On Thursday 19 January 2006 21:27, Don Armstrong wrote: > The Secretary has the authority to adjudicate constitutional disputes > of interpretation under §7.1.2.[1] Since modifying the Foundation > Documents requires a modification to the constitution, it seems > reasonable that the secretary would adjudicate whether a particular GR > would require such a modification to remain consistent. The authority to adjudicate constitutional disputes is not the same as the power to interpret the DFSG, which while a foundation document, is NOT the constitution. And therefore it is not the role of the Secretary to determine whether a license complies with the GFDL, and it is therefore NOT within his or her power to declare that a vote on such a question of interpretation requires a supermajority (because this would necessarily imply a prior judgment on the DFSG-freeness of the license in question). > A stance has to be made one way or the other; The correct stance for the Secretary to adopt would be not to exceed his or her powers, and therefore let the vote occur without pre-judging it by imposing a supermajority requirement, and then accept the outcome of the vote regardless of personal opinion. > either way involves a personal weighing of whether the acceptance of a > particular license as acceptable in main violates the DFSG itself; No, no such judgement is necessary. It is not the Secretary's role to make such judgments. > Indeed, the very fact that we've had 2 previous GRs on this very issue > which required a modification of the DFSG to do so seems to indicate that > the project has decided on multiple occasions that 3:1 majorities were > required to deal with the current version of the GFDL. We have not had any GRs on the GFDL. That the status of the GFDL was in people's minds when debating recent GRs is immaterial. Nothing in the GRs refers to the GFDL, or to any other specific license. That the previous GRs required a supermajority is due to their clear intention to modify or suspend foundation documents, not to establish an interpretation one specific application of them. > 1: Odly enough, it's not clear that the developers can override a > decision that the Secretary has made,[2] although I'd be surprised if > a Secretary would fail to heed a clear overriding vote. I'm not trying to override the Secretary in any formal constitutional manner. I'm simply trying to convince him not to overstep the bounds of his powers by making a decision which he is not entitled to make. Cheers, Christopher Martin
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