Re: Proposed wording for the SC modification
On Mon, 17 Nov 2008, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 09:14:41PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > The foundation documents are like the law. This GR is like a "decree of
> > the government" that tells us how the law will be applied.
>
> A decree of the government does not do that. It gives supplemental rules and
> regulations compatible with the law (and generally requires a specific
> authorization in the law, but this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction).
>
> In any case, GRs are law, not decrees. The proper analogy for a decree would
> be a Project Leader or Delegate decision.
Analogies do have limits of course but you get the meaning and I stand
behind my logic. In our case the developer body has the right to rule
on anything: change the law (parliament), change a delegate's decision
(override the government), decide of sanctions (justice, we never did it
fortunately) and any analogy with a country will fail due to that.
However, here we have delegates (the RM) that have taken a decision
and someone believes that the decision was wrong and want to override
it. Instead of voting on that (and then creating a sort of
"jurisprudence") we came up with explanations on how the
firmwares should be handled and for me this is exactly like
a decree that fills the hole (maybe unintentionaly in our case,
intentionaly in real cases probably) that were left in the law.
> > If the GR doesn't explicitely state that it modifies a foundation
> > document, then it doesn't. If you believe that it does implicitely, then
> > you vote against it (or propose an amendment where you explicitely modify
> > the document).
>
> The Project Secretary is charged with conducting General Resolution votes,
> and with judging disputes in the application of the Constitution. As such, the
> Project Secretary is not really a secretarial position - the best analogy is a
> chairperson of a decision-making body.
>
> As such, I believe it is the Project Secretary's duty (not a right, but duty)
> to ensure that any proposals and amendments are compatible with the
> Constitution, and it is also the Project Secretary's duty to refuse to conduct
> a vote he believes to be contrary to the Constitution.
Like has already been said elsewhere, he applies the constitution and has
to interpret it. I don't believe that it is his role to interpret the
SC/DFSG and decide if a resolution is compatible. We have all agreed
to defend the SC/DFSG but obviously we do have differing ways to interpret
them and so does the secretary, he should not get a special power here.
The developer body decides if a resolution is compatible or not with
our foundation documents when they vote on it.
If the secretary can't be convinced with this discussion, maybe we should
aim at clarifying this in the constitution itself.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/
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