Re: RFC: General resolution: Clarify the status of the social contract
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> writes:
> I do ont think that determining who interprets the
> non-constitution foundation documents belongs on the same ballot.
That seems entirely reasonable to me, and I agree on the undesireability
of combinatorial explosion of the ballot.
> It is a flaw in the constitution, and should be fixed, I would second
> proposals that let the secretary not just interpret the constitution,
> but all other foundation documents as well. This seems in line with the
> constitution already handing tot hte secretary the role of interpreting
> the constitution.
In theory, I agree. In practice, if we vote the SC as binding, it puts
the secretary in the unenviable position of delaying releases or rejecting
package uploads without having a popular mandate. There are major
advantages to that for stability of decisions, but socially, there are
also major disadvantages personally for the secretary. It sets up the
secretary to be the project whipping boy. I certainly would not want that
job.
That's one of the reasons why I think the DPL may be a better choice. At
least there's a clear vote for the DPL and the feeling that the DPL is
supported by the project as a whole in a real and concrete way every year,
which gives the DPL more social authority to make hard decisions while
hopefully making it less likely (although not completely unlikely) that
they'll have to deal with the sort of crap that you've dealt with over the
last week or two.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
Reply to: