Re: Proposed GR: Repeal the 2005 vote for declassification of the debian-private mailing list
On Sun, Sep 18, 2016 at 09:28:40PM +0000, Nick Phillips wrote:
> On Fri, 2016-09-16 at 06:51 +0000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > It is obviously okay for anyone who posted to disclose what they
> > wrote
> > to -private at any point; maybe a feasible and interesting starting
> > point would be a service that let's people easily disclose their own
> > old mails to -private.
> Unfortunately not the case. One might well have written something that,
> while not directly quoting a previous mail, refers to its content in a
> manner that would not be acceptable - e.g. "AJ, you say that you agree
> that X should not be accepted as a DD, but..."
One of the benefits of eventually publishing all discussions is being able
to prove that you *didn't* say things, like your made up quote refers
to above. I don't think I've ever suggested that someone should not be
accepted as a DD; though I have been involved in a couple of threads on
-private about expelling Dds.
> Were it not for the fact that your axiom is fatally flawed, I would
> like your idea :)
Perhaps I'm misreading your tone and/or the list's, but the impression I'm
getting is "your ideas have no merits worth building upon" -- certainly
that's the way "fatally flawed axioms" in maths should be treated. So
I'm not really sharing the smiley.
When I joined Debian I endorsed the social contract [0] which said
"we won't hide problems". I think folks are renegging on that ideal,
but even if that's what the majority decides, I don't think it absolves
me from my commitment. So if the proposal that attempts to deauthorise
people from releasing their own posts to the public gets on a ballot,
I'll be putting all my -private posts up on my own website prior to the
vote closing, so I don't run the risk of having to quit Debian in order
to keep the commitment I made in order to join it in the first place,
amusingly ironic as that would be. I would prefer some sort of middle
ground that has some consideration for people's desire for secrecy;
but I can't see that happening at this point.
Cheers,
aj
[0] Did you know Debian's Social Contract has dropped to the end of the
5th page of google results, even below the Gentoo Social Contract?
At one point I'm pretty sure it was in the top couple of results,
which presumably would've been delightfully confusing for undergrad
philosophy students for a while...
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