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Dale <rdalek1967@×××××.com> posted 4A47F8E3.8070703@×××××.com, excerpted |
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below, on Sun, 28 Jun 2009 18:12:35 -0500: |
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> As a long time Gentoo user, I have to ask. Why is that EVERYONE on the |
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> council must be there or have someone there to represent them? Would |
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> Gentoo come to a end if one person or even two people were not present? |
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I believe the fear is in ultimately having a very small group of people |
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(say 1-3) vote in something agreed among themselves, that the rest of the |
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community doesn't agree with. Gentoo devs tend to be a rather |
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independent lot, and they don't want that risk. That's the reason the |
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council is seven members instead of say, five or three, as well. With a |
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three person council it's really easy to get just two acting in cahoots, |
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and with five, getting a third person isn't that much harder. A seven |
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member council means in ordered for something to pass, at least four |
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members must agree, and there's a lot of developers for whom that's |
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simply the minimum number they can trust to make a reasonable decision. |
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From that viewpoint, if anyone's absent without proxy, it lowers the |
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"safe" level dramatically, because it's just too easy to persuade one or |
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two other folks to vote with you, even if they don't share your ulterior |
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motive. So the idea is to keep the number of votes to seven, so the |
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number necessary for a majority is always a reasonably safe four. |
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> I do agree that if a proxy is going to be used, they should be a |
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> developer. If it is not that way now, it should be changed. I been |
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> using Gentoo for years and wouldn't even consider serving as a proxy. I |
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> would certainly not want to be a tie breaker on a vote. |
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I agree. If I read GLEP 39 correctly, however, the reason it wasn't |
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required that all council members be devs is because they'd be council |
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members by virtue of being voted in by devs (being a dev is a requirement |
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to vote). Thus, if a majority of voting devs voted in a Gentoo-non-dev, |
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presumably they'd be expressing explicit trust in that non-dev to do the |
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right thing. |
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Of course, the same doesn't apply to proxies, who are single-person |
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designated by the to-be-absent council member. Thus, the safety margin |
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doesn't exist there, they were NOT approved by the voting devs as a |
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whole, or even the council as a whole, and it's certainly a reasonable |
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argument that because of that, they should at least be devs. |
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However, see my recent post proposing designated proxies, taking the job |
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for the full council term of a year. They could either be voted in as |
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running mates along with the (voting) council, or designated and approved |
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as the first order of business of the new council. (Since voting is |
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already underway for the new council, it'd have to be designated and |
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approved, this year, with the running mate idea perhaps next year if |
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thought good.) |
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That'd eliminate both the unprepared proxy still trying to get up to |
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speed on what he's supposed to be voting on, as they'd presumably be as |
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prepared as would the regular voting council member, AND the problem of |
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non-dev as proxy, since they'd at minimum have been approved by the |
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council as a whole, if not voted in, in the same council vote as the |
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(voting) council itself. |
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|
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-- |
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Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. |
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"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- |
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and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman |