> On Wed, Jun 03, 1998 at 11:17:15AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote: > > > Democracy would give the majority the feeling that they have the right to > > tell the few what to do, which they absolutely do not have. > > That is the major falling of every democracy[...]
There are many different types of democracies. Universal franchise democracies are *very* dangerous, for reasons well known (and easily seen) by anyone interested in the matter. On the other hand, proportional (or corporate) democracies can be remarkably stable. In the case of Debian, a pretty straightforward democracy can be implemented by voting by "shares," where one share == one package. You could also weigh shares by category; e.g., an essential package is worth 5 shares, an optional package is worth 2 shares and an "extra" package is only worth one. That keeps control in the hands of the people who do the work, and they're the ones most likely to know what needs to be done and the true cost of "trivial" changes. Also, since the voting majority rests in the hands of relatively few individuals, they can generally lead by consensus amongst themselves. If someone disagrees with their policies, they can easily gain a louder voice by carrying a greater share of the load. Since I haven't had time to work on the Hesiod package for several weeks (not even to recompile it with libc6), I have zero shares and you're certainly free to ignore me! :-) Bear Giles [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]