Hi Thierry, Well that has to be the fiercest reaction so far.
Volker proposed the text and he probably pinched most of it from somewhere else (fedora if I remember correctly). I have to take issue with some of your characterization. There was a long discussion thread and I'll admit I haven't read the whole of it but a fair amount of it and no one proposed a change of wording for it. The anti camp didn't want amendment, they'd rather not have it. The "for" camp has not put forward any alternative words as far as I remember. There was plenty of opportunity to get the text amended and it didn't happen. Think what you will of it. I personally think that whatever the result it has shown that the community is broadly well behaved while there seem to be strong feelings, so far you are the one who pushed the envelop the furthest, the debate stayed quite polite. I don't think we need the code but considering the general behavior here I don't think it will matter. We are a quite well behaved community. We'll have to deal with the occasional explosion with or without code. Francois On Tue, 25 Nov 2014 03:17:19 Thierry wrote: > Hi again, > > I have serious concerns with the current situation. > > What is wrong with the current call for vote ? > > > Let me summarize the situation : > > - An obscure group of self-appointed people wrote a text, they had the > possibility to discuss and amend its content, with an unlimited amount > of time. The estimated entropy of the text is larger than 1. > > - This text can not be modified by the community and is submitted as is > for a majority vote. Those that do not belong to the obscure group > (which is still anonymous after various requests) can therefore only > contribute 1/n bits, where n is the number of voters. They have less > than two days to answer. > > > My point of view about this : > > - This is paternalistic because it means that the community as a whole is > not able to work together and write anything good. This looks also > useless (or dangerous?) to take more time and let people think and > exchange about this. > > - This contradicts the contents of the text which claims about > collaboration and respect, however it is not how the obscure group > behaves. Hence, i doubt that the text will be used in other way than for > repression. > > - This is in complete contradiction with Sage community habits. Let me > give an example: when someone writes some code, anyone can help during > the review process. If one of the reviewers thinks something can be > improved, it is discussed on trac, modifications are made until > everyone agree. We are all pointing toward a common goal. Discussing > some big issues on sage-devel is a way to involve more people in > important design discussions and mix more ideas together, it is not a > way to enforce the approval by a majority vote. > > > There are strong issues with majority voting : > > - A call for vote aims at closing a discussion. However, if there is an > issue somewhere, the only way to reach a stable solution is precisely to > let the discussion open until enough content is added into it and try to > merge good ideas and objections. Regarding the current proposition, some > objections were emitted by various people. > > - Launching such a vote creates a division within the community, whatever > the outcome, between those who belong to the "majority" and the others. > This will result in oppression: the minority will have to behave > according to what the majority decided. > > - It is easy to raise an army of voters, especially on a public > mailing-list. It can be as innocent as sending e-mails to people that > are likely to agree with you and say "there is a vote going on, you > should read it and make your own opinion". > > - This is unlikely to attract future developers with diverse and original > points of view and autonomous thinking. > > - If the text is voted, the minority will have to conform to a text they > could not even discuss. This is even more serious that the text is about > individual behaviour. Was there with a particular minority in mind ? > > > Choosing among ideas or mixing them ? Competition or Collaboration ? Fight > or Solidarity ? > > This e-mail is not ended, i encourage you to read and think about > "majority voting" and "consensus decision making". > > We have a serious communication issue, and we need to discuss it, without > deadline. Following the previous thread, Vincent opened a page for this on > the wiki. > > Ciao, > Thierry -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
