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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Kevin Mark]

Hi Peter,
On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 05:08:42PM -0600, Peter Samuelson wrote:
> 
> [Josip Rodin]
> > I also think that a social committee would be a good idea.  Even if
> > unrefined and/or undefined, just the notion of having both a
> > technical and a social committee would indicate major progress in our
> > way of thinking.
> 
> Pretty words.  What problem is this supposed to solve?  What benefits
> can we expect from "major progress in our way of thinking"?
> 
> > This one could be tricky to phrase. Maybe - "Decide on any social
> > matter, including social norms and customs, non-technical
> > communication among developers, and day-to-day organization matters
> > within the Project."
> 
> For example?  For every social problem I can think of in Debian, the
> solutions are not enforceable by a committee vote, unless you give them
> the authority currently held by the DAMs, listmasters and ftpmasters.

Those people have authority to restrict people's action in Debian, which
I would say is the major 'punishment' in a free software project, so
maybe the soc-ctte can influence the actions of those who currently have
power rather than it having any real power.

> That is, the only ways I can see to effect social reforms is to be able
> to throw people out of the project, or restrict their list postings, or
> restrict their uploads.  

The reasons why people are thrown out, have their postings or
uploads restricted usually has some social component relating to a
violation of Debian social norms. Would it not be good to have the
reasons why someone was restricted be more transparent as opposed to
wondering why person X did it?

> Anything less is just empty gestures.  People
> who cause social problems don't stop just because someone asks them to
> stop.

As I said, technical means of restriction to the project is the most
obvious way to make it clear that someone's actions are not appreciated.

> 
> Or is this, just like way too many other threads in Debian, really
> about Sven Luther needing a better ombudsman?

I guess if someone felt that a technical decison was wrong, they'd go to
the tech ctte. And similarly, if someone felt an enforment of social
policy through technical restriction was unfair, they'd go to the soc
cttee.

-Kev
-- 
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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 18:03:26 -0800, Steve Langasek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 05:55:03PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> Voting implies the tyranny of the majority; and I would expect the
>> social and cultural norms to be heavily biased towards white, male,
>> occidental euro-american social and cultural modes; since such is
>> the composition of the voting population.

>> I am not sure I want to be governed by such a social /cultural
>> policy.

> Why do you think the establishment of a "social committee" would
> have any bearing at all on whether you're subject to a tyranny of
> the majority where cultural norms are concerned?

Good question. Please allow me to see if I can do it
 justice. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the monologue.

When the subject was first bruited in in the shadowy secrecy
 of -private; it was associated with the technical committee.  it was
 said that the social committee will be like the technical committee,
 except for social and cultural issues.  Like the tech ctte, it would
 make policy, _social policy_, it would define the norms, and so
 on. The constitutional bits related to the DPL and tech ctte were
 quoted as a model for the social committee.

And the technical committee is the highest authority on
 technical issues in the various institutions the  constitution
 delineates.

To be fair, all the proponents have said that initially the
 social committee would have very few powers.  But I believe if the
 effort does not die of neglect, if we spend time and energy into it,
 we would only do so to create something effective.  To be effective,
 eventually, it would need teeth.  Me, I  am merely trusting in the
 developers ability to create something effective, and looking far
 enough I can see things that ought to be worrisome.

You see, the committee is going to define the norms. It is
 going to lay down the acceptable cultural mores. In my experience,
 committees never produce minimalist documents. The never know when
 to stop. Design by committee is what gave us ADA.

Now, culturally accepted practices differ widely by culture --
 and we are very strongly biased to be a white, male, mostly European
 descended mono-culture, as a group.  For example, in Indian social
 groups (including mailing lists), age and seniority equal respect. I
 have the distinct honour and great discomfort of being addressed as
 "Manoj Sir" in some mailing lists I am on. You might bad mouth people
 approximately your age group, but speak rudely to a "senior" person,
 and the whole gang descends on you and beats you back in line.  On
 the other hand, an occidental social structure, individuality and
 meritocracy take precedence -- and social mores are based much less
 on age. This would be seen as unacceptably rude from where I come
 from. 

   Now, I have been in the US for (gulp) 21 years (where d_do_
 these decades go?), so I personally have assimilated. But, looking at
 IEEE's latest newsletter about college admissions in CS and
 engineering, and looking at the Asia; the contributors of the future
 to Debian might well come from cultures that find the norms of
 occidental society to be horribly rude.

Given that once codified, style, usability, and social
 polices (well, almost any policy) tends to get more and more chiseled
 in stone; creating a social policy is not in the Nay^H^Hprojects best
 interest, perhaps.

No, I am not sure I fully believe this, but it is a point that
 should be considered as we dash headlong towards creating a social
 committee and social policy to mirror the technical committee and
 technical policy and constitutional amendments to chisel it into the
 codex.

manoj
-- 
"Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time." a coffee
cup
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Felipe Augusto van de Wiel (faw)]

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Hash: SHA1

On 01/25/2007 04:11 PM, Josip Rodin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This idea arose from a discussion on the -private mailing list.
> Andreas Tille, Gustavo Franco, Manoj Srivastava and Gunnar Wolf all
> commented fairly positively on a vague idea of having a social committee
> (soc-ctte), different from the technical committee (tech-ctte).
> I'm citing their names simply to avoid an issues with taking credit.

While we are at the initial steps of discussing this idea,
I would like to "quote" a nice blog entry (thanks to David Nusinow
- -- aka gravity -- for the link). David quoted the blog entry a
while ago, it is from a Gentoo Developer about some of situations
in Gentoo, how they tried to deal with the different situations
and how things evolved. There is also a nice followup in the
comments.

http://spyderous.livejournal.com/80869.html


Please, do not look to this as something specific to a
given distro or project, I'm also not trying to compare
communities, what I'm trying to do is increase the information
available for our decisions, because I _do_ think that we can
learn a lot from history, specially from similar experiences
and scenarios, in order to achieve our goals.

This message has no intention to say "go ahead, do
that" or "stop right now, it will blow our toilets". :-)


Kind regards,

- --
Felipe Augusto van de Wiel (faw)
"Debian. Freedom to code. Code to freedom!"
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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Steve Langasek]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 05:55:03PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> > We can determine social policy by discussion and, if necessary, by
> > voting. I'd rather see consensus, and, more specifically, see the
> > soc-ctte spell out the social norms and if the developer body
> > disagrees with it, and can't convince the soc-ctte via discussion,
> > they can force a change via a GR.

> Voting implies the tyranny of the majority; and I would expect
>  the social and cultural norms to be heavily biased towards white,
>  male, occidental euro-american social and cultural modes; since such
>  is the composition of the voting population.

> I am not sure I want to be governed by such a social /cultural
>  policy.

Why do you think the establishment of a "social committee" would have any
bearing at all on whether you're subject to a tyranny of the majority where
cultural norms are concerned?

-- 
Steve Langasek   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer   to set it on, and I can move the world.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://www.debian.org/


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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 02:25:40 +0100, Josip Rodin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 07:06:33PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> > I should also note that we have this sort of an effect already -
>> > if someone wishes to impose their ideas on others, for example to
>> > modify a certain package in a way that they think is right, they
>> > can usually achieve it by working hard enough and being patient
>> > enough to take over the package.
>> 
>> > Yet, we also have a tyranny of the minority effect, when e.g. a
>> > person with an uncommon opinion maintains a package in a way that
>> > contradicts with the wishes of others.
>> 
>> In both these cases, those that do the work make the decisions.
>> People who do not like it, and are willing to do the work, can fork
>> and offer alternatives.
>> 
>> We don't generally let the majority decude how the working minority
>> does its work.

> Er, that's not a technically sound argument. Just because someone is
> more diligent in making uploads and more vocal in trying to explain
> why they should maintain a package, that doesn't in any way imply
> that what they are doing is better than what a person less intent on
> racing uploads and mailing list posts would be doing.

I was not defending the practice; I was pointing out that the
 proposed soc ctte thing is different from what we do with packages.
 There are vast amounts of leeway a package maintainer exercises over
 their package, but they do not have the power to block a fork.

So, if your hypothetical more effective maintainer can't
 convince the incumbent about how to do things better, can't file bugs
 about th deficiencies and provide patches (and perhaps NMU's for the
 more egregious flaws), they can offer alternatives, either on p.d.o,
 or as a forked package, or, finally, as a last resort, go to the tech
 ctte; but only with legitimate non-subjective technical grievances.

While this might not provide the best maintainer-package
 mapping, nor the most efficient one -- it is a model that has worked
 for us.

I do pay far more attention to packages that are mine; there
 is a sense of ownership, and hos the packages are maintained reflects
 on me.  I, personally, take greater care of my packages than I would
 of anything I am merely part of a team; I would not push off sleep or
 work tasks in order to maintain the latter (let the rest of the team
 deal with it in my crunch time); but since it is my responsibility, I
 go the extra mile.

I am rambling.

OK, so we do carve out little fiefdoms on the packaging side;
 but I think it does have a benefit of added incentive. That is the
 rationale.

manoj
-- 
He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.
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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Josip Rodin]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 07:06:33PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> > I should also note that we have this sort of an effect already - if
> > someone wishes to impose their ideas on others, for example to
> > modify a certain package in a way that they think is right, they can
> > usually achieve it by working hard enough and being patient enough
> > to take over the package.
> 
> > Yet, we also have a tyranny of the minority effect, when e.g. a
> > person with an uncommon opinion maintains a package in a way that
> > contradicts with the wishes of others.
> 
> In both these cases, those that do the work make the
>  decisions.  People who do not like it, and are willing to do the
>  work, can fork and offer alternatives.
> 
> We don't generally let the majority decude how the working
>  minority does its work.

Er, that's not a technically sound argument. Just because someone is more
diligent in making uploads and more vocal in trying to explain why they
should maintain a package, that doesn't in any way imply that what they are
doing is better than what a person less intent on racing uploads and mailing
list posts would be doing.

-- 
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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 01:35:21 +0100, Josip Rodin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
said:  

> I should also note that we have this sort of an effect already - if
> someone wishes to impose their ideas on others, for example to
> modify a certain package in a way that they think is right, they can
> usually achieve it by working hard enough and being patient enough
> to take over the package.

> Yet, we also have a tyranny of the minority effect, when e.g. a
> person with an uncommon opinion maintains a package in a way that
> contradicts with the wishes of others.

In both these cases, those that do the work make the
 decisions.  People who do not like it, and are willing to do the
 work, can fork and offer alternatives.

We don't generally let the majority decude how the working
 minority does its work.

> Both of these kinds of people are free to participate in public
> discussions and represent their point of view.

_anyone_ can participate in a public discussion, yes.

> Having various opinions represented through elected members of a
> committee will have various effects. It will dampen the effect of
> any small minority, including those who are otherwise dominant, if
> they couldn't elect a candidate who would represent their exact
> views most vocally; they could still counteract that by continuing
> to voice their opinions and convincing others to join and 'expand'
> their ranks. It would also support the election of candidates who
> enjoy support of the other kind of people, those who are otherwise
> disproportionally discriminated against.

This still means the tyrranny of the majority.

> Bear in mind that we use a Condorcet method to elect people, meaning
> that the elected people will more often lean towards consensus than
> not.  That could well be sufficient to avoid anything approaching a
> tyranny of the majority. If not, the committee's powers would never
> be as far-reaching as to actually be able to alienate any minority
> too much.

No, condorcet  still lets the majority rule -- all it does it
 that it allows people to vote for more than one  options, without
 having them feel that they might be throwing their vote away as in
 first past the post and otehr methods.

Condorcet does nothing to allay the tyranny of the majority, I
 am sorry to say.


If we do have a social committee, there should be some
 guidelines to  protect the cultural rights of minorities, and to
 favour diversity as opposed to the monoculture our mostly white,
 euopean-descended, male voting population represents.

manoj
-- 
Unnamed Law: If it happens, it must be possible.
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 01:14:57 +0100, Josip Rodin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
said:  
> All that you say is true, but it is also true that *right now* we
> all abide by various social and cultural norms which are of various
> shapes and forms.

> The forming of a group which would discuss these subjective matters
> in an organized fashion wouldn't make them any more or less
> important, but it would give them a much more fair hearing (or at
> least more fair than a typical flamewar).

> As far as governing goes, I explicitly said in the proposal that the
> committee should not have many powers, and indeed that its initial
> instance should have an even more reduced set of powers from one
> that we could envision it to have, so that we don't rush anything.

Well, Iam willing to give it a shot. But bear in mind
 everything you say could have been said about -legal before it was
 created; but -legal has little representation from the  vast majority
 of developers, and I am not sure the opinions that hold sway on
 -legal are really representative of the opinions held by the
 developer body at large.

The soc ctte might also fall into such a state (or it might
 not, which is why I am willing to give it a shot).  but as a new
 american citizen living under the leadership of President Bush; let
 us say I am inherently skeptical of a new governing body created with
 a mandate as fuzzy as "determine acceptable social/cultural values,
 by majority rule if need be, and eventually enforce them".

And that brings me full circle; leaning on the skeptical side
 of indifference to this proposal, but willing to cut the proponents
 some slack, and give them some rope.

manoj
-- 
The trouble with superheros is what to do between phone booths. Ken
Kesey
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Josip Rodin]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 06:34:47PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> >> I'd rather see consensus, and, more specifically, see the
> >> soc-ctte spell out the social norms
> 
> > The developer's reference, for example, includes several social
> > norms already - anything that isn't a strict technical obligation
> > but instead a matter of procedure and/or courtesy.
> 
> But the dev-ref is optional -- last time I read it, I did not
>  find it very useful tome, and I disagreed with a lot of its dictums,
>  and so I largely ignore it while building packages; I rely on my
>  sense of best practices. The tech ctte does not come down on me like
>  a tonne of bricks for not removing the . from my short descriptions.

The social committee wouldn't do anything of the sort; like Lars said,
it could spell out the norms. Coming down on people like a tonne of bricks
would be anti-social, which would would go against the very notion of
a *social* committee.

-- 
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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 00:33:55 +0100, Josip Rodin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 01:07:30AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
>> > Why don't I think it is a good idea? Well, because,
>> > unlike
>> >  technical issues, social issues are very subjective.  Also,
>> >  social and cultural norms differ widely from culture to culture;
>> >  which culture shall be represented in, and whose norms shall be
>> >  enforced by this social/cultural committee?
>> 
>> That's easy: we should enforce (assuming that is not too strong a
>> word) the social and cultural norms that we, as a community, agree
>> on. The comparison to technical policy is not entirely invalid: we
>> make up our technical policy ourselves, too.
>> 
>> We can determine social policy by discussion and, if necessary, by
>> voting. I'd rather see consensus, and, more specifically, see the
>> soc-ctte spell out the social norms and if the developer body
>> disagrees with it, and can't convince the soc-ctte via discussion,
>> they can force a change via a GR.

> Thanks for saving me from having to say all that. :)

> The developer's reference, for example, includes several social
> norms already - anything that isn't a strict technical obligation
> but instead a matter of procedure and/or courtesy.

But the dev-ref is optional -- last time I read it, I did not
 find it very useful tome, and I disagreed with a lot of its dictums,
 and so I largely ignore it while building packages; I rely on my
 sense of best practices. The tech ctte does not come down on me like
 a tonne of bricks for not removing the . from my short descriptions.

> A code of conduct, if you will. The mailing lists have an explicit
> code of conduct which is generally not enforced by any technical
> measure but maintained by consensus (or at least diligence of those
> who care, for the cynics among us ;).  Those are some existing
> documented topics that a social committee could keep an eye on;
> there are also numerous matters relating to our day-to-day
> interaction that go unnoticed because they're so "normal" to us, but
> are indeed something that we would be wise to take care of.

Frankly, a ctte that enforces things like the dev-ref scares
 the living daylights out of me.

manoj
-- 
"I am ... a woman ... and ... technically a parasitic uterine growth"
Sean Doran the Younger
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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Josip Rodin]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 05:55:03PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> > We can determine social policy by discussion and, if necessary, by
> > voting. I'd rather see consensus, and, more specifically, see the
> > soc-ctte spell out the social norms and if the developer body
> > disagrees with it, and can't convince the soc-ctte via discussion,
> > they can force a change via a GR.
> 
> Voting implies the tyranny of the majority;

I should also note that we have this sort of an effect already - if someone
wishes to impose their ideas on others, for example to modify a certain
package in a way that they think is right, they can usually achieve it by
working hard enough and being patient enough to take over the package.

Yet, we also have a tyranny of the minority effect, when e.g. a person with
an uncommon opinion maintains a package in a way that contradicts with the
wishes of others.

Both of these kinds of people are free to participate in public discussions
and represent their point of view.

But then there can also be people who are not particularly interested in
imposing their ideas on others, who don't have pretentions to take over
other people's packages, or to contradict other people based on their
opinion, or to represent their point of view in public discussions.

These are actually discriminated against, because the reality seems to
favor the more ambitious, the more active, the more vocal.

Having various opinions represented through elected members of a committee
will have various effects. It will dampen the effect of any small minority,
including those who are otherwise dominant, if they couldn't elect a
candidate who would represent their exact views most vocally; they could
still counteract that by continuing to voice their opinions and convincing
others to join and 'expand' their ranks. It would also support the election
of candidates who enjoy support of the other kind of people, those who are
otherwise disproportionally discriminated against.

Bear in mind that we use a Condorcet method to elect people, meaning that
the elected people will more often lean towards consensus than not.
That could well be sufficient to avoid anything approaching a tyranny of
the majority. If not, the committee's powers would never be as far-reaching
as to actually be able to alienate any minority too much.

-- 
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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Josip Rodin]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 05:55:03PM -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> But the technical issues are often not subjective; while
>  social issues almost always are subjective, and very very heavily
>  influenced by cultural bias.
> 
> Voting implies the tyranny of the majority; and I would expect
>  the social and cultural norms to be heavily biased towards white,
>  male, occidental euro-american social and cultural modes; since such
>  is the composition of the voting population.
> 
> I am not sure I want to be governed by such a social /cultural
>  policy.

All that you say is true, but it is also true that *right now* we all abide
by various social and cultural norms which are of various shapes and forms.

The forming of a group which would discuss these subjective matters in
an organized fashion wouldn't make them any more or less important, but
it would give them a much more fair hearing (or at least more fair than
a typical flamewar).

As far as governing goes, I explicitly said in the proposal that the
committee should not have many powers, and indeed that its initial instance
should have an even more reduced set of powers from one that we could
envision it to have, so that we don't rush anything.

-- 
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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Josip Rodin]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 05:08:42PM -0600, Peter Samuelson wrote:
> > I also think that a social committee would be a good idea.  Even if
> > unrefined and/or undefined, just the notion of having both a
> > technical and a social committee would indicate major progress in our
> > way of thinking.
> 
> Pretty words.  What problem is this supposed to solve?  What benefits
> can we expect from "major progress in our way of thinking"?

Here's a few aspects of the issue (not necessarily *problem* per se):

Debian is a thousand-member entity whose members operate according to
numerous more or less standardized beliefes and procedures, with various
intricate or general twists and undertones. So far we have attracted
at least two sociologists found the project an interesting study for a
scientific work. This isn't to say that I particularly fancy those things,
but the fact that they happen should make us think about it.

Or, alternatively, consider that other kinds of organizations, both
for-profit or non-profit, that have as many members as we do also generally
tend have a much more complex hierarchy than we do; they have whole human
resources departments which organize various schemes to facilitate
information sharing, decision making, etc. This isn't to say that I
particularly fancy those, either, it's just that we might want to take
note of our sheer size.

Another point, perhaps a bit closer to our every day life in Debian, would
be the simple fact that we still use the mailing lists as the main method of
discussion, despite the fact we've grown a magnitude in numbers, and that
the lists are actually too high-volume to track for a sizeable chunk of the
normal human population :) The way we do this kind of stuff affects the way
we do the technical stuff; for good or for bad, but it definitely has an
impact.

People will also notice that we still have a single leader, democratically
elected but with uncommonly few powers; groups formed ad hoc which are
influential, or groups formed after much fuss which are ineffective;
individuals who can be MIA, or those who can pull entire important
transitions all by themselves.

Forming a new body that would try to consider various non-technical, social
issues would definitely help gain some collective insight. Maybe we'll come
to the conclusion that we don't need the committee? Maybe that we don't need
the entire constitution?! Maybe, maybe not. But it's worth thinking about
and discussing, in an organized setting.

> > This one could be tricky to phrase. Maybe - "Decide on any social
> > matter, including social norms and customs, non-technical
> > communication among developers, and day-to-day organization matters
> > within the Project."
> 
> For example?  For every social problem I can think of in Debian, the
> solutions are not enforceable by a committee vote, unless you give them
> the authority currently held by the DAMs, listmasters and ftpmasters.
> That is, the only ways I can see to effect social reforms is to be able
> to throw people out of the project, or restrict their list postings, or
> restrict their uploads.  Anything less is just empty gestures.

I disagree, it most definitely is not! Most people in Debian are not
sociopaths, they can be reasoned with, and they *should* be reasoned with.
We have been doing exactly that all this time, and it has not really failed
us yet.

Also, the social committee shouldn't necessarily effect *reforms*. It might
as well evolve into a reactionary entity that aims to maintain the existing
social order in Debian. But that's beside the point. The point is that we
don't have any group doing any organized thinking about these matters.

> People who cause social problems don't stop just because someone asks them
> to stop.
> 
> Or is this, just like way too many other threads in Debian, really
> about Sven Luther needing a better ombudsman?

Umm, what? You do realize by the amount of my participation, or rather the
lack thereof, that I barely ever looked at the Sven Luther discussions that
caused this latest commotion? Please let's not resort to semi-random cheap
shots.

Please consider the proposal on its own merit. Consider also the simple
fact that I have been in this community for over eight years now, and
that I do have better things to do than to go about proposing a generic
constitutional ammendment over a single more-or-less transient issue.

> Perhaps you need to import a bit more context from -private.

What do you have in mind? This is it, AFAICT.

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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 01:07:30 +0200, Lars Wirzenius <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> On to, 2007-01-25 at 16:27 -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> Why don't I think it is a good idea? Well, because, unlike
>> technical issues, social issues are very subjective.  Also, social
>> and cultural norms differ widely from culture to culture; which
>> culture shall be represented in, and whose norms shall be enforced
>> by this social/cultural committee?

> That's easy: we should enforce (assuming that is not too strong a
> word) the social and cultural norms that we, as a community, agree
> on. The comparison to technical policy is not entirely invalid: we
> make up our technical policy ourselves, too.

But the technical issues are often not subjective; while
 social issues almost always are subjective, and very very heavily
 influenced by cultural bias.

> We can determine social policy by discussion and, if necessary, by
> voting. I'd rather see consensus, and, more specifically, see the
> soc-ctte spell out the social norms and if the developer body
> disagrees with it, and can't convince the soc-ctte via discussion,
> they can force a change via a GR.

Voting implies the tyranny of the majority; and I would expect
 the social and cultural norms to be heavily biased towards white,
 male, occidental euro-american social and cultural modes; since such
 is the composition of the voting population.

I am not sure I want to be governed by such a social /cultural
 policy.

manoj
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Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team

[Josip Rodin]

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 07:30:41PM +0100, joy wrote:
> > It would also be helpful if there were people who are able to commit time
> > to do significant but boring tasks to help DSA, expecting neither praise,
> > acknowledgement or, most importantly, any additional rights/priveleges in
> > return. If that's you please mail me privately, probably at [EMAIL 
> > PROTECTED]
> 
> Doing anything in private conversations kills any transparency that
> we might have hoped to have, and will ultimately not fix the problem.

I should, however, mention that I also offer man-hours for any such tasks.

(Does it really have to be a private-only mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or can it 
stay
Cc:ed like this? I'll repeat it if necessary.)

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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Josip Rodin]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 01:07:30AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote:
> > Why don't I think it is a good idea? Well, because, unlike
> >  technical issues, social issues are very subjective.  Also, social
> >  and cultural norms differ widely from culture to culture; which
> >  culture  shall be represented  in, and whose norms shall be enforced
> >  by this social/cultural committee?
> 
> That's easy: we should enforce (assuming that is not too strong a word)
> the social and cultural norms that we, as a community, agree on. The
> comparison to technical policy is not entirely invalid: we make up our
> technical policy ourselves, too.
> 
> We can determine social policy by discussion and, if necessary, by
> voting. I'd rather see consensus, and, more specifically, see the
> soc-ctte spell out the social norms and if the developer body disagrees
> with it, and can't convince the soc-ctte via discussion, they can force
> a change via a GR.

Thanks for saving me from having to say all that. :)

The developer's reference, for example, includes several social norms
already - anything that isn't a strict technical obligation but instead a
matter of procedure and/or courtesy. A code of conduct, if you will. The
mailing lists have an explicit code of conduct which is generally not
enforced by any technical measure but maintained by consensus (or at least
diligence of those who care, for the cynics among us ;).
Those are some existing documented topics that a social committee could
keep an eye on; there are also numerous matters relating to our day-to-day
interaction that go unnoticed because they're so "normal" to us, but are
indeed something that we would be wise to take care of.

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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Lars Wirzenius]

On to, 2007-01-25 at 17:08 -0600, Peter Samuelson wrote:
> [Josip Rodin]
> > I also think that a social committee would be a good idea.  Even if
> > unrefined and/or undefined, just the notion of having both a
> > technical and a social committee would indicate major progress in our
> > way of thinking.
> 
> Pretty words.  What problem is this supposed to solve?  What benefits
> can we expect from "major progress in our way of thinking"?

It's a proposal to solve problems related to bad (or non-existent)
communication between members of the project, be they individual
developers or teams. As a concrete example, developers who flame and
insult other developers (or users) on Debian mailing lists should be
stopped.

> Anything less is just empty gestures.  People
> who cause social problems don't stop just because someone asks them to
> stop.

Mere asking might not have been enough, but that plus kicking me out of
Debian mailing lists worked in my case, when I was out of line in 1996.
So I claim that the soc-ctte, if implemented properly, need not be an
empty gesture.

> Or is this, just like way too many other threads in Debian, really
> about Sven Luther needing a better ombudsman?

This has nothing to do with Sven in particular, as far as I could see
from the mails on -private.

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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Peter Samuelson]

[Josip Rodin]
> I also think that a social committee would be a good idea.  Even if
> unrefined and/or undefined, just the notion of having both a
> technical and a social committee would indicate major progress in our
> way of thinking.

Pretty words.  What problem is this supposed to solve?  What benefits
can we expect from "major progress in our way of thinking"?

> This one could be tricky to phrase. Maybe - "Decide on any social
> matter, including social norms and customs, non-technical
> communication among developers, and day-to-day organization matters
> within the Project."

For example?  For every social problem I can think of in Debian, the
solutions are not enforceable by a committee vote, unless you give them
the authority currently held by the DAMs, listmasters and ftpmasters.
That is, the only ways I can see to effect social reforms is to be able
to throw people out of the project, or restrict their list postings, or
restrict their uploads.  Anything less is just empty gestures.  People
who cause social problems don't stop just because someone asks them to
stop.

Or is this, just like way too many other threads in Debian, really
about Sven Luther needing a better ombudsman?

Perhaps you need to import a bit more context from -private.


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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Lars Wirzenius]

On to, 2007-01-25 at 16:27 -0600, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> Why don't I think it is a good idea? Well, because, unlike
>  technical issues, social issues are very subjective.  Also, social
>  and cultural norms differ widely from culture to culture; which
>  culture  shall be represented  in, and whose norms shall be enforced
>  by this social/cultural committee?

That's easy: we should enforce (assuming that is not too strong a word)
the social and cultural norms that we, as a community, agree on. The
comparison to technical policy is not entirely invalid: we make up our
technical policy ourselves, too.

We can determine social policy by discussion and, if necessary, by
voting. I'd rather see consensus, and, more specifically, see the
soc-ctte spell out the social norms and if the developer body disagrees
with it, and can't convince the soc-ctte via discussion, they can force
a change via a GR.

-- 
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all.--H.A.


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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Lars Wirzenius]

On to, 2007-01-25 at 19:11 +0100, Josip Rodin wrote:
> As far as appointment, we could try all the same for soc-ctte.
> Except two things:
> * keeping votes secret - maybe they should not be secret.
> * soc-ctte members should serve two years or more.

Hmm. There might be a problem requiring people to commit to working on
something for Debian for at least two years. It's a bit commitment, and
might scare off otherwise worthy people. (Not quite sure it would scare
off me, right now.)

> Maybe the limit should be a third of the election quorum, or
> sqrt(number-of-devels)/2? Currently that would be 16 people. I think that's
> a good sample of people, and a workable audience for a mailing list (of
> soc-ctte). Even if we expand twice in size, that's still just 23 people
> (i.e. the ctte would not grow twice as large).

The bigger a committee is, the harder it is for it to get anything done,
in general. However, as long as the soc-ctte doesn't need all of its
members to be active for some particular decision, then it shouldn't be
hampered by people being on vacation, or having their ADSL moved, or
whatever.

Despite the above two quibbles, I'm in favor of the soc-ctte idea. I'm
sure there's lots of details to work out, but those are just details.

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Re: Social Committee proposal

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 19:11:36 +0100, Josip Rodin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> Hi, This idea arose from a discussion on the -private mailing list.
> Andreas Tille, Gustavo Franco, Manoj Srivastava and Gunnar Wolf all
> commented fairly positively on a vague idea of having a social
> committee (soc-ctte), different from the technical committee
> (tech-ctte).  I'm citing their names simply to avoid an issues with
> taking credit.

I am sorry I gave the impression I was in favour of a social
 committee, such was not my intent.  I intended to say, on -private,
 that such a tasking should not be overloaded onto the tech committee,
 and  that if a social committee is formed, then election might well
 be a good mechanism of filing its ranks.

My own characterization of my position is indifferent to
 mildly negative.

Why don't I think it is a good idea? Well, because, unlike
 technical issues, social issues are very subjective.  Also, social
 and cultural norms differ widely from culture to culture; which
 culture  shall be represented  in, and whose norms shall be enforced
 by this social/cultural committee?

For example, in Indian social settings, the cultural norm is
 that "seniority" begets respect; and it is unseemly to argue with or
 be  disrespectful to your elders. Hmm. On the other hand, I would
 not be opposed to the cultural committee enforcing that norm :)

Then there are other cultural norms -- like, some categories
 of people shall be seen but not heard; based on class "shut up, ye
 peasant", caste (Jaldhar would be one of the most respected voices
 under this clause), or gender (I had better not get into this one, or
 Judy shall have something to say about this) --  and then there are
 the heathen and the ungodly.  Which cultural norm shall we enforce?
 Does the majority culture get to impose its view on the minority
 cultures?

Who gets to decide which culture is better than the other?

Ones mans respectful atmosphere is another woman's strait
 jacket and stultifying morass. Who shall be ascendant?

Me, I'd rather be not caught in the middle of this one.

manoj
-- 
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Re: Please appoint one new person to the DSA Team

[Josip Rodin]

On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 04:06:56PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> Martin, Branden and myself have all been trying to address the original
> issue as DPL

So it's taking three mandates, three years, and it can't be done? Why not?

How can the DPL not get something done by his delegates?

What purpose does our constitution serve if we can have people ignoring it
for years with no penalty whatsoever?!

> messages like the one beginning this thread don't help,

Perhaps I agree with the *concrete* example, where one intricate problem was
cited as the sole reason for a change.

However, if there is also any implication that that complaints in general
don't help, and I infer that from the whole context, then I'll have to
repeat what I wrote before: that is a defeatist attitude, and the
*wrong* attitude in the organization that has a thousand members.
It's just untenable!

> It would also be helpful if there were people who are able to commit time
> to do significant but boring tasks to help DSA, expecting neither praise,
> acknowledgement or, most importantly, any additional rights/priveleges in
> return. If that's you please mail me privately, probably at [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Doing anything in private conversations kills any transparency that
we might have hoped to have, and will ultimately not fix the problem.

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Social Committee proposal

[Josip Rodin]

Hi,

This idea arose from a discussion on the -private mailing list.
Andreas Tille, Gustavo Franco, Manoj Srivastava and Gunnar Wolf all
commented fairly positively on a vague idea of having a social committee
(soc-ctte), different from the technical committee (tech-ctte).
I'm citing their names simply to avoid an issues with taking credit.

I'm re-posting my text to debian-project so that this worthwhile idea is
not kept secret and/or lost in the noise at the other list.

-

I also think that a social committee would be a good idea.
Even if unrefined and/or undefined, just the notion of having both
a technical and a social committee would indicate major progress in
our way of thinking.

Let me try to shape this idea by citing the constitution and proposing what
the text of the constitution could be with regard to the proposed social
committee.

   The Project Leader may:
  Appoint Delegates or delegate decisions to the Technical Committee.
  Lend authority to other Developers.

The social committee could have its own delegations. The most obvious
example that springs to my mind would be delegating one or more
communications coordinators for this-and-that mailing list, or for this and
that team in Debian. These delegates would have one little bit more of an
authority to talk about those issues; on the other hand, they could be
required to earn this privilege by being entrusted the task of monitoring
all discussions on a list and making sure that no complaint goes unnoticed
or unsolved, be it from a user or between developers.

The committee should have in its charter the demand to avoid appointing such
people out of the blue. Instead, it should by default act only when other
developers request assistance from the committee on a particular matter. It
could choose to intervene in some situation ad hoc, but then the leader
should be allowed to halt such intervention if he decides that the soc-ctte
was being too nosy. (This safeguard could be abused by the leader to
obstruct the work of the soc-ctte, but the veto could easily be worked around
in case of real problems by having other people bring the discussion up with
the soc-ctte.)

The delegation of decisions to the technical committee should also be
included in the charter; if the soc-ctte can't decide (with a majority of
votes) whether an issue is not technical but social, it should defer
judgement.

Continuing with the constitution citation...

  Make any decision which requires urgent action.
  Make any decision for whom noone else has responsibility.
  Propose draft General Resolutions and amendments.

Maybe skip anything like these until we have more experience.

  Lead discussions amongst Developers.
  The Project Leader should attempt to participate in discussions amongst
  the Developers in a helpful way which seeks to bring the discussion to
  bear on the key issues at hand. The Project Leader should not use the
  Leadership position to promote their own personal views.

This would work for soc-ctte, too.

As far as appointment, we could try all the same for soc-ctte.
Except two things:
* keeping votes secret - maybe they should not be secret.
* soc-ctte members should serve two years or more.

Section 5.3 Procedure should apply, too.

Comparing with section 6., Technical committee, let's see:

  Decide on any matter of technical policy.
  This includes the contents of the technical policy manuals,
  developers' reference materials, example packages and the behaviour of
  non-experimental package building tools.

This one could be tricky to phrase. Maybe - "Decide on any social matter,
including social norms and customs, non-technical communication among
developers, and day-to-day organization matters within the Project."

The points 6.1.2. through 6.1.7. should all be included, with
s/technical/social/g or so.

  The Chairman can stand in for the Leader, together with the Secretary
  As detailed in §7.1(2), the Chairman of the Technical Committee and
  the Project Secretary may together stand in for the Leader if there is
  no Leader.

Adding this could be postponed for later, or just skipped altogether, to
avoid the impression that soc-ctte election is a shadow leader election or
anything like that.

As far as 6.2. Composition is concerned, I would think that the soc-ctte
should be allowed to be rather large, growing comparably to the growth of
the developer body. After all, its emphasis can't really be on leadership, I
would think that we would want to have a decent sample of the developer body
in it.

Maybe the limit should be a third of the election quorum, or
sqrt(number-of-devels)/2? Currently that would be 16 people. I think that's
a good sample of people, and a workable audience for a mailing list (of
soc-ctte). Even if we expand twice in size, that's still just 23 people
(i.e. the ctte would not grow twice as large).

The rest should be either copy/pasted from tech ctte or omitted for obvious
re

Re: question

[Wesley J. Landaker]

On Thursday 25 January 2007 07:48, Estudio SIMA wrote:
> Hi, just a question, which distributions of Linux are REAL open-source,
> non-commercial 100% for commercial use?
>
> I'm doing intelligent houses i need a stable version of linux for the
> server that runs my programs, control the circuits,etc etc, and i want to
> know several posibilities about Linux.
> Debian is one, Slackware also or not? there are another ?

Some popular ones are Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Slackware and Fedora. Since 
this is a Debian list, you can imagine that most of us would recommend you 
stick with Debian. Afterall, most of us here have tried *many* 
distributions over the years, and come to prefer Debian for a variety of 
reasons.

You can go to a site such as http://distrowatch.com/ to compare GNU, Linux, 
and BSD distributions yourself. They list a lot of details about tons of 
distributions, including their project background, a little bit about how 
they work technically, their commercial status, etc.

-- 
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Description: PGP signature

question

[Estudio SIMA]

I'm an argentinian guy, and my english is not so good, so sorry if my
english is a real disaster.

Hi, just a question, which distributions of Linux are REAL open-source,
non-commercial 100% for commercial use?

I'm doing intelligent houses i need a stable version of linux for the server
that runs my programs, control the circuits,etc etc, and i want to know
several posibilities about Linux.
Debian is one, Slackware also or not? there are another ?

Thanks in advance,
 Daniel G. Zylberberg