Re: Making the RMS resolution a Secret Ballot

[Ulrike Uhlig]

Hi!

On 09.04.21 20:08, Kurt Roeckx wrote:

On Fri, Apr 09, 2021 at 10:59:16AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:


* A secret ballot, while contrary to the constitution for GRs, is not
   wholly irregular for the project.  We use one every year for the DPL
   election and the tradeoffs are well-understood.  This vote poses an
   additional challenge because we haven't been using the verification
   method we use for DPL votes from the start of the vote, but I don't
   think this is a serious enough issue to be decisive.  At worst, we are
   extending one-time trust to the Project Secretary that he will
   accurately count the votes without normal verification processes in this
   one unusual circumstance, and then will immediately return to regular
   order to discuss how to handle this going forward.


I fear that devotee will break in various ways changing from
a non-secret to a secret in the middle of a vote. But I could
remove all processing of the results so far, and then reprocess
all the received emails. This would result in getting a new
acknowledgement (or error) mail.


Sounds perfectly acceptable.

People should just be made aware. It would, I guess, also allow for 
comparing one's previous vote acknowledgement with the new one.


Take care,
Ulrike

Re: Making the RMS resolution a Secret Ballot

[Holger Levsen]

On Fri, Apr 09, 2021 at 05:55:48PM +, Holger Levsen wrote:
> That said, I think it's a *very* bad idea to change the vote procedure
> during an ongoing vote. Really *bad* idea and precedence. Double more
> so on a vote with shortened discussion period.
> 
> (plus secret voting is a *really really really* hard problem.)
> 
> 
> I also don't fear that much of a changed outcome. It seems 117 Debian
> people (most of them voters I believe) signed 
> https://rms-open-letter.github.io/
> and https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/ counts 268 valid votes,
> so, based on that *and* on the discussion here now and in the past, I
> don't think a few people who fear to vote what they think because then 
> their opinion could become public will make a big difference. 

footnote1: I'm sorry if this sounded like I might disregarded those very real
fears and hate mail and worse. By all means not. But, as written right 
here...(!)

> Most people
> made public statements already anyway. Also: they vote has been started
> as a public vote, it was shortened as a public vote and it's technically
> complete unclear what "secret" would mean here (and to whom and for how long).
> 
> But, to be clear, change outcome of the vote is not my concern here. Changing
> the way we vote, in a rush, from what will be perceived as a cabal, is my
> concern. 


-- 
cheers,
Holger

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Request for calm discussion, please

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

Everyone:

As we've seen many times in the last 25 years or so: Contentious discussions
are easy to start and hard to stop.

Online arguments are hard to contain. It is very easy indeed to upset somebody
- to push their buttons - so that they either crumple and fold up or react 
angrily and instinctively to something written.

It is also very easy indeed to get sucked into a whirlpool of ideas and 
emotion and react immediately without thinking through the best ways to get 
points across in a calm, well-phrased and polite way. 
It's a very human failing to just pitch in and get involved in a two or three 
person fight because you feel that somebody is behaving wrongly towards you 
and not listening to you or your point of view. 

This is very natural online because it's hard to read context and intent: you
say things you wouldn't say in person to each other.
[And of course the obligatory xkcd - https://xkcd.com/386/ ]

The issues we see reflected on other Debian lists and in other media are
continuing to spill over into anger and argument. Please try not to encourage
them here and do not start your own further arguments - now is really not 
the time and it detracts from building relations and making a tense 
environment better.

If anyone has any problems about what I have written or complaints against 
any individual for acting against the Debian code of conduct - please email 
commun...@debian.org

Andy Cater

For the Community Team

Re: Making the RMS resolution a Secret Ballot

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Fri, Apr 09, 2021 at 10:59:16AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
> * A secret ballot, while contrary to the constitution for GRs, is not
>   wholly irregular for the project.  We use one every year for the DPL
>   election and the tradeoffs are well-understood.  This vote poses an
>   additional challenge because we haven't been using the verification
>   method we use for DPL votes from the start of the vote, but I don't
>   think this is a serious enough issue to be decisive.  At worst, we are
>   extending one-time trust to the Project Secretary that he will
>   accurately count the votes without normal verification processes in this
>   one unusual circumstance, and then will immediately return to regular
>   order to discuss how to handle this going forward.

I fear that devotee will break in various ways changing from
a non-secret to a secret in the middle of a vote. But I could
remove all processing of the results so far, and then reprocess
all the received emails. This would result in getting a new
acknowledgement (or error) mail.


Kurt

Re: Making the RMS resolution a Secret Ballot

[Russ Allbery]

Sam Hartman  writes:

> Thanks for doing this.  I'm actually very comfortable for us to make the
> decision under 5.1(3).  We cleraly cannot hold a GR in time to change
> the constitution prior to the election ending.  And our constitution
> already has a provision for making decisions where a timely decision is
> required.  I think this qualifies; it is becoming more and more clear we
> need to protect people on both sides of the vote, and other avenues like
> GRs will not allow us to achieve something in time.  This is not a
> situation that has become urgent through inaction on our part: as
> harassment has increased it has become more clear that action is needed.
> So while we might have been willing to let this last vote slide without
> secret ballots, it is becoming more clear through the actions of others
> that is an increasingly bad idea.  So I absolutely support the DPL (with
> the secratary's concurrance) making this decision under the emergency
> powers DPL clause.

I support this approach and believe the DPL should decide under 5.1(3)
that Debian will not publish the association between identity and ballot
for the RMS resolution.

My rationale:

* Many Developers have expressed discomfort or fear about voting publicly
  on this resolution.  Those concerns have been expressed on all sides of
  the debate, and are in the context of continued escalating harassment of
  project members.  We have good reasons to believe that this vote will be
  used for further harassment.

* A secret ballot, while contrary to the constitution for GRs, is not
  wholly irregular for the project.  We use one every year for the DPL
  election and the tradeoffs are well-understood.  This vote poses an
  additional challenge because we haven't been using the verification
  method we use for DPL votes from the start of the vote, but I don't
  think this is a serious enough issue to be decisive.  At worst, we are
  extending one-time trust to the Project Secretary that he will
  accurately count the votes without normal verification processes in this
  one unusual circumstance, and then will immediately return to regular
  order to discuss how to handle this going forward.

* Changing the vote to a secret ballot seems to be the least drastic and
  irregular action that can be taken to resolve the problem.  There are
  other things that we could do, such as canceling the GR in its entirety,
  but anything we do here potentially sets some precedent, and this seems
  like the least damaging precedent to set.  A secret ballot doesn't
  undermine our other constitutional provisions, whereas (for example) the
  DPL canceling a GR potentially undermines the project's ability to
  override the DPL.

* Switching this vote to a secret ballot is clearly a decision with a
  fixed deadline (namely the voting period, since the decision for whether
  to have a secret ballot will affect people's vote), and thus satisfies
  the second paragraph of 5.1(3).

* There is an obvious mechanism to reject this course of action if we have
  misjudged project consensus on wanting a secret ballot.  Since this
  decision would be a DPL action under 5.1(3), any Developer can propose a
  GR to override that decision under 4.1(3).  If that GR is sponsored by
  2K developers, the DPL decision would be immediately put on hold, which
  in this situation essentially overrides the decision given the fixed
  deadline.  If there are not 2K developers to override this decision
  (this is not a very high bar), I think that's a reasonable (albeit not
  perfect) way of gauging project agreement with this decision.

* We will be bringing a GR to resolve the question of secret ballots for
  GRs going forward, so the precedent of this decision will be clearly
  limited by a subsequent GR in which the whole project will have a
  constitutional vote.  (Obviously if that GR determines that we do not
  want to have a secret ballot for subsequent GRs, future DPLs should take
  that into account and not use 5.1(3) in this way again.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)  

Re: Making the RMS resolution a Secret Ballot

[Holger Levsen]

On Fri, Apr 09, 2021 at 01:12:26PM -0400, Sam Hartman wrote:
> On another list, there was discussion of the DPL encouraging the
> secretary to make the vote on the rms GR secret.

I'm not sure this is not leaking.
 
> I argued on another list that[...]
> Several people agreed with me, ande one person disagreed.

Again, I'd consider this leaking from that other list which has a no-leaking
policy.

If you don't like that, better don't use that other list. (I unsubscribed
because I've been (too) annoyed by discussions happening there which should
happen in public.)


That said, I think it's a *very* bad idea to change the vote procedure
during an ongoing vote. Really *bad* idea and precedence. Double more
so on a vote with shortened discussion period.

(plus secret voting is a *really really really* hard problem.)


I also don't fear that much of a changed outcome. It seems 117 Debian
people (most of them voters I believe) signed https://rms-open-letter.github.io/
and https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/ counts 268 valid votes,
so, based on that *and* on the discussion here now and in the past, I
don't think a few people who fear to vote what they think because then 
their opinion could become public will make a big difference. Most people
made public statements already anyway. Also: they vote has been started
as a public vote, it was shortened as a public vote and it's technically
complete unclear what "secret" would mean here (and to whom and for how long).

But, to be clear, change outcome of the vote is not my concern here. Changing
the way we vote, in a rush, from what will be perceived as a cabal, is my
concern. 


-- 
cheers,
Holger

 ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
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 ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ PGP fingerprint: B8BF 5413 7B09 D35C F026 FE9D 091A B856 069A AA1C
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I'm looking forward to Corona being a beer again and Donald a duck.


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Re: Constitution A.6 - "V(A,D) is strictly great"

[Joost van Baal-Ilić]

Hi Laura,

Last uploader of doc-debian here.

On Fri, Apr 09, 2021 at 06:45:47PM +0200, Laura Arjona Reina wrote:
> 
> I have changed the constitution files in the website repo to match the
> updated text currently now in doc-debian package:
> 
> https://salsa.debian.org/webmaster-team/webwml/-/commit/e3d525d9f092f9014e00417cc847900ac5a99649
> 
> The fix will be available online after the next build.

Great, thanks.

> I didn't close the bug because I don't know if a decision has been taken
> about which one of the two sources (website repo or debian-doc package
> repo) should be the "canonical" one. In my opinion, the website, but I'm
> biased of course :-)

Yes, the website is the canonical one.  The doc-debian build infra in a way
refers to the website.  (I did an evil hack for last upload to speed up the
fix.)

Closing the bug.

Bye,

Joost

Re: Making the RMS resolution a Secret Ballot

[Kurt Roeckx]

On Fri, Apr 09, 2021 at 01:12:26PM -0400, Sam Hartman wrote:
> 
> On another list, there was discussion of the DPL encouraging the
> secretary to make the vote on the rms GR secret.

If we're going to go this way, I would really like to make this
change soon. Based on the outcome of this, people might want to
change their vote, and I would like to give them sufficient time
to do so.


Kurt

Making the RMS resolution a Secret Ballot

[Sam Hartman]

On another list, there was discussion of the DPL encouraging the
secretary to make the vote on the rms GR secret.

I'll let the DPL speak for his own position.

A bit of background.

There has been increasing harassment of people based on what they are
expected to vote on the rms gr.
People on both sides have expressed increasing discomfort with the idea
of voting in public with the entire world knowing how they voted.

I argued on another list that it would be appropriate for the DPL (with
the concurrence of the secretary) to  make the vote secret using
constitution section 5.1 (3).
Here's my rationale:

Thanks for doing this.  I'm actually very comfortable for us to make the
decision under 5.1(3).  We cleraly cannot hold a GR in time to change
the constitution prior to the election ending.  And our constitution
already has a provision for making decisions where a timely decision is
required.  I think this qualifies; it is becoming more and more clear we
need to protect people on both sides of the vote, and other avenues like
GRs will not allow us to achieve something in time.  This is not a
situation that has become urgent through inaction on our part: as
harassment has increased it has become more clear that action is needed.
So while we might have been willing to let this last vote slide without
secret ballots, it is becoming more clear through the actions of others
that is an increasingly bad idea.  So I absolutely support the DPL (with
the secratary's concurrance) making this decision under the emergency
powers DPL clause.

I am very uncomfortable with the other rationales for making the
decision--using various loopholes in the constitution.

It's pretty clear that's not what was meant by the text of the
constitution.
And unfortunately, choosing to interpret the constitution creatively
like that to meet the needs of the day is a very slipperly sloap with a
lot of negative long-term consequences.

I like that for the most part we use plain language and common sense.
I would not like to see us twisting our language to meet the needs of
the day.
Especially when we have a clause already in our constitution  for making
emergency decisions.

Let's be honest about this and make this as an emergency decision
because we are in an emergency.

If we're going to solve this long term, let's do it by GR, not by
suddenly interpreting the constitution differently than we have for
years.



Several people agreed with me, ande one person disagreed.
I'll let any of those people speak up if they choose and let the DPL
comment if he chooses.


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Re: Constitution A.6 - "V(A,D) is strictly great"

[Laura Arjona Reina]

Hi all

I have changed the constitution files in the website repo to match the
updated text currently now in doc-debian package:

https://salsa.debian.org/webmaster-team/webwml/-/commit/e3d525d9f092f9014e00417cc847900ac5a99649

The fix will be available online after the next build.

I didn't close the bug because I don't know if a decision has been taken
about which one of the two sources (website repo or debian-doc package
repo) should be the "canonical" one. In my opinion, the website, but I'm
biased of course :-)

Kind regards,

El 4/4/21 a las 11:05, Kurt Roeckx escribió:
> On Sun, Apr 04, 2021 at 09:31:46AM +0200, Niels Thykier wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> In https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-A, there is the
>> following sentence under A.6. bullet 3.2.:
>>
>>>  An option A defeats the default option D by a majority ratio N, if V(A,D) 
>>> is greater or equal to N * V(D,A) and V(A,D) is strictly great 
>>
>> The "... and V(A,D) is strictly great" looks like an incomplete
>> sentence.  Is that something we can fix as an editorial correction (i.e.
>> without a vote)?
> 
> See #896067.
> 
> 
> Kurt
> 

-- 
Laura Arjona Reina
https://wiki.debian.org/LauraArjona

Re: Please let this thread go extinct.

[Ulrike Uhlig]

Hi,

On 09.04.21 03:08, Norbert Preining wrote:

Please let this thread go extinct.


Isn't it easy to try to make a thread go extinct when the perpetrator is
on "your side", while writing again and again when it is the other way
round. Very impressed by your "fairness" and "inclusiveness".


I'm not on anybody's side. I'm speaking only for myself.

I (my maternal, mediating side, if you wish to understand the intention 
of my email a bit better) read that there is still a lot of frustration 
and suffering for everyone involved. And if you (singular) are genuinely 
interested in solving this, I think a moderated discussion could help. 
But that's up to you (plural) - you (plural) might also want to deal 
with that kind of frustrations differently. But I believe that keeping 
this thread alive doesn't help anyone really.


Take care,
Ulrike

Re: Please let this thread go extinct.

[Pierre-Elliott Bécue]

Le vendredi 09 avril 2021 à 10:08:07+0900, Norbert Preining a écrit :
> > Please let this thread go extinct.
> 
> Isn't it easy to try to make a thread go extinct when the perpetrator is
> on "your side", while writing again and again when it is the other way
> round. Very impressed by your "fairness" and "inclusiveness".

Hi Norbert,

Contrary to yours, I actually see Ulrike's reply as applying to
everyone, and therefore, of interest.

Could you refrain from spiling oil on ashes next time, please? I was
happy to see that you were able to manage your frustration to not add up
to the situation, and now I'm a sad panda.

Thanks.

-- 
Pierre-Elliott Bécue
GPG: 9AE0 4D98 6400 E3B6 7528  F493 0D44 2664 1949 74E2
It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.


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Re: What does FD Mean

[Timo Röhling]

* Sam Hartman  [2021-04-08 08:33]:

i think it's very presumptuous to assume  anything about what someone
should have voted because all those combinations are reasonable.

And if anyone is really losing sleep over that question, they can still
ask those ten voters if they intended to vote for systemd and were
indifferent among the alternatives.

--
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