Hi Debian Developers
Over the course of the last few days, I've received many mails regarding
the RMS GR, both on this list, on debian-private and in private. These
mails contain a wide spectrum of concerns and even ideas on how to
improve our situation, each of which come with their own set of upsides
and downsides.
There's been wide acknowledgement within our community that our GR
process isn't perfect, and there's been some good ideas already that
could help improve it, some might even need GRs themselves to update our
constitution towards a better GR and/or voting/polling process. In this
particular case, I feel that the process is more than just imperfect,
and that it may be failing us. While it's premature to do a full
postmortem on this GR, it's already clear where some cracks have formed
early on.
Initially, the RMS open letter[1] contained a list of individuals
supporting the removal of RMS and the existing FSF board from their
positions there. Soon after, some organisations were added and the list
of organisations grew quite fast, begging the question for some: Should
Debian also sign this letter?
[1] https://rms-open-letter.github.io/
At this stage, many Debian Developers (including myself) have signed the
letter. I felt that this was both sufficient in terms of a Debian
presence there, and in terms of what needed to be achieved with such a
letter. While I'm not scared of making a unilateral statement on behalf
of the project when needed, at the time, I just didn't feel it would be
appropriate for the DPL to unilaterally add Debian to the list of
organisations there.
Members within the project felt that we should represent Debian on that
letter more formally, and whether it's the best tool or not, the only
tool that we do have for that is the GR process, and it didn't take long
for the initial proposal[2] to be sent and be seconded[3].
[2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2021/03/msg00083.html
[3] https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/vote_002#proposer
Now, I know and acknowledge that the circumstances we find ourselves in
here are a bit extraordinary, but, even within that context, what
happened here so far was perfectly in accordance with our constitution
and the processes it mandates. The project members who wanted to ratify
the letter followed the exact procedure they were supposed to.
Although, this is also when the cracks start appearing. It seems that in
both this vote, and some previous GRs that have happened, it seemed that
a lack of metadata on the GR has hurt us.
In this case, what we're voting on has seemingly subtly, but
significantly changed since the initial proposal.
Initially, the question that the original GR proposal raised was more or
less binary in form. It basically asked, "Should we as a project sign
this letter?", which ultimately, can only end up as a yes or no option.
I say "more or less" binary, because of course, it ends up being more
complicated than that. If that option ran by itself, we'd end up with an
option on the ballot for the affirmative of the GR and for FD (Further
discussion), which in itself causes some problems, since some might
literally want further discussion on the topic, while it is also
typically used as a "None of the above" option in votes with many options.
I was comfortable reducing the discussion period on the vote, especially
since the question it poses is relatively simple (even though it might
be a difficult choice for some to make). I thought that there might have
been another option proposed option for the GR, so that the votes would
extend to the equivalent of "yes/no/FD", but didn't quite expect that
there would be additional proposals that would change the nature of the GR.
So to recap, initially the GR proposal was to ratify the RMS open
letter, which is basically (albeit with caveats) a yes/no question. With
the addition of more proposals, the question that the original poster
was asking, "Should we signed this open letter" changed to a much
broader question of "What should our public position on RMS be?". It
might sound like a subtle difference, but it's really an entirely
different kind of vote that may need a different kind of discussion
period and even a different level of timeliness. At this point, I'd like
to state that I'm not blaming any individual involved with this GR
whatsoever, for the most part, everyone did what they were supposed to
do or what they could do to get their voices heard, my problem is that
this process is really a clumsy fit when it comes to nearly any decision
other than constitutional changes or a DPL election.
The privacy aspect has brought another dimension to the problem. There
are concerns that some might not vote because this vote will be public,
and might open themselves up to further real-world harassment.
Unfortunately, our constitution doesn't seem to provide us with any
tools to deal with this, I don't think the authors at the time could
have anticipated the current social climate
