Stefano Zacchiroli <lea...@debian.org> writes: > But I still find interesting that in an example that you use to argue > for transparency, a private mail exchange has played a relevant role.
I don't find this at all surprising. In fact, I would be stunned if this isn't the case in most such situations. I probably should save this for the main discussion in -vote or -project, but since I'm thinking about it right now, I may as well say it here so that I have it all written down. I will plan on rewording and repeating this later as part of the broader discussion. > This is why I'm worried about this specific GR: it seems to go in the > opposite direction. I think that the present situation, i.e. "thou shalt > not do that", is a moral check on the desire of discussing matters > privately with and within the tech-ctte. Those private discussions will > happen [1], but the fact that they are considered socially wrong will > limit them to cases that are considered "extreme", even for tech-ctte > issues (which are already extreme per se). I fear that legitimating > private discussions will remove this useful moral check. There are two different things that you can happen when you say something that's obviously infeasible in a procedural document like the constitution. One is, as you say, that it will serve as a moral force to make violations of that principle rare and "extreme." The other is to make the rules of the document look ridiculous and cause them to lose all moral force entirely. I believe the current situation is the latter, not the former. The idea that any decision-making body would avoid all discussions in private is, to me, completely contrary to how people interact and how every decision-making body that I've ever heard of functions. I've never heard of a body akin to the technical committee that operates under those sorts of absolute constraints: not corporate boards, not project oversight groups in corporations, not free software governance organizations, not governments, not non-profit committees. The only exception that I can think of off-hand are Olympic judges, where the point of that sort of rule is to prevent collusion between the judges to generate a particular outcome. I certainly hope people don't think that's analogous to the work of the technical commitee! The current wording, read literally, means that if I happened to run into Steve Langasek, say, at a social occasion, I am not permitted to mention network-manager and GNOME to him, because that conversation isn't public and that's an issue currently before the technical committee. I'm not allowed to talk about network-manager in a private Usenet hierarchy that I happen to know that Colin Watson and Ian Jackson also read because that's not public. It feels like I'm expected to act like a prospective US Supreme Court judge whose nomination is before Congress: I must not say anything about anything, ever! I don't believe that technical committee members have ever actually behaved this way. By the very nature of the role, the people on the technical committee generally know each other and generally have other contact outside of committee work, and the topics that come before the committee are generally topics of considerable discussion in the project. They are therefore natural topics of discussion, and this sort of absolute ban is horribly distortive and very difficult to achieve. And to what end? Certainly, this sort of extreme limitation on discussion isn't going to result in better decisions. Part of my decision-making process, and I don't think this is unique to me, is to mull something over from multiple angles, bounce it off of people, and seek out different perspectives. Depending on the issue, or depending on simple *convenience*, some of those discussions will be effectively private. It helps in getting as broad of input as possible, including from people who may not be comfortable expressing their opinion in public when they believe their opinion to be unpopular or when they feel like they'll get shouted down. (And yes, to me this does go to honoring diversity.) I believe the underlying goal here, which we need to preserve, is that the reasons for the decisions of technical committee members must be made public: that we state our reasoning for our votes for the record and in a forum where other people can see and comment if they believe that reasoning is ill-considered. I also think that enough of the deliberations need to be public for the project as a whole to monitor and, if necessary, check committee members who are making decisions on bases that might harm the project. We certainly do not want to be in a situation where the committee hands down unjustified opinions, where the only public artifact of the decision is a vote. And I support finding some way to say that in the constitution. But this sort of outright ban is not how one does it. Rather, I would instead look to a model where there are formal meetings and informal meetings, the formal meetings have to happen in public, and all committee members are expected to bring into a formal meeting any information or discussion from informal meetings that has a substantial effect on their position. This is akin to the sorts of rules that I've sen in other deliberative bodies; not everything is on the record, but there is an expectation that the formal business is always on the record. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-ctte-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87d33ub93l....@windlord.stanford.edu
