Short comments... see next message for longer ones. (Nothing bilious.) On 2 Nov 2003, at 13:10, Manoj Srivastava helpfully wrote:
> > Is there a 'canonical' way of finding, or place to find, the current > > number of developers? > > Given the Debian keyrings (available from keyring.debian.org), > you can try running dvt-quorum from the package devotee (the arch > repository for that is at > http://arch.debian.org/arch/private/srivasta/archive-2003/) Tried it, but it's too complicated for just fetching one number. I wish there was a web page or some sort of server that simply had the current number of developers somewhere; other users might find it convenient as well. Maybe that's a separate 'wishlist' bug... > > Is the current number of developers likely to fall below 100? > > Highly unlikely. I should have said 65 developers, and if that number is even more unlikely, then that's all the more reason the text might be condensed, sans algebra. > > Is there a rationale behind this quorum formula of '3/2 of a square root'? > > It feels right. The sqrt ensures that the quorum growsx > monotonically as the developer body grows, but does not rise too fast > so as to make votes hard. It it's attractive because it works well > even with absurdly low quorums; and it's roughly sensible, and no > one's come up with any reason to do anything different Thank you for the explanation.
