Hi Ian, Thank you very much for your prompt and serious response. I prize your insights as our constitutional architect.
First I should note that my message seems not to have made it to -project despite my intentions (and message headers). No matter, it can be found here. https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2025/04/msg00087.html At 2025-04-09T14:21:56+0100, Ian Jackson wrote: > I'm going to try to limit my involvement in this subthread about > project governance, becuase of the difficult timing/context. I understand. > G. Branden Robinson writes ("a Constitutional interpretation question > (was: Why Debian is dying)"): > > [lots of stuff] > ... > > So, to me, the TC's view of the limitation on its power in this > > respect is anything but clear. > > You make an interesting argument as a matter of textual > interpretation. We can keep it in mind for the future. > But Sean is right that this is a view that multiple TCs have expressed > on multiple occasions. Acknowledged. I would then simply urge the current TC to keep in mind that this limitation is one that they have _chosen_, not one that has been imposed on them. With luck, the distinction will not become important soon, if ever. > In theory this ought not to matter very much because it ought to be > easier to deal with problematic behaviour by Delegates via the DPL. > The DPL is a single person (so no need for a committee debate), > and has both sweeping powers, and democratic legitimacy. > > In practice, I radically underestimated the willingness of more > neurotypical people to perform the review (and if necessary > overruling) functions assigned to them in the Constitution. You mean overestimated? Or that we got a long string of less neurotypical (than you[?]) people into constitutional offices? I'm not sure it's a matter of neurotypicality, as that term is now used. But to say more would digress into autobiography, and bore nearly every reader. If we ever sit down together, I may bore only you with it. > It seems that all that anyone is ever willing to do is mediate - but > of course mediation is not accountability. Agreed, and further, mediation as a term is best applied to where all parties are known to each other and a neutral arbiter is also present. When the "mediator" is acting as a proxy or advocate for another, "mediation" is not what is taking place. Mediation is good for only some conflict resolution processes. > Accountability requires the oversighters to make judgements, and be > willing to exercise their supervisory powers - if necessary, against > the wishes of the supervisee. Yes. > Take Delegations. DPLs have almost never been seen to publicly > intervene in a Delegation. One of Julian Klode's messages on -vote prompted me to refresh my understanding of the FTP Team. I noticed that a delegation has not been made to that team in 7½ years.[1] That's a lot of DPL terms. > Even allowing for the fact that in a well-functioning system, most > situations will be resolved by private discussions, I wouldn't even go that far. In the bash, groff, and ncurses projects practically all business is carried on publicly. That seems to be the case for procps-ng as well. All of these development teams, though, are pretty small. I think article 3 of the Social Contract is of immense importance. We must not hide problems. We must instead put as many minds as necessary and possible to work on them. > you'd expect that in a functioning governance setup some proportion of > disagreements would result in the DPL seeking consensus (Constitution > 5.3; maybe using d-private) Yes. Being from the U.S. and no longer young, I've grown wearily accustomed to executive overreach. Possibly the only DPL who even flirted with that possibility was Anthony Towns, and even them I'm not sure. (I had tons of disagreements with him in our pre-DPL terms of service, but did not pay close attention to his tenure as Leader. I was already on my way out.) I do note that he rather handily survived a recall, so even if he did press the limits of his executive authority, the membership ended up affirming him for it. There were, however, other problems that, to the best of my knowledge, he did not tackle... > for exercising their power under 5.1(1) to remove a Delegate or > reassign some responsibilities. ...like that. But all, or nearly all, of our DPLs can wear that black mark, and I certainly do not exclude myself. I should have been bolder. I wonder if the system we've managed to create is one where the Delegates govern the Leader rather than vice versa. Certainly we had a stretch of many years where at least some Delegates did not even feel bound by the Constitution, let alone the will of the Developers. In protecting ourselves from the excesses of Louis XIVs, we may have structurally overlooked the risk of fiefs run by Richelieus. > That this doesn't happen is a sign not that our Delegated teams have > always functioned well, any more than a piece of software having no > CVEs means it is perfectly secure. It's a sign that the first-line > Constitutional accountability mechanism for Delegates isn't working. I concur. > > (1) ask the TC to prominently document their policy of > > non-override of Delegates ... and (2) ask [maybe] > > propose a GR to amend the Constitution to reflect [this] > > I'm not sure this cleanup is a useful use of our time. There are more > fundamental problems. I agree that it doesn't seem urgent, and so I won't prosecute the idea in the near term. But I would remind us of the Eisenhower Matrix.[2] > > And also what the use of italics means. > > The italics were introduced at some point as a way to add > non-normative explanatory text. See Appendix B. Thanks. That was hiding from me in plain sight. Some groff maintainer I am, overlooking the word "typography". Best regards, Branden [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2017/11/msg00001.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_management#Eisenhower_method
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