Gerardo Ballabio <gerardo.balla...@gmail.com> writes: > However, I wonder how that fits with 8.2: "The Project Leader may not > make the position as a Delegate conditional on particular decisions by > the Delegate"
> As I understand it, that means that the Leader cannot say "I give you > this delegation, but you must do X". It may be argued that, by the same > token, the Leader cannot say either "you must do X or I'll revoke your > delegation", and even "since you don't want to do X, I'm appointing > another delegate who will do it" seems questionable, for it's clearly a > way to work around that prohibition. The traditional interpretation in the project as I understand it is that the DPL cannot do the first two actions that you describe above, but can do the third. In other words, the DPL cannot make or override the decision or appoint someone conditional on making a specific decision, but they can remove a delegate for making decisions they don't like and appoint a different person (provided that person is a Developer; see 5.1(1)). That person may then be able to overturn those earlier decisions. The intent here as I understand it is not to absolutely prevent the DPL from reversing delegate decisions they don't like, but rather to slow this process down and require the DPL work through other people who have the authority to make different decisions. The backstop on all of this is, of course, a GR, so I believe the intent is not so much to provide a strong procedural obstacle as to require the DPL work hard enough to do this that the project has an ample chance to stop it if the project doesn't like what the DPL is doing. That said, we have not put a lot of weight on this portion of the constitution that I can recall. One of the areas in which the Debian constitution is the most murky is around persistence of decisions. Can a newly-appointed delegate change the decision just made by the previous holder of that delegation? Can a developer who was overridden by the Technical Committee go back to their original decision after some period of time? Can a delegate who was overruled by a GR then make a decision that doesn't match that GR after some period of time? (A month? A year? Ten years?) This has always been rather murky, and we have always resolved this via assuming good faith and assuming people will do something reasonable, and for the most part it's worked out. It's hard to nail this all down in detail without creating other problems. In general, I personally fall on the side that says attempting to make constitutions bulletproof is going to fall prey to the halting problem anyway. Debian isn't a government: We don't have prisons, people with guns, weapons of war, or the ability to force anyone to live under our rules. We are a volunteer association, which means the final backstop for any decision made in Debian is that Debian has to retain its volunteers or it will cease to exist. The constitution is there to help us make decisions that are sufficiently supported by the community of volunteers that make up the project such that the project doesn't fall apart. It doesn't need the rigor of a parliament or court system. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
