Sam Hartman writes ("Re: Bug#830978: Browserified javascript and DFSG 2"): > [stuff]
There is much that you've said that I don't necessarily disagree with, but: > Part of having good governance is to have those discussions on devel. The problem isn't having the discussion. The problem is that we keep having the discussion again and again. The same people rehearse the same points. Over and over. This is a terrible pattern in our community, because it invites the more functional people to disengage. They leave -devel, or kill these threads, because they want to get something useful done. That leaves the less functional to dominate the discourse. Eventually we end up with situations where the apparent public discourse elides large sections of the community, or is even substantially at variance with the consensus view of the project as a whole. > The TC isn't going to be able to add anything here. We have similar > biases to the ftp team. We deal with licenses less often, so they are > probably even more aware of the issues than we are. > Having two teams say the same thing isn't going to shut up anyone on > devel frustrated that we're insisting they do significantly more work. "Adding" does not necessarily mean disagreeing. If the TC agrees with ftpmaster, the TC can still help. The TC can communicate the status quo more clearly, and provide it with more legitimacy. The TC members are focused on communication. TC members are (or should be) able to reason and write exceptionally clearly. The TC has an established mechanism by which it can debate an issue, vote on it, and publish a clear an authoritative statement of the collective view. Now I agree that it would be nice if ftpmaster were better at these things, but ftpmaster have lots of other things to do besides clear up these kind of disputes. Specifically, Pirate has acknowledged the authority of the TC by asking the TC to intervene. I think it is possibly even rather disrespectful to Pirate to suggest that if the TC formally disagrees with them, they'll continue their campaign on -devel as before. Absent a radical change in the ftpmaster team's approach to communicating these kind of decisions, the only other way we are going to settle this is a GR. To put it another way: could you (the TC) please at least _try_ to help ? If it doesn't work then little harm is done. Ian.