> > > I would reasonably assume (obviously a mistake when dealing with > > > bureacracies) that if the secretary needs to make a decision, they should > > > interpret the constitution, not throw it out and do whatever the hell they > > > want.
On Thu, Sep 28, 2000 at 10:39:45AM -0700, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote: > > And that's what the secretary did. On Fri, Sep 29, 2000 at 02:04:19AM -0500, Joseph Carter wrote: > Prove it. > > Show me where in the constitution it says that votes should be broken in > half and that ammendments may be voted on before the ballot for the > proposal they are attached to is posted. Show me where it says that the > social contract is anything other than a non-technical document and > deserving of any special treatment. Show me where, in the constitution, there are any requirements that these things [which you're asking for] be in the constitution. You can't because it ain't there. [So I guess we're both out to lunch, eh?] > You can't because it ain't there. The only thing the constitution > says about any of this is that the secretary may make a decision. > Apparently, that decision need not be otherwise constitutional. I > don't believe this was intended. I don't believe it's right. And I'll > be damned if I'm going to simply ignore this precedent. You seem to believe that your interpretation of the constitution is the only correct one. And yet, you've yet to show *how* the secretary's decision conflicts with the constitution. Here's my take: The debian constitution is basically designed on the idea that debian is composed of competent individuals, that some degree of consensus is important for non-technical decisions, and that assigning responsibility is important for technical decisions. The voting process itself is mostly non-technical, though there are some specifics of managing it which are detail-oriented. The secretary is assigned the responsibility of managing those details. Now, as I pointed out in an earlier email (which, so far, you've chosen to ignore): the interpretation the secretary went with was an interpretation that other people had already proposed. This interpretation has some simularities with the more extreme ideas (modifying social contract first requires a constitutional ammendment vs. modifying social contract is no more significant than issuing an official statement on our goals for woody). The more extreme ideas don't have much simularity with each other. -- Raul
