I believe Ross Gardler, our current president said it extremely well:
The Apache Way works because of our core principles of
consensus building within a meritocratic structure. We are not
a democracy, nor are we an oligarchy.
As Jim said, and this is true in the projects I am active, the point
of the vote is to either gauge consensus or to formalize consensus.
We +1/+0/-1 out of tradition. But we would arrive at the exact same
conclusion if we skipped all that and just left it as a DISCUSS
thread.
On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 10:39 AM, Benson Margulies
<bimargul...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps this discussion stems from questions about how Apache uses the
> term 'consensus'.
>
> In the rest of the world, there is a formally defined 'consensus
> decision process'. The goal of this process is to make decisions when
> possible, and leave the status quo otherwise. Very roughly, discussion
> takes place. When the moderator perceives a possible consensus, the
> moderator asks, 'does anyone block consensus'? At that point, people
> think very carefully, balancing the value of action against the
> importance of an objection. If people have a too-low threshold for
> blocking consensus, then nothing ever happens. If people have a
> too-high threshold, then disagreements build and other disfunction
> sets in.
>
> You can model an Apache 'vote with veto' as an electronic consensus
> test. -1 means 'I'm not thrilled, but I'm open to persuasion.' VETO is
> a blocking of consensus. +0 is 'I'm not thrilled, but I'm I won't
> block it.'
>
> The concept of 'procedural votes' is that there are some topics that
> don't deserve all of this angst; that a defined quorum of people in
> favor is enough. Whether PMC or commit should be consensus or
> procedural I leave to others to debate; I just offer this to try to
> put the veto into context.
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 10:00 AM, Pierre Smits <pierre.sm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I agree: consensus reached through discussion as far better than having to
>> do the (majority rule) vote. As with that, you -for sure - don't always get
>> what you want.
>>
>> But it is - by far-the best alternative available to keep movement in a
>> project. And do-overs are possible.
>>
>> Pierre
>>
>> Op dinsdag 24 maart 2015 heeft Greg Stein <gst...@gmail.com> het volgende
>> geschreven:
>>
>>> On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 8:33 AM, Marvin Humphrey <mar...@rectangular.com
>>> <javascript:;>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> > On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 2:43 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz
>>> > <bdelacre...@apache.org <javascript:;>> wrote:
>>> > > On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 10:28 AM, Jacques Le Roux
>>> > > <jacques.le.r...@les7arts.com <javascript:;>> wrote:
>>> > >> Who will update the https://community.apache.org/newcommitter.html
>>> > page?*
>>> > >
>>> > > I've done that, it now says "In general, committer elections are
>>> > > majority approval votes, as described on the Apache Voting Process
>>> > > page" with a link.
>>> >
>>> > That's not my understanding. It's not what I've heard from the Board
>>> > over the years, particularly from Greg. And I believe that it's for a
>>> > very good reason that personnel votes at Apache are not majority rule:
>>> > majority rule forces a result rather than creates consensus.
>>> >
>>>
>>> I dislike all voting, yes. Consensus through discussion is definitely a
>>> better approach.
>>>
>>> Concretely: I don't think there is any specific recommendation for how a
>>> PMC/community decides upon new committers. I've seen many mechanisms. In
>>> fact, within Apache Subversion, a committer can be added by any *singular*
>>> PMC member, no vote required (but their resulting commit rights are
>>> limited).
>>>
>>> For PMC Members, Roy has stated [on general@incubator, on 1/31/2012] that:
>>>
>>> "Well, it boils down to the fact that making someone a PMC member gives
>>> them veto power over the changes you make. The only way that works
>>> socially is if everyone currently on the PMC agrees that person is a peer."
>>>
>>> >...
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> -g
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Pierre Smits
>>
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