Re: Membership and voting and consensus... (Re: Membership)

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

jg@pa.dec.com (Jim Gettys) writes: 
> ***I think a view of someone being a member is someone who believes they want
> to be a member is sufficient.***
>

If membership means participation in the technical side of the
project, access to mailing lists, and CVS, certainly, that should be
open to everyone. If it means making decisions, I am just terrified of
this. There are way too many people with not a clue in the world who
might join and vote, especially as GNOME becomes more popular.

> The last thing you want are frequent votes, where someone who doesn't 
> know the issue has the same power as someone who knows the issues. I 
> guarantee that having a situation where people believe they have formal 
> votes can be poisonous...  There are people who then believe they should 
> be able to vote about everthing, no matter how trivial, and make the most 
> amazing fuss when you don't put absolutely everything to a vote.
> 

Indeed, I've seen that with Debian. Bruce Perens quit Debian over just
such a stupid flamewar, IIRC.

So I would understand your proposal to be, "the membership only votes
to approve decisions", including an approval of the board of directors
slate. The membership would never choose between two decisions, and
they wouldn't be able to put forward a motion themselves.

Havoc