Re: Release coordination - a clarification

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> [1] ...and yet I'm still not convinced.  Voting is a tool for making
>     decisions when there is a lack of consensus.  It is not a means
>     of reaching consensus.

Show of hands is not a vote. It gives no hard figures, what it gives you
is a quick way of trying various scenarios to see what people think
about them. I think non-specialized opinions are very valuable! While I
agree with Havoc that we don't want to setup a publicity contest,
maintainers sometimes uniquely disqualify themselves from making the
decision by being the maintainer - we all have personal attachements to
our own projects. So both sides give technical arguments on a public
mailing list, then you see what the list thinks about things.

Want an example of a situation where show of hands would be useful? I
personally think it would be very useful applied to itself, it'd be
interesting to know what the general mailing list populace thinks of
using a show of hands system in some form ;-) Not every decision we make
is of a detailed technical matter. Pretty much everyone on this list is
at least somewhat technically competent, its not like asking a random
person off the street "what do you think of gconf vs. bonobo-config".

-Seth