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Re: [PATCH] Revert Abortion joke removal.


On May  7, 2018, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:

>> If you felt so strongly about it, why did you not respond there?

> I feel the need to speak up, because you are encouraging a kind of
> behavior that can deeply harm a project.

> The standard of consensus used by this project is not "if you do not
> speak up very very quickly, then your opinion does not matter".

I guess we've somehow miscommunicated, because I'm actually pointing out
a weakness in the current rules, that was proponents of the removal of
the snippet under dispute were taking advantage of.

The argument brought forth by some of them was precisely that, because
Richard did not speak up quickly enough, he would then have to overcome
objections, because he'd have been turned into a proponent of a change
to revert what had been sneaked past him, whereas had he spoken up very
very quickly, those having to overcome objections would be those seeking
to make the change.

At the same time, it was argued that the rules were made so that those
proposing a change were the ones who had to overcome objections.

See, the *current* rules, per their argument, only serve their stated
goals for those who reply very very quickly.  That's a bug.

The *current* rules fail to serve their stated goal if a slightly late
response reverses the burden of overcoming objections, as some who
support the removal claim to prefer.

I denounce these distortions and expose them as bugs in the rules, but
fighting an uphill battle because the underlying topic is far too hot
and polarized.

And yet, I do not take advantage of the hole to denounce it.  I waited
more than twice as long as the sneaked-in patch for objections.

> This project relies on maintainers' ability to judge consensus, and
> several of the maintainers have already judged it accurately, in my
> opinion.

There is indeed a very significant majority that voiced support for the
removal.

The current rules adopted by the community, however, speak of consensus
in terms that can be exploited by sufficiently stubborn people (say,
like DJ, RMS and myself :-) as DJ has just demonstrated by his blanket
objection to any of my future proposals.

> On the other hand you are a GNU maintainer and have some
> responsibilities associated with that, and I don't fault you for
> carrying them out.

Thanks for your understanding.

> Just don't pretend this is consensus,

The larger debate on whether to remove the snippet is still ongoing, so
I agree there's no consensus on that.  However, my proposal to restore
the initial state so that the debate could take place without distortion
did not face any objections over several days.  Per our rules, and
without exploiting any of the weaknesses I denounce, that's consensus
for restoring the initial state while the debate plays out, but not for
anything else.

> and don't encourage people to quickly pile on to every patch they
> dislike for fear that consensus will be misjudged.

*nod*


I will take this opportunity to suggest two improvements for the
consensus rules:

- establish reasonable time limits for objections to be raised before
  one can conclude that consensus was reached, or, for expediency,
  explicitly allow for (not too) late objections to be raised, in such a
  way that the burden of overcoming objections is not reversed just
  because there *appeared* to be consensus

- relax the consensus requirements such that even a sustained objection
  by a (stubborn) concerned interest won't block changes indefinitely,
  with fallback decision-making procedures such as collective decisions
  by maintainers, escalating to GNU or somesuch

  BUT

  documenting that, being part of GNU, the first and only operating
  system developed for ethical reasons, GNU libc may be asked to install
  or to back out changes that might not seem relevant under the
  technical light of the developer community, but that are deemed
  important by the GNU project.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter    http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist|Red Hat Brasil GNU Toolchain Engineer


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