Re: [rain1 at airmail dot cc] Delete abortion joke

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva at redhat dot com>]

On May  8, 2018, Torvald Riegel <triegel@redhat.com> wrote:

> It had consensus (not unanimous though) all the time.  Do you actually
> think there's no consensus now?

Per the consensus rules spelled out in the wiki, there isn't, for the
simple reason that there is "sustained opposition to substantial issues
by an important part of the concerned interests."

As for unanimity...  That's applied quite unevenly.

Consider the initial patch.

There was Richard's initial objection to removal present in the patch
itself.

There was Ondřej's objection posted the day before the patch went in.

There was my objection, that I hadn't posted because, well, there were
other objections already, so there was going to be a debate and
consensus-building process, so I might as well wait for RMS's feedback
before chiming in.  Maybe he would say he didn't care any more, that the
issue was no longer relevant, and then why would I?

Except that there was't.  The patch went in anyway, completely
disregarding even the visible objections.


Now let's look at what happened when I reverted the patch that should
never have been rushed/sneaked in.

One person claimed he had objected to the temporary reversal proposal by
responding to a different subthread about a different issue without any
mention of the reversal and without even responding questions about
whether he even read the proposal.

Three others jumped on the bandwagon and claimed they hadn't further
voiced their objections because they saw his.

Now, let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that I had
misunderstood his unrelated response as an objection to my proposal, and
had decided to proceed anyway, because his opinion was that of a valued
contributor, but there were opinion in favor of the temporary reversal
by an officially-appointed maintainer and by the ultimate maintainer.

Would it be wrong to disregard his objection in this hypothetical
situation, because consensus needs not be unanimous and other objections
hadn't been voiced, or are we supposed to assume that there might be
other unvoiced objections hiding behind a voiced one?

How about unvoiced support?  Should that even be relevant, considering
the wording of the definition?  Does it matter how many voices are in
support, if the only written criterion for consensus is the absence of
sustained opposition?

See?, this is road to madness.  It might seem to work just fine as long
as there aren't significantly controversial issues, but the moment there
are...  We've all just seen how it plays out.

-- 
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