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Re: A summary of some open discussions


From: Samuel Thibault
Subject: Re: A summary of some open discussions
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2020 02:31:40 +0100
User-agent: NeoMutt/20170609 (1.8.3)

nylxs, le mer. 08 janv. 2020 14:05:46 -0500, a ecrit:
> On 1/8/20 12:30 PM, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> > nylxs, le mer. 08 janv. 2020 10:19:26 -0500, a ecrit:
> >> when systemD was adopted,
> > The systemd question was not about adoption (adding it to the archive
> > was really not a concern), but about whether to make it a default/only
> > choice.  Which is a collective concern, and thus was discusssed
> > collectively. The leader can help the discussion to happen but in the
> > end it's a vote which settled what the community wanted to do.
> 
> Only if the "community" is top down the governance.

I can't parse this.

> >> [Debian] could NEVER do what GNU does because it gives too much power
> >> to the project leaders
> > ?? GNU gives *way* more power to its leader than Debian does to its
> > leader.
> 
> No - Debian gives too much power to the individual project leaders, not
> the Debian Debian leader.

Which individual project leaders? How do you think it "gives" to some,
and not just to "all"? Developers can just do what they want with
their package, only constrained by the policy which was agreed on
collectively. Or do you precisely mean too much power to just everybody?
But then it's not "power", but "freedom"?

> >> the entire OS.
> > Certainly not the entire OS. I have been for instance working in the
> > accessibility team completely the way I wanted, creating whatever
> > repositories, wikis, giving commit access like I wanted. At some point
> > there was interaction with other pieces of the OS, so discussion was
> > needed, and they happened directly with the corresponding teams. It
> > never went through the technical committee or leader. It would only have
> > been on an unsolved disagreement that we would have had to resort to the
> > technical committee.
> 
> which is one reason Debian continues to suck.  They wait for people to
> just do things, and then they complain, discuss and then they make a top
> down decision.

Sure. What else would you do in such a case? Are you here rejecting
top-down? Or are you just saying "blah, see, it's top-down!!" Well,
sure, sometimes you need some tie breaking. But if we can agree on using
it as little as possible it's better.

> All Volunteer organizations are top down.  Maybe not the French
> Communist party, or the 99% movement, but all the rest of them.

Is *that* not a catchall statement..

> >> Meanwhile, go volunteer at the American Museum of Natural History and
> >> see if you can move the T-Rex around...
> >> Good luck with that.
> > Which, to my opinion, is not a good thing. 
> 
> It is a ***GREAT*** thing, as a fact, anyone else's opinion not
> withstanding.  It means that the leadership is responsible 100% for the
> direction of the institution, and it assures real standards.  It
> prevents a hostile takeover by flat-earthers.

There is no need for such a thing to prevent hostile takeovers. What if
the leadership happens to convert itself to flat-earth beliefs, even if
the vast majority of the organization refuses that?

> Nobody should want be part of an organization where the mice can take
> over the boat.

Sure. That's why you want collective discussions. Some mice have
tried in Debian to keep non-systemd a requirement, and the community
collectively decided that no, it was too much of a burden, so the mice
now have to either find another place, or adapt.

Hierarchical organizations, on the contrary, run the risk of seeing a
mouse climbing the leadership steps and eventually, with the obtained
power, driving the organization away from what the collective spirit is.

Sure, the "RMS forever" solution avoids that kind of issue, since RMS
can keep his focus. But æternal life still isn't a thing, so we will
need somebody else at some point. Will that successor follow RMS' focus,
or will that be a mouse? Community-driven focus is more robust to such a
thing.

> > Organizations which can't evolve go extinct.
> 
> That is a meaningless catchall statement

It's not a catchall, it's what you can see in various cases.

Samuel



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