Re: Draft resolution formalising Debian's Associated Project status

On Fri, Mar 16, 2007 at 05:29:12PM +0000, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > Board is made aware of any situations where there is disagreement among
> > Debian Developers on the identity of the Debian Project Leader or the
> > Debian Project Secretary, and situations where the Debian Project Leader
> > and Debian Project Secretary disagree on the authority held by either of
> > them.
>
> Really I think this is hair-splitting which will do no good if we have
> a real flamer idiot DoS type. The reason I'm resisting it is because
> it gives the impression that the SPI board thinks it's not supposed to
> read the constitution and make up its own mind - and it is IMO
> supposed to do that.

I have to pick a level of risk to worry about, and I'm much less worried
about the risk of people inventing disagreements about the DPL's
identity for sake of DoSing the board than I am about the very real
likelihood that there will always be DDs who dissent from the majority
view of the scope of the DPL's authority. I also don't care for this
purpose if non-DDs are mistaken about any of the above.

And, I don't see how this gives the impression that the SPI board
wouldn't read the constitution in case of a disagreement on identity or
authority of our recognized decision communicators, after being notified
about the disagreement. It does give the impression that the board
wouldn't take the initiative to proactively check every request from the
DPL or Secretary with its own reading of the constitution, but that is a
very reasonable stance for the board to take.

SPI should only interpret projects' internal documents when it can't
feel certain of the validity of the interpretations it has been given by
its designated contacts in the projects. Do you want to have to read
PostgreSQL and OpenOffice.org's internal governing documents to verify
that all of their liaisons' requests to SPI are properly authorized in
the absence of a reason to doubt that being the case? I certainly don't,
and our treasurer most definitely doesn't.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)spi-inc(dot)org