Re: SPI Meeting Reminder: Thursday 14th June, 2012 @ 20:00 UTC

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012, Ian Jackson wrote:

> Jonathan McDowell writes ("SPI Meeting Reminder: Thursday 14th June, 2012 @ 2$
>> 2012-05-17.mcs.1 (Removal of OpenOffice.org as associated project)
> Can I bring to the attention of the Board my objection to the wording
> of clause 4 of this resolution ?

I mentioned your objection during the discussion leading up to the vote on
2012-05-25.rtb.1.

[Ian's proposed alternative wording partly snipped for brevity]

** Note, original wording passed a vote between Ian's email and this
response **

> However FFmpeg does not currently have a formal governance
> structure. Therefore in case of dispute, SPI will follow what
> appears to the SPI Board to be the rough consensus view of the
> FFmpeg project's direct contributors.

Doesn't 2004-08-10.iwj.1 already cover that? 2004-08-10.iwj.1
is referenced in the resolution template.

I did quote this in recent discussions on this topic but here it is again:

"If a Project's internal organization or procedures are unclear or
disputed, SPI will deal with the situation as fairly as possible; if
possible SPI will act according to the decisions or rough consensus of the
Project's participants or in case of doubt that of the whole Community."

> In the email discussion no-one seems to have suggested that
> "authoritative decisionmaker" _doesn't_ mean what I say it does.

Actually I did, in my first response after you initially raised the
concern. I am quite prepared to concede that my interpretation of the
term is wrong but it is different to yours (as I understand your
position).

> The counterarguments to my objection seem to have been "we have always
> done it this way". Well, I'm sorry I haven't always been paying 100%
> attention to these things, but the fact that something has been done
> wrong in the past is not a reason for doing it wrong now.

I am cautious about changing wording without proper consideration (as per
my next comment).

> Robert wrote:
>> If the board doesn't object, I'm happy to refer this to SPI counsel for
>> advice. This will happen in parallel to the current proposal of course.
>
> I don't think it is necessary to refer this to laywers. It's really

I disagree on this point. My position is that we should definitely have
counsel review any proposed resolution template before we put it in to
action. This need not be an onerous process. SFLC has been very quick to
respond to our queries in the past. I am very impressed by the service
they have been providing us.

Cheers,

Rob

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