Michael Gilbert <mgilb...@debian.org> writes: > On Sat, Feb 8, 2014 at 5:56 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> Well, in defense of the discussion that Steve, Colin, and I have been >> having, I do think it's worthwhile for the TC to try to hammer out a >> compromise on that point as well and express it as either technical >> advice to the project or as technical policy. > Why not hammer that out on -policy in public, and only if something goes > wrong there, then defer it to the TC? Because -policy doesn't have a decision-making process other than consensus, so Ian's objections to all of the positions shy of L and my objections to L would deadlock and effectively block the -policy discussion from ever reaching a decision. There is no method for either of us to be overridden. Now, there would have been no way of knowing in advance that something like that would happen... but based on my past experience with Policy discussions and the level of controversy over this particular question, I would have been stunned if it hadn't happened, which is exactly why I would have immediately punted to the TC. Policy doesn't have a strong decision-making method other than consensus, which means that it will fail to arrive at a conclusion for anything that's even vaguely controversial (and sometimes even for things that are not very controversial but which don't inspire people to express an opinion). Maybe that's a bug that should be fixed, or maybe we should just use the TC as the way of reaching conclusions on controversial issues; I can see arguments either way. (The first Policy issue that I escalated to the TC as an experiment in using the TC to make these decisions was decided but was never implemented, and the second is still pending before the TC, so the track record here is not great, for a variety of reasons.) But as matters stand right now, there's no way for the Policy process to reach a conclusion on questions like this. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
