Matthew Palmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 04:37:49PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote: > > intention would clearly be to dealy the issue until everyone who opposes you > > has left in disgust, and you can claim consensus. > > *You've* driven three people out of this discussion with your personal abuse > against them. Who is exactly is trying to berate the opposition into > silence and then claim they hold the consensus opinion, exactly?
Actually, the process Sven describes here seems to be happening. Some people on the list abuse the other participants until they leave, and then claim consensus afterwards. They may just as well procede to say that whoever left is an unclued idiot, because they are not around to defend themselvees anyway. Sven's arguments seem clear and important to me, and it behooves us to pay attention and address them. The current "flame until concensus" process seems inherently broken for the purpose of making a good decision about what to include and not include. While the flamers seem to be honestly trying to figure the issues out, I wouldn't want to rely on their opinions alone if we can avoid it. Most especially I do not want to reach the situation where a theorist on debian-legal has found a theoretical problem that the maintainer of the package disagrees with. Of course, even aside from the process question, there is an issue of proper treatment of fellow Debian developers. We are all on the same side, but some people seem to be forgetting this. If you think Sven and I are exagerating, let me toss out a few examples from just the last couple of weeks: Nathanael Nerode <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I have argued that it may well be *good* for a license to specify choice > > of venue. It is a nice thing to know which laws apply to the agreement, > > and that's what a choice of venue clause tells you (at least, to the > > point anything is certain in law). > > Wrong wrong wrong. Please pay attention. How is it "wrong", much less "wrong wrong wrong", to point out a new argument? And why am I supposed to "pay attention" here, when clearly I am pointing out something that people are overlooking? This is not the kind of treatement a fresh idea should receive. I have yet to see *anyone* respond to this point itself. The hair split that follows this is interesting but has no bearing on the point. > > But don't take my advise, however much logic it may be based on. > Namely, "none". This speaks for itself. G. Branden Robinson wrote: > I'm afraid your response was far too scholarly and informed to be taken > seriously by anyone who feels that choice-of-law or -venue clauses are just > fine by the DFSG. This was the entire content of one post, aside from a rot-13'd comment that this is sarcastic. This post had no purpose other than to flame someone and to rabble rouse. Further, we see here again the implicit assumption that anyone disagreeing with the mob leaders must be incorrect. That simply is not a good atmosphere for making good decisions. It's a great atmosphere for increasing the sphere of influence of the people who are doing it. > Proof by assertion; wow. Good thing we're not lawyers, or we'd have > detected that fallacy. This is not a proper response in a debate. The issue mentioned was in fact carefully described and defended. It even happens to be one that, if followed, could make Debian a better distribution. It received no substantial response, despite being a careful, well-reasoned, and non-confrontational observation. On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 09:59:22AM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote: > Would you care to base your assertion on fact and logic? Yes, I did so. This poster, however, sees no need to state an *objection* based on fact or logic. Here we see the strategy of spamming out a bunch of flames in order to quickly eliminate the weak of heart and the short of time. Branden Robinson wrote: > (5 days later...) > > Perhaps not. :-/ This is exactly the kind of thing I and Sven are talking about. There is an implicit assumption here that an argument crafted over more than a day or two must obviously be inferior to one that is spammed out from the tip of the brain. Aside from that, five days is a rather narrow window to decide that someone's point -- a point that the poster has admitted that they don't even understand -- has somehow timed out and is no longer relevant to the eventual "consensus". Lex
