General Resolution: Project membership procedures

Time Line

Proposal and amendment Friday, 24th October, 2008 Wednesday, 29th October, 2008
Discussion Period: Wednesday, 29th October, 2008 Wednesday, 26th November, 2008
Voting Period 00:00:01 UTC on Monday, 8th Dec, 2008 23:59:59 UTC on Sunday, 14th Dec, 2008

Proposer

Charles Plessy [[email protected]] [[email protected]]
Please note, the finalised text of the proposal is an accepted amendment from Peter Palfrader [[email protected]]. See [[email protected]] and [[email protected]]

Seconds

  1. MJ Ray [[email protected]]
  2. Robert Millan [[email protected]]
  3. Bas Zoetekouw [[email protected]]
  4. Frans Pop [[email protected]]
  5. Amaya Rodrigo Sastre [[email protected]]
  6. Lucas Nussbaum [[email protected]]
  7. Bastian Blank [[email protected]]
  8. Jurij Smakov [[email protected]]
  9. Rémi Vanicat [[email protected]]
  10. Philipp Kern [[email protected]]
  11. Luca Filipozzi [[email protected]]
  12. Pierre Habouzit [[email protected]]
  13. Colin Tuckley [[email protected]]
  14. Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt [[email protected]]
  15. Raphaël Hertzog [[email protected]]
  16. Patrick Schoenfeld [[email protected]]
  17. Cyril Brulebois [[email protected]]
  18. Philipp Kern [[email protected]]
  19. Alexander Schmehl [[email protected]]
  20. Nico Golde [[email protected]]
  21. Andreas Barth [[email protected]]

Text

The actual text of the resolution is as follows. Please note that this does not include preludes, prologues, any preambles to the resolution, post-ambles to the resolution, abstracts, fore-words, after-words, rationales, supporting documents, opinion polls, arguments for and against, and any of the other important material you will find on the mailing list archives. Please read the debian-vote mailing list archives for details.

Choice 2: Invite the DAM to further discuss until vote or consensus, leading to a new proposal.

The Debian Project recognizes that many contributors to the project are not working withing established frameworks of Debian and thus are not provided by the project with as much help as might be possible, useful or required, nor opportunities to join the project.

We thank Jörg Jaspert for exploring ideas on how to involve contributors more closely with and within the project so that they can get both recognition and the necessary tools to do their work.

We realize that the proposal posted to the debian-devel-announce mailinglist is not yet finalized and may not have the support of a large part of our community. We invite the DAM and all the contributors to further develop their ideas in close coordination with other members of the project, and to present a new and improved proposal on the project's mailinglists in the future.

Significant changes should only be implemented after consensus within the project at large has been reached, or when decided by a general resolution.

Amendment Proposer A

Lucas Nussbaum [[email protected]] [<[email protected]>]

Amendment Seconds A

  1. Damyan Ivanov [[email protected]]
  2. Matthew Johnson [[email protected]]
  3. Stefano Zacchiroli [[email protected]]
  4. Margarita Manterola [[email protected]]
  5. Raphaël Hertzog [[email protected]]

Amendment Text A

Choice 1: Ask the DAMs to postpone the changes until vote or consensus.

The Debian Project, by way of a general resolution of its developers, asks the Debian Account Managers to postpone the implementation of the changes described on the debian-devel-announce mailing list (Message-id: <[email protected]>) about "Developer Status", until there is consensus on a proposal, or a vote to define the proposal that should be implemented.

Amendment Proposer B

Lucas Nussbaum [[email protected]] [<[email protected]>]

Amendment Seconds B

  1. Damyan Ivanov [[email protected]]
  2. Matthew Johnson [[email protected]]
  3. Stefano Zacchiroli [[email protected]]
  4. Margarita Manterola [[email protected]]
  5. Raphaël Hertzog [[email protected]]

Amendment Text B

Choice 3: Ask the DAMs to implement the changes.

The Debian Project, by way of a general resolution of its developers, asks the Debian Account Managers to start the implementation of the changes described on the debian-devel-announce mailing list (Message-id: <[email protected]>) about "Developer Status".

Quorum

With the current list of voting developers, we have: 

 Current Developer Count = 1018
 Q ( sqrt(#devel) / 2 ) = 15.9530561335438
 K min(5, Q )           = 5
 Quorum  (3 x Q )       = 47.8591684006314

Quorum

Data and Statistics

For this GR, as always statistics shall be gathered about ballots received and acknowledgements sent periodically during the voting period. Additionally, the list of voters would be made publicly available. Also, the tally sheet may also be viewed after to voting is done (Note that while the vote is in progress it is a dummy tally sheet).

Majority Requirement

All the amendments need simple majority

Majority

Outcome

Graphical rendering of the results

In the graph above, any pink colored nodes imply that the option did not pass majority, the Blue is the winner. The Octagon is used for the options that did not beat the default.

In the following table, tally[row x][col y] represents the votes that option x received over option y. A more detailed explanation of the beat matrix may help in understanding the table. For understanding the Condorcet method, the Wikipedia entry is fairly informative.

The Beat Matrix
 Option
  1 2 3 4
Option 1   112 195 211
Option 2 125   194 209
Option 3 71 65   88
Option 4 47 49 173  

Looking at row 2, column 1, Invite the DAM to further discuss until vote or consensus, leading to a new proposal.
received 125 votes over Ask the DAMs to postpone the changes until vote or consensus.

Looking at row 1, column 2, Ask the DAMs to postpone the changes until vote or consensus.
received 112 votes over Invite the DAM to further discuss until vote or consensus, leading to a new proposal.

Pair-wise defeats

The Schwartz Set contains

The winner

Debian uses the Condorcet method for voting. Simplistically, plain Condorcets method can be stated like so :
Consider all possible two-way races between candidates. The Condorcet winner, if there is one, is the one candidate who can beat each other candidate in a two-way race with that candidate. The problem is that in complex elections, there may well be a circular relationship in which A beats B, B beats C, and C beats A. Most of the variations on Condorcet use various means of resolving the tie. See Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping for details. Debian's variation is spelled out in the constitution, specifically, A.6.

Neil McGovern