Re: Democracy (was Re: There is no leadership vaccumm.)

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On 8 Dec 1997, Mark W. Eichin wrote:

> > Why is there this implicit assumption that democracy is a good way
> > to run things ?
>
> Perhaps people forget that Democracy is designed to *prevent*
> progress from crushing the little guy.  That's only an issue in an
> *involuntary* arrangement, such as that between an inhabitant of a
> territory and the occupying government.

how true.

unlike the "real world" of governments and guns, in a voluntary project
like debian we can vote with our feet if we don't like the direction
it's taking.

> Benign dictatorship is *much* more efficient; it's just hard to find
> "good" dictators, so we try to have these annual elections (as much to
> support the self-confidence of the leaders as anything, it's not like
> we're all particularly qualified to evaluate such leaders -- remember,
> we're here because we're successful at packaging software, and this is
> *not* a leadership-filtering quality :-)
> 
> > I'd rather not be on a bus with a steering wheel for every passenger.
> 
> Well and clearly put.

all of this stuff (i have no other polite word to describe it) that's
happening now is exactly why i was against making debian too democratic
way back when we first started talking about holding elections.

I've seen exactly the same things happen to other groups when they have
switched from being a benign dictatorship to a democracy. it diverts
too much energy into politics and fighting...the group's focus changes
from achieving whatever the original aims were to issues of control over
the group. "well-meaning" people waste far too much of everyone's time
attempting to save the group from itself.

unfortunately, it's probably too late to turn back. we're probably
stuck with some form of democratic input now. i think the only way for
debian to successfully incorporate elements of democracy is to have an
automated polling system which supports three types of polling:

	Elections		For the position of project leader.  once every year or
                    two years.

	Votes			The leader[1] may call for a vote on any issue of
                    fundamental importance - e.g. the social contract and
                    the DFSG.  Results of Votes are binding on the leader.

	Polls			any person, including the leader, may call for a 
					consensus poll on any issue.  the results of this
 					should *NOT* be binding on the leader.

[1] optionally, any person may call for a Poll on whether a Vote should
be held on a particular issue.  If the poll gets more than 2/3rds YES
response then a Vote is held.  The result of the Vote should be binding.
Think of this as citizen initiated referenda.  To be used sparingly.

Creation of a new Poll or Vote should be automated (either via email
or a web form).  Debian could issue SSL certificates for web based
voting/polling, and PGP should be used to sign any email vote/poll.

The intent of all this is to allow the leader to get on with leading
while giving those who want a democracy a playpen where they wont waste
everyone's time.  Only Elections and Votes are binding, while Polls are
just an opinion/consensus guage....apart from that, the leader does what
they want subject only to their own common sense (e.g. obvious things
like you can't lead people - especially volunteers - where they don't
want to go, and that a leader who drives away all their followers is
only making a fool out of themself)

NOTE: This idea needs some extra details, like notice periods for polls
and votes (polls should have a short notice period of a few days, votes
and elections should have at least two weeks or a month's notice).  Any
vote, poll, or election should last 1 week.  Anyone who has voted can
change their vote during this week by submitting another one - only
their last vote should count.  Notice to eligible voters should be by
personal email for votes and elections, and by public announcement in
debian-private or debian-devel for polls.  All results should be public,
and counting should be automated so that preliminary returns can be
viewed at any time.  I'm not sure whether secret or public ballots are a
good idea.

craig


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