Draft resolution formalising Debian's Associated Project status

[Don Armstrong]

On Tue, 06 Mar 2007, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Yes, *and* specific clause references. The Debian Constitution is 14
> pages long and changes every 2 years;

It changes when it changes; time has no relevance to when amendments
are proposed and incorporated.

> you simply cannot expect a non-Debian SPI Board member to read and
> interpret all of it as to whether it might apply to Debian's
> relationship to SPI or the particular thing which SPI is being asked
> to do.

There's no problem with requiring that Debian Developers who are also
members of SPI bring up any such irregularities. The project liason
should be capable of providing the details of most decisions, but in
the case of a conflict, the constitution must control.

> For reference, the PostgreSQL charter on interacting with SPI is
> *one* page, and the ones for other organizations are one
> *paragraph.*

Brevity, while a laudable persuit, often leads to unforgivable holes.
Far better for a document to be 10 pages long and properly deal with
the cases at hand than 1 sentence long and fail utterly.

> So the names of the officers aren't posted anywhere on the Debian
> web site? There are no public archives of debian-vote?

They're posted and made available, but SPI shouldn't need to go find
them.

> I feel like I keep saying, "I want a simple API definition" and Ian
> & MJ keep saying "read the whole codebase".

There's no problem with providing a simplified API definition, but in
cases of conflict, the actual codebase (as it does in the case of API
definitions) controlls.


Don Armstrong

-- 
There is no such thing as "social gambling." Either you are there to
cut the other bloke's heart out and eat it--or you're a sucker. If you
don't like this choice--don't gamble.
 -- Robert Heinlein _Time Enough For Love_ p250

http://www.donarmstrong.com              http://rzlab.ucr.edu