[gentoo-council] Amending GLEP39

[Denis Dupeyron <calchan@gentoo.org>]

Next topic on the (long) list: how do we go about amending GLEP39?
This is by the way a blocker for part of the previous discussion about
meeting format, i.e. getting rid of proxies and slacker mark.

I will keep my opinion for myself until later in order to not bias the
discussion. I will try and present the facts as I see them but as
neutrally as possible. This is the result of lots of discussions with
lots of yous. Feel free to add to this, I'm not going to pretend I've
heard it all.

There are various schools of thought here, and we can divide them
using mainly two axes.

One is about whether we can actually modify GLEP39 or not. Some think
that GLEP39 is so fundamental that it can't be changed, period. A less
extremist faction think that although it can't be changed we can
decide to write another and switch to it if enough of the right people
agree (TBD, see below). And then there's those who think that GLEP39
can be amended under the right conditions (see below again).

The other axis is about how we agree we can amend GLEP39 or switch to
an entirely different text. Some think that as long as GLEP39 was
voted by the whole dev population, in order to change it we need all
devs to vote the change. Some others think that the whole point of
electing a council is about delegating your vote and making the
maneuvering of this large ship that Gentoo is a lot easier than if we
had to resort to all-devs vote for everything. The required majority
for each alternative (all devs vote, or council members only) is a
detail right now, but will need to be discussed at some point.

Then there's a sub-axis. In the case we allow the council members to
vote on GLEP39 changes to make things easier, would it be the same if
we were to switch from GLEP39 to a completely different text or would
this require an all-devs vote? And even in the case we're only
changing GLEP39, how major can the change be before we have to go back
to the whole dev population? Because it's certainly possible to change
GLEP39 to such an extent that it becomes an entirely different thing.
Can we actually quantify how big a change is?

There's one last group: those who don't care but will find an angle in
the above to make personal attacks. Please don't.

Denis.