Re: [gentoo-project] Council Meeting 2023-04-09: Call for Agenda Items

[Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org>]

>>>>> On Wed, 29 Mar 2023, Rich Freeman wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 29, 2023 at 1:29 AM Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> 
>> - Updating GLEP 39 requires an all-developers vote [4]

> Minor suggestion: the text does not say whether this is a simple
> majority or something else.  It is probably worth a little thought,
> and making it explicit.

The metastructure reform (which was published as GLEP 39 later) was
originally accepted in a Condorcet vote [1], which makes it somewhat
difficult to compare it with a simple yes/no question. Voter turnout
at the time was 100 votes out of 381 eligible voters (26.24% of
participation) [2].

The master ballow is also still available [3]. So, I did a simple
analysis, taking only the proposals "Oldschool-small-with-slacker-boot"
(which was accepted), "Keep-current", and "Reopen-nominations" into
account. (The idea is that preferring the accepted proposal to
"Keep-current" is comparable with a "yes" vote.)

- Comparing "Oldschool-small-with-slacker-boot" with "Keep-current":
  67 voters ranked it above, 24 below, 9 with equal rank.

- Comparing "Oldschool-small-with-slacker-boot" with "Reopen-nominations":
  74 voters ranked it above, 17 below, 9 with equal rank.

- Comparing "Oldschool-small-with-slacker-boot" with both,
  63 voters ranked it above both, 28 below at least one of them,
  9 with equal rank.

> I realize this isn't the formal approval of the text, but it might
> actually be a nice thing for Council to discuss.

> To toss something out, I'd probably suggest at least a 60% majority of
> those voting, simply because this is a fairly foundational document
> and matters with only a slim majority probably should lead to more
> deliberation.

We should be careful there. For example, if I take the numbers from
GLEP 77 [4]:

- ratio of positive to negative votes of at least 2:1,
- positive votes no less than 1/4 the number of active developers,

then the original metastructure reform wouldn't have been accepted. With
a ratio of 67:24 of positive to negative votes, it would have made the
first criterion, but with only 67 positive votes out of 381 eligible
voters, it would have failed the second one.

Also, I am not sure if we could impose anything else than a simple
majority for the upcoming vote. Even if we require a 60%, 2/3, or 3/4
majority or a certain quorum in the document, I believe it would only
be applicable to future changes.

Ulrich

[1] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/f5ab9ccca62a5d5e0b7b7ab0156f19b3
[2] https://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/message/dd313930e951d05c574c58a3c20a6276
[3] https://marc.info/?l=gentoo-dev&m=111876215822161
[4] https://www.gentoo.org/glep/glep-0077.html