[llvm-foundation] Voting

[Hal Finkel via llvm-foundation]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Renato Golin via llvm-foundation" <llvm-foundation at lists.llvm.org>
> To: "Alex Bradbury" <asb at asbradbury.org>
> Cc: llvm-foundation at lists.llvm.org
> Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2016 1:44:44 PM
> Subject: Re: [llvm-foundation] Voting
> 
> On 29 June 2016 at 17:02, Alex Bradbury <asb at asbradbury.org> wrote:
> > This proposal of course assumes that the LLVM community is to be
> > run
> > as a direct democracy.
> 
> I don't think it does. At least, that wasn't what I was proposing at
> all.
> 
> My point was simply to reach consensus *first*, as usual, then vote
> *only* on the most controversial / high impact decisions to
> cristalize
> the consensus into a number. Good examples are version control, code
> of conduct, license, etc.
> 
> Voting without (or to reach) consensus is a grenade to the foot.

I understand your point, but I don't think this addresses the problem we have in practice. The problem we have in practice is determining when we have consensus. This is because a small percentage of our community actively participates in any given discussion, and disproportionally loud opponents or proponents can skew the apparent tenor of the conversation.

 -Hal
 
> 
> > I don't want to distract from your detailed
> > proposal, but it seems the desired governance model needs to be
> > defined before delving in to the details of how to implement it. Or
> > has this discussion taken place somewhere?
> 
> This is what we have done as far as I can remember, and is my
> interpretation of what we have evolved into.
> 
> From previous posts in this list, the foundation doesn't want to be a
> driving force, but a supporting force, and I very much support this
> view. We have had the model of consensus for a long time and it has
> worked very well so far. In that case, the foundation can only make
> it
> better.
> 
> I think Chris' words reflect that position well:
> 
> "Most things can be done by the community, the foundation should only
> step in when there is no ability (e.g. legal issues) or apparent will
> (e.g. the website overhaul) to do it."
> 
> 
> > Communities such as
> > FreeBSD, Debian, and others obviously have rather more involved and
> > fully defined decision procedures.
> 
> I am confident that this will not work for LLVM.
> 
> We grew into a group of mostly agreeable and respectable people, and
> politics will only drive us away from each other and tear the
> community appart (see Britain).
> 
> The day that we *need* politics, the community will be long dead. The
> GitHub, code of conduct and license threads are great examples of how
> we can persevere against the odds and come up better as a group.
> 
> We may not agree with everything, and take a long time to change
> things, but we're always moving towards what the collective believes
> is better (whatever that means).
> 
> Less haste, more speed.
> 
> cheers,
> --renato
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-- 
Hal Finkel
Assistant Computational Scientist
Leadership Computing Facility
Argonne National Laboratory