Re: Voting rules

[Peter Donald <do...@apache.org>]

At 04:57  29/11/00 +0100, you wrote:
>When the vetoer becomes convinced that his reasons have been
>invalidated by the requesters counter-arguments, he can
>easily change his vote to 0 or +1, so there is no need
>for an 'automatic' change of the vote.

Well the problem occurs when someone will not argue their position and give
reasons for their convictions. If they don't do that then it is impossible
for the requester to respond to problems because they are not aware of them.

>So the interesting question is: what happens if the vetoer 
>is not convinced by the requesters counter-arguments? 
>Who should decide if the counter-arguments *really* have 
>addressed all issues? 
>
>This question has four possible answers:
>- the process continues without decision

one way.

>- a third party decides
>- the requesters position wins
>- the vetoers position wins

the other way.

>Letting the process continue means a de facto rejection
>of the change (if the vetoer doesn't change his mind), 
>because the requester can't proceed to commit the change 
>(I assume that the voting process takes place before the 
>change is done). 

depends - it is a lazy veto because it occured after the fact. Anyone can
always -1 a change post it being changed.

>That means that the first answer leads 
>to the same result as the last: the vetoer wins.

right.

>Your position seems to be a combination of answer one and 
>three: as long as the vetoer responds, the process 
>continues; if he stops responding, the requester wins. 

If the vetoer has all his problems solved by counters of requester and the
vetoer does not come up with new reasons to -1 then he is -1 without an
explanation (which is invalid and uncounted).

>So there is only one choice left:
>the vetoer wins. Only the vetoer can recast his vote if he 
>becomes convinced by requesters counter-arguments. Otherwise 
>the change remains rejected.

right.

>Now let's take a look at the idea to put an obligation
>to answer on the vetoer. It doesn't really help the 
>requester to put such an obligation into the rules, 
>because a good will vetoer will always listen to the 
>requester's arguments while a bad will vetoer will 
>always produce some answer to comply with the rule.

I haven't seen many of this type of behaviour at Apache. Almost everyone
that I have encountered will at least consider other positions (in most
cases).

>Another disadvantage is that the requester could try 
>producing more and more reasons, until the vetoer becomes 
>too tired to respond.

One way ;)

>(after rereading this paragraph I'd like to emphasize that I 
>don't think this is happening in the jar file discussion).
>My last argument against such an obligation is that it
>would have to become a very complicated rule to be
>fair to both parties (how many days may the vetoer wait 
>until he responds, what happens if he gets on holiday, ...).

;) You should see some of the discussions on other lists. Ant is relatively
tame - it took me about 3 months at one time to convince the other
committers not to veto something (and I needed to convinve them all as
their was only 3 other active committers). While this is painful if you
need a quick fix it generally produces a better product .... eventually. I
ended up just forking for those 3 months and then merging at end.

It also depends on the group. Some of them (Cocoon and Avalon in
particular) tend to do things the "right" way and will take forever to
arrive at a decision. You will notice that some issue keep being brought up
to. If a committer really wants X they will cyclically ask about it until
it get accepted or peeps get really annoyed with them ;)

>Note that this is trying to be a theoretical discussion of 
>the rules. I don't have any opinion on the jar file issue.

;)

Cheers,

Pete

*-----------------------------------------------------*
| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof."                   |
|              - John Kenneth Galbraith               |
*-----------------------------------------------------*

Re: Voting rules

[Stefan Bodewig <bo...@apache.org>]

Peter Donald <do...@apache.org> wrote:

> At 04:57  29/11/00 +0100, you wrote:

["you" being Wolf Siberski]

> Well the problem occurs when someone will not argue their position
> and give reasons for their convictions.

OK, as much as I haven't seen any -1 being overruled here (during the
time I have followed Ant development that is) I haven't seen a
committer sticking to a -1 without giving reasons - or without
discussing it thereafter. And I really really hope this won't happen
here.

To be honest, I haven't seen too many -1s at all ...

>>So the interesting question is: what happens if the vetoer 
>>is not convinced by the requesters counter-arguments? 
>>Who should decide if the counter-arguments *really* have 
>>addressed all issues? 

> If the vetoer has all his problems solved by counters of requester
> and the vetoer does not come up with new reasons to -1 then he is -1
> without an explanation (which is invalid and uncounted).

This doesn't really answer the question who should decide whether all
problems have been solved. It's not always clear and of course the
vetoer and the requester are going to disagree - otherwise one of them
would change his/her vote.

>>Now let's take a look at the idea to put an obligation
>>to answer on the vetoer. It doesn't really help the 
>>requester to put such an obligation into the rules, 
>>because a good will vetoer will always listen to the 
>>requester's arguments while a bad will vetoer will 
>>always produce some answer to comply with the rule.
> 
> I haven't seen many of this type of behaviour at Apache. Almost
> everyone that I have encountered will at least consider other
> positions (in most cases).

I haven't seen that either. I hope people like the "bad will vetoer"
Wolf describes would show this attitude before they get elected as
committers.

> ;) You should see some of the discussions on other lists. Ant is
> relatively tame

Even though I don't really know which lists you are referring to, I
guess you are right. But I wouldn't say Ant is "relatively tame".

The Ant community - like any other - has its own style of
discussions. It seems you will always really know everybody is just
interested in improving Ant. I know there are some people whose
opinion is very important to me, even though - or maybe because - we
don't share the same point of view. I really enjoy being part of the
Ant community (and this is not "committers only" of course).

Stefan