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Debian votes to make no statement regarding RMS readmission to the FSF board

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Re: Debian votes to make no statement regarding RMS readmission to the FSF board

#31

Post by yurielt »

kstenerud wrote: post #25

I don't get why organizations feel they need to weigh in on this so much. The FSF has a code of conduct ( https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct.en.html ), so it's pretty clear what the conditions are for removing someone. Either remove him according to the rules of the code of conduct, or leave him be. That's what COCs are for. If you're not happy with the COC, push for changes.

No you see that is what the heteropatriarchal meanies at the Free Software Foundation wants you to believe in reality if you don’t completely change your institution every time a pink haired person complains in Twitter it means you are a nazi and or rapist

. .

Edit: it’s sarcasm just on case

Re: Debian votes to make no statement regarding RMS readmission to the FSF board

#32

Post by gizmo686 »

Pfhreak wrote: post #6

If you look at the results they link, the picture becomes clearer. They proposed 8 options. 2 directly called for resignations at FSF, 2 directly supported RMS, one said to stop working with FSF, one said to call for governance improvements at FSF, one was no comment, and one was discuss further. The two options in support of RMS were not majority held opinions, and were held by ~1/6-1/3 of voters. No comment beat "c…

How do you get to 2/3rds? I am not familiar with Debian's voting system, but I get just under 1/2 in favor publically supporting removal.

I define "support" as preferring an option over "Further Discussion".

According to [0], there were 420 unique voters. Using 420 as the denominator, and collumn 8 [1] as the numerator, we get the following approval voting results:

1) Call for the FSF board removal, as in rms-open-letter.github.io - 203/420 = 48%

2) Call for Stallman's resignation from all FSF bodies - 222/42 = 53%

3) Discourage collaboration with the FSF while Stallman is in a leading position - 19/420 - 52%

4) Call on the FSF to further its governance processes - 221/42 = 53%

5) Support Stallman's reinstatement, as in rms-support-letter.github.io - 52/420 = 12%

6) Denounce the witch-hunt against RMS and the FSF - 84/420 = 20%

7) Debian will not issue a public statement on this issue - 277/420 = 65%

8) Further Discussion - N/A

It does not look like individual votes have been released yet. If they were, I would like to see how accurate my assumption that no one "approves" of both his presence and absence from the board. The sum of approval for both 1 and 5 is 255 = 61%, so it seems like most of the no statement voters actively disprove of a statement in either direction (instead of simply preferring no statement)

[0] https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/

[1] https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/results.txt

Re: Debian votes to make no statement regarding RMS readmission to the FSF board

#33

Post by Pfhreak »

tedunangst wrote: post #18
cbmuser wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Debian will issue no comment, 2/3+ of voters in Debian supported calling for RMSs removal. It's clear which way the tide is moving, even if Debian says nothing. FWIW, some people didn’t want to vote because the results would be publicly with names. So the result of a secret vote might have been different.

They should have gated this vote with a yes/no vote on whether to vote.

No, they should have used a standard process for general resolutions and not special cased it. Which is what they did. They have a constitution and a democratic process that requires proposals, seconding, a period of open discussion, and then a vote.

They agreed on their voting system in advance exactly to handle cases where the vote might be contentious.

Re: Debian votes to make no statement regarding RMS readmission to the FSF board

#34

Post by turbinerneiter »

umvi wrote: post #12

Can someone fill me in on the RMS drama/politics? Is this because he was cancelled due to (supposedly) defending Epstein and he's now trying to uncancel himself?

He isn't perfect, he said something insensitive in the Epstein causa, now all kinds of ridiculous allegations and warranted criticism gets mixed into a toxic cocktail, which doesn't allow anyone to move forward productively.

If RMS accepts his cancellation, he basically caves to wrongful accusations. If he stays, we can't move forward and get work done because of the drama and all the viable reasons why he shouldn't be a central, public FSF spokesperson anymore.

Plus, everyone really just wants to see the FSF fail anyway, for some reason.

Re: Debian votes to make no statement regarding RMS readmission to the FSF board

#35

Post by Pfhreak »

fighterpilot wrote: post #29
Pfhreak wrote: post #6

If you look at the results they link, the picture becomes clearer. They proposed 8 options. 2 directly called for resignations at FSF, 2 directly supported RMS, one said to stop working with FSF, one said to call for governance improvements at FSF, one was no comment, and one was discuss further. The two options in support of RMS were not majority held opinions, and were held by ~1/6-1/3 of voters. No comment beat "c…

Was it an anonymous vote?

No. Do you have evidence that anonymity would have mattered?

The vote totals seem in line with historical votes.

Re: Debian votes to make no statement regarding RMS readmission to the FSF board

#36

Post by McScroogy »

Pfhreak wrote: post #6

If you look at the results they link, the picture becomes clearer. They proposed 8 options. 2 directly called for resignations at FSF, 2 directly supported RMS, one said to stop working with FSF, one said to call for governance improvements at FSF, one was no comment, and one was discuss further. The two options in support of RMS were not majority held opinions, and were held by ~1/6-1/3 of voters. No comment beat "c…

[flagged]

Re: Debian votes to make no statement regarding RMS readmission to the FSF board

#37

Post by zozbot234 »

ekianjo wrote: post #30
Pfhreak wrote: post #6

If you look at the results they link, the picture becomes clearer. They proposed 8 options. 2 directly called for resignations at FSF, 2 directly supported RMS, one said to stop working with FSF, one said to call for governance improvements at FSF, one was no comment, and one was discuss further. The two options in support of RMS were not majority held opinions, and were held by ~1/6-1/3 of voters. No comment beat "c…

> It's clear which way the tide is moving It's only clear that the way this is measured is heavily biased: 4 options out of 8 are against current FSF/RMS' statu quo. Only 2 are for supporting the statu quo. And 1 is for indifference, and the last one for more discussion needed. If you overcharge the negative choices, it's kind of given most of the answers will fall in them. Survey design 101. For reference: - Option…

> If you overcharge the negative choices, it's kind of given most of the answers will fall in them

That's not how it works. The voters are asked to rank all options according to their preference, and a winner is chosen according to an extended Condorcet criterion. Adding similar options doesn't affect the outcome.

Re: Debian votes to make no statement regarding RMS readmission to the FSF board

#38

Post by kroeckx »

nextaccountic wrote: post #8
madars wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian uses the Condorcet method for elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method . Each voter is to rank a subset of all options, and this is the resulting pairwise preference graph.

If it's the pairwise preference, shouldn't it be a complete graph? (a graph with edges between any two nodes)

The code does not draw lines between the options that didn't pass the quorum or majority test (drawn in pink), because they are dropped before the Schulze method is used. But it then adds the options again, to show all the options.

When multiple options are in the Schwartz set, the weakest defeats are removed until only 1 option is left in the Schwartz set. I think it only draws the graph after there is only 1 option left. But that didn't happen in this vote.

Re: Debian votes to make no statement regarding RMS readmission to the FSF board

#39

Post by Pfhreak »

ekianjo wrote: post #30
Pfhreak wrote: post #6

If you look at the results they link, the picture becomes clearer. They proposed 8 options. 2 directly called for resignations at FSF, 2 directly supported RMS, one said to stop working with FSF, one said to call for governance improvements at FSF, one was no comment, and one was discuss further. The two options in support of RMS were not majority held opinions, and were held by ~1/6-1/3 of voters. No comment beat "c…

> It's clear which way the tide is moving It's only clear that the way this is measured is heavily biased: 4 options out of 8 are against current FSF/RMS' statu quo. Only 2 are for supporting the statu quo. And 1 is for indifference, and the last one for more discussion needed. If you overcharge the negative choices, it's kind of given most of the answers will fall in them. Survey design 101. For reference: - Option…

You should read up on how they conduct votes. Every voter essentially gets a chance to rank every option against every other option. So the number of options should not impact the vote totals.

Re: Debian votes to make no statement regarding RMS readmission to the FSF board

#40

Post by remram »

Moiman wrote: post #28
kstenerud wrote: post #25

I don't get why organizations feel they need to weigh in on this so much. The FSF has a code of conduct ( https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct.en.html ), so it's pretty clear what the conditions are for removing someone. Either remove him according to the rules of the code of conduct, or leave him be. That's what COCs are for. If you're not happy with the COC, push for changes.

FSF and FSFE are different organizations.

And on this particular issue, FSFE disapproved publicly: https://fsfe.org/news/2021/news-20210324-01.en.html
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