Subject: About consensus (was Re: [bug#76407] [GCD] Rename the default branch)

From: Simon Tournier <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2025 19:25:36 +0100

Hi Leo,

On Mon, 24 Mar 2025 at 17:56, Leo Famulari <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Now we get into semantics, but I disagree that "consent means accepting
> another angle than our own".

The other part “one angle that I do not fully share but I can live with”
of the quote matters, IMHO. :-)

Anyway.

If my wording was poor or misleading, sorry, so let point to the
dictionary: If you give your consent to something, you give someone
permission to do it.  If you consent to something, you agree to do it or
to allow it to be done.

Yes, I agree that Making Decision based on consensus is a challenging
bet at the scale of Guix.  The most difficult part, IMHO, is to keep
some conditions [1] under the constraints asynchronous and full remote.
I’m still confident. :-) We will see…
    
In the all cases – whatever any other final decision making system as
voting we would pick–, the practice of trying to reach a consensus
appears to me sane and healthy because it pushes all the participants to
be active in finding solutions.  Yeah some subjects – choosing between
the color yellow or orange for stuff – seem inadequate, but consensus is
still worth to try, IMHO. :-)

As said elsewhere, I’ve a rough draft of a GCD for amending GCDs.  Then,
it would allow to amend GCD 001 and improve the process itself; for
instance, we could imagine a mechanism that triggers some last resort
option falling back to some voting method – well it raises many details
that need to be discussed in some dedicated thread. ;-)

For now with the GCD at hand, I think we all need to work on the
objections specific to the document.  Because, re-reading all the
thread, what I observe is some general arguments not focused on the
document itself.

Somehow, in all this thread, after re-reading it, I’m still missing the
“active” part from: « these concerns are actively resolved through
counter proposals.  A deliberating member disapproving a proposal bears
a responsibility for finding alternatives, proposing ideas or code, or
explaining the rationale for the status quo. »

Well, I am going to do my homework… :-)

Cheers,
simon

1: https://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/consensus#conditions