Subject: About GCD process, consensus and derailment (was Re: Deliberation period for GCD 003 "Rename the default branch" has technically started)

From: Simon Tournier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2025 17:44:39 +0200

Hi Vagrant, all,

On Mon, 21 Apr 2025 at 11:58, Vagrant Cascadian <[email-masked]> wrote:

> The nature of (at least some of) those responses were largely a negation
> that left little room to discuss how to move forward, which left me at
> an impass as to how to even continue the discussion.
>
> Only in retrospect of having encountered this situation did I realize
> there is a fundamental flaw in the GCD process (at least in my
> opinion)...

I think the fundamental flaw comes from the lack of self-discipline.

Somehow, I’ve seen too: « a negation that left little room to discuss
how to move forward ».  Building consensus requires a friendly mindset
of the participants.  Did we read that?

>             in that there is a presumption of moving forward and
> accepting the proposed changes (in some capacity), rather than
> maintaining the status quo. E.g. a person has to propose improvements in
> order to reject the proposal, but there is nowhere in the process that
> handles a fundamental disagreement about the proposal in any form. This
> is contrary to any other genuine consensus process I have worked with.

As I wrote in [1]:

        Why do people need to drag in the discussion – in no specific order–:
        Black friends, personal history with slavery or dictatorship, opinions
        on US imperialism, Gaza massacre, English language, Ukrainian war, a
        quote of Frantz Fanon, etc.

Well, from my point of view, the flaw isn’t about “proposing
improvements in order to reject the proposal”, the flaw comes from the
inadequate mindset when approaching the proposal.  For instance, one
might disagree with the motivations section and instead of locking the
discussion in some confrontational opinions, instead one might frame:

        + Can we rewrite the Motivation section?  Because people have Master
          degree and the diploma’s not yet renamed, to my knowledge.  Is the
          words master really harmful, racist or sexist?

        + About the Motivation, why not narrow the scope and focus on some
          aspects: quoting [-] « a) most users leave unchanged the Git default
          "main", therefore "master" will become increasingly uncommon and
          unexpected, b) the choice of "main" is masterfully similar when
          tab-completing or looking through a sorted list of refs, and c) the
          move to Codeberg presents a hopefully rare opportunity combine
          disruptive changes »

        + The Motivation appears to me poorly written because I’ve never heard
          that the term master would be harmful or racist or sexist.  Do we have
          references for backing this claim?

        Etc.

Maybe I’m missing something but, IMHO, building consensus requires to be
very specific on the document itself.  Similarly as we do about patches
– we do not discuss in the vacuum of the abstract but based on concrete
code; I do not see why it would be fully different for the GCDs.

> Which... is certainly out of scope for GCD 003 "Rename the default
> branch", but because it is a clear example of a flaw of this GCD
> process, figured it was worth noting.

All that said, I agree that the GCD process needs refinements!  Well, we
could name these refinements some “flaws”. :-)  IMHO, we need to bound
the scope “how to build consensus” and we need to reinforce the
positions of « Sponsor » who are the guards against the derailment.

WDYT?  Although we should discuss that elsewhere. :-)

Cheers,
simon

1: [bug#76407] About consensus, again (was Re: [bug#76407] [GCD] Rename the default branch)
Simon Tournier <[email-masked]>
Wed, 26 Mar 2025 21:20:36 +0100
id:[email-masked]
https://issues.guix.gnu.org/76407
https://issues.guix.gnu.org/msgid/[email-masked]
https://yhetil.org/guix/[email-masked]