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From: Sean Busbey <busbey@cloudera.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2014 12:40:17 -0500
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Subject: Re: [VOTE] Accumulo Bylaws - Bylaw Change Changes
To: "dev@accumulo apache. org" <dev@accumulo.apache.org>, vines@apache.org
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On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 12:19 PM, John Vines <vines@apache.org> wrote:

> So, I pseudo got an explanation for the second point in the CtR discussion,
> so I'm going to withdraw that comment. However, I would still appreciate an
> explanation for initial paragraph.
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 12:32 PM, John Vines <vines@apache.org> wrote:
>
> > The majority of the reasoning I read in the bylaws thread justifying why
> > bylaw changes should be majority and not consensus seemed to spiral
> around
> > "We don't want someone to be able to torpedo the vote". Can someone who
> > held this opinion clarify why this is unacceptable for a bylaw change but
> > acceptable for adopting a new code base, a new committer, a new pmc
> member,
> > or a new pmc chair? Primarily I was looking at these compared to bylaw
> > changes when I made decided that bylaws should have the same level of
> > approval. I feel that having these items as consensus by bylaws as
> majority
> > seems inconsistent.
> >
>

N.b. I don't subscribe to the "we don't want someone to torpedo the vote"
concern. (btw I would rephrase it as "we don't want casual or obstinate
participants to deadlock the community.")

One big difference between our bylaws and e.g. new committer, new pmc
member, etc. is that after the vote passes we effectively give up control
over that decision. As mentioned during the early work on the bylaws, only
the ASF can remove people.

For comparison, if there's a problem with the bylaws we can amend them
ourselves with an additional vote.

I happen to think that Majority Approval leads to better consensus building
in well functioning communities. As Benson mentioned in his earlier email,
it's important for the majority opinion to avoid running roughshod over the
minority opinion. I think well functioning communities take this to heart
and work to moderate their positions. By comparison, the nature of vetoes
in Consensus Approval can lead people to squabbling over the legitimacy of
a particular veto on technical grounds.

At the end of the day, wether the vote is Majority or Consensus won't
matter. Either of them can be abused should a segment of the community
decide to and we'll be faced with very negative outcomes regardless. More
important, to me, is that we not get too distracted in the process of
deciding which to use.

-- 
Sean

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