Lars Wirzenius | 21 Jul 2006 08:39
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Re: Constitutional Amendment GR: Handling assets for the project

to, 2006-07-20 kello 20:12 -0500, Manoj Srivastava kirjoitti:
> +   9.2. Authority
> 
> +    1. An organization holding assets for Debian has no authority
> +       regarding Debian's technical or nontechnical decisions, except
> +       that no decision by Debian with respect to any property held
> +       by the organization shall require it to act outside its legal
> +       authority. An exception is that Debian's constitution may
> +       occasionally use SPI as a decision body of last resort.

I'm generally in favor of this amendment, but I think this paragraph may
require clarification. In a quick reading it was unclear to me that the
"it" in "require it to act" refers to the organization holding assets
for Debian. Maybe substitute "the organization" for "it", even if it a
bit longer. 

More importantly, the last sentence makes it sound that the Debian
constitution requires the SPI to act illegally, whereas the exception
really is to the fact that Debian doesn't have authority. I'm not sure
how this is best fixed.

(It's pretty clear what the text means. I'm trying to forestall future
bad re-interpretations to make it mean something else, like the attempt
to make only the SPI be able to hold assets for Debian that we've seen
in recent times, which makes use of an ambiguity in the wording of the
constitution.)

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MJ Ray | 21 Jul 2006 11:51
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Re: Constitutional Amendment GR: Handling assets for the project

Lars Wirzenius <liw <at> liw.iki.fi>
> bad re-interpretations to make it mean something else, like the attempt
> to make only the SPI be able to hold assets for Debian that we've seen
> in recent times, which makes use of an ambiguity in the wording of the
> constitution.)

I agree that the constitution has ambiguities, but can you point to an
older interpretation of the constitution that directs donations to other
organisations?

Thanks,
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Frank Küster | 21 Jul 2006 09:52
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Re: Constitutional Amendment GR: Handling assets for the project

Lars Wirzenius <liw <at> liw.iki.fi> wrote:

> to, 2006-07-20 kello 20:12 -0500, Manoj Srivastava kirjoitti:
>> +   9.2. Authority
>> 
>> +    1. An organization holding assets for Debian has no authority
>> +       regarding Debian's technical or nontechnical decisions, except
>> +       that no decision by Debian with respect to any property held
>> +       by the organization shall require it to act outside its legal
>> +       authority. An exception is that Debian's constitution may
>> +       occasionally use SPI as a decision body of last resort.
>
> More importantly, the last sentence makes it sound that the Debian
> constitution requires the SPI to act illegally, whereas the exception
> really is to the fact that Debian doesn't have authority. I'm not sure
> how this is best fixed.

I've got one other remark about this:  This text is part of the
constitution proper.  Then why stay vague and write "occasionally",
instead of referring to the particular place where SPI is the last
resort for decisions?

Regards, Frank
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Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding  <at>  Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)


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