Superseded: Constitutional amendment: alternate disambiguation of 4.1.5

Proposal-0010: Superseded by a GR in 2003

Date

October 10, 2000

Proposer

Manoj Srivastava [srivasta@debian.org]

Seconds

Text

 4. The Developers by way of General Resolution or election

   4.1. Powers

    Together, the Developers may:
     1. Appoint or recall the Project Leader.
     2. Amend this constitution, provided they agree with a 3:1 majority.
     3. Override any decision by the Project Leader or a Delegate.
     4. Override any decision by the Technical Committee, provided they
        agree with a 2:1 majority.
-    5. Issue nontechnical policy documents and statements.
-       These include documents describing the goals of the project, its
-       relationship with other free software entities, and nontechnical
-       policies such as the free software licence terms that Debian
-       software must meet.
-       They may also include position statements about issues of the day.
+    5. Issue, modify and withdraw nontechnical policy documents and statements.
+       These include documents describing the goals of the project, its
+       relationship with other free software entities, and nontechnical
+       policies such as the free software licence terms that Debian
+       software must meet.
+       They may also include position statements about issues of the day.
+   5.1 A special clause applies to the documents labelled as
+       "Foundation Documents". These documents are those
+       that are deemed to be critical to the core of the project,
+       they tend to define what the project is, and lay the
+       foundations of its structure. The developers may
+       modify a foundation document provided they agree with a 3:1
+       majority.

+   5.2 Initially, the list of foundation Documents consists
+       of this document, The Debian Constitution, as well as the
+       documents known as the Debian GNU/Linux Social Contract and the
+       Debian Free Software Guidelines. The list of the documents
+       that are deemed to be "Foundation Documents" may be changed
+       by the developers provided they agree with a 3:1 majority.
     6. Together with the Project Leader and SPI, make decisions about
        property held in trust for purposes related to Debian. (See
        s.9.1.)

Rationale: The clause being modified has been seen recently to be quite ambiguous. Since the original wording appeared to be amenable to two wildly different interpretations, this change adds clarifying language to the constitution about _changing_ or withdrawing nontechnical documents. Additionally, this also provides for the core, or Foundation, documents of the project the same protection against hasty changes that the constitution itself enjoys.

Opposition

None Recorded

Amendments

None Recorded

Quorum

(yet to be determined)

Outcome