General Resolution: Limiting the term of the technical committee members
- Time Line
- Summary
- Proposer
- Seconds
- Text
- Amendment Proposer A
- Amendment Seconds A
- Amendment Text A
- Quorum
- Data and Statistics
- Majority Requirement
- Outcome
Time Line
| Proposal and amendment | Monday, 1st December 2014 | |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion Period: | Monday, 1st December 2014 | |
| Voting Period: | Friday, December 19th, 00:00:00 UTC, 2014 | Thursday, January 8th, 23:59:59 UTC, 2015 |
Summary
Both proposals aim at creating a regular turn-over of Technical Committee members, by enforcing a term limit of about four years. The proposals differ in the way they react to resignations or removals of TC members for reasons other than term limit.
- 'Option 1' chooses to leave regular term limits unaffected by resignation/removals, which could result in more than 2 TC members leaving the TC during the same year, in such events.
- 'Option 2' chooses to subtract the number of resignations/removals from the required number of expiries, which could result in some TC members exceeding the term limit, in such events.
Proposer
Stefano Zacchiroli [zack@debian.org] [text of proposal] [Call for vote]
Seconds
- Jakub Wilk [jwilk@debian.org] [mail]
- Aníbal Monsalve Salazar [anibal@debian.org] [mail]
- Ricardo Mones [mones@debian.org] [mail]
- Didier 'OdyX' Raboud [odyx@debian.org] [mail]
- Cyril Brulebois [kibi@debian.org] [mail]
- Colin Tuckley [colint@debian.org] [mail]
- Sebastian Ramacher [sramacher@debian.org] [mail]
- Steve McIntyre [93sam@debian.org] [mail]
- Martin Zobel-Helas [zobel@debian.org] [mail]
- Steve Langasek [vorlon@debian.org] [mail]
- Bernd Zeimetz [bzed@debian.org] [mail]
Text
Choice 1: Option 1
The Constitution is amended as follows:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- constitution.txt.orig 2014-11-17 18:02:53.314945907 +0100
+++ constitution.2-S.txt 2014-11-21 16:56:47.328071287 +0100
@@ -299,8 +299,20 @@
Project Leader may appoint new member(s) until the number of
members reaches 6, at intervals of at least one week per
appointment.
- 5. If the Technical Committee and the Project Leader agree they may
+ 5. A Developer is not eligible to be (re)appointed to the Technical
+ Committee if they have been a member within the previous 12 months.
+ 6. If the Technical Committee and the Project Leader agree they may
remove or replace an existing member of the Technical Committee.
+ 7. Term limit:
+ 1. On January 1st of each year the term of any Committee member
+ who has served more than 42 months (3.5 years) and who is one
+ of the two most senior members is set to expire on December
+ 31st of that year.
+ 2. A member of the Technical Committee is said to be more senior
+ than another if they were appointed earlier, or were appointed
+ at the same time and have been a member of the Debian Project
+ longer. In the event that a member has been appointed more
+ than once, only the most recent appointment is relevant.
6.3. Procedure
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
As a transitional measure, if this GR is passed after January 1st, 2015,
then the provision of section §6.2.7.1 is taken to have occurred on January
1st, 2015.
Amendment Proposer A
Lucas Nussbaum [lucas@debian.org] [text of amendement]
Amendment Seconds A
- Note: This amendment has been submitted by the current Project Leader, and thus does not require seconding
- Sam Hartman [hartmans@debian.org] [mail]
- Didier 'OdyX' Raboud [odyx@debian.org] [mail]
- Bernd Zeimetz [bzed@debian.org] [mail]
- Colin Tuckley [colint@debian.org] [mail]
- Matthew Vernon [matthew@debian.org] [mail]
Amendment Text A
Choice 2: Option 2
The Constitution is amended as follows:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
--- constitution.txt.orig 2014-11-17 18:02:53.314945907 +0100
+++ constitution.2-R.txt 2014-11-24 10:24:42.109426386 +0100
@@ -299,8 +299,22 @@
Project Leader may appoint new member(s) until the number of
members reaches 6, at intervals of at least one week per
appointment.
- 5. If the Technical Committee and the Project Leader agree they may
+ 5. A Developer is not eligible to be (re)appointed to the Technical
+ Committee if they have been a member within the previous 12 months.
+ 6. If the Technical Committee and the Project Leader agree they may
remove or replace an existing member of the Technical Committee.
+ 7. Term limit:
+ 1. On January 1st of each year the term of any Committee member
+ who has served more than 54 months (4.5 years) and who is one
+ of the N most senior members automatically expires. N is
+ defined as 2-R (if R < 2) or 0 (if R>= 2). R is the number of
+ former members of the Technical Committee who have resigned,
+ or been removed or replaced within the previous 12 months.
+ 2. A member of the Technical Committee is said to be more senior
+ than another if they were appointed earlier, or were appointed
+ at the same time and have been a member of the Debian Project
+ longer. In the event that a member has been appointed more
+ than once, only the most recent appointment is relevant.
6.3. Procedure
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quorum
With the current list of voting developers, we have:
Current Developer Count = 1026
Q ( sqrt(#devel) / 2 ) = 16.0156173780470
K min(5, Q ) = 5
Quorum (3 x Q ) = 48.0468521341409
Quorum
- Option1 Reached quorum: 208 > 48.0468521341409
- Option2 Reached quorum: 196 > 48.0468521341409
Data and Statistics
For this GR, like always, statistics will be gathered about ballots received and acknowledgements sent periodically during the voting period. Additionally, the list of voters will be recorded. Also, the tally sheet will also be made available to be viewed.
Majority Requirement
The proposals need a 3:1 majority
Majority
- Option1 passes Majority. 8.320 (208/25) >= 3
- Option2 passes Majority. 5.444 (196/36) >= 3
Outcome
In the graph above, any pink colored nodes imply that the option did not pass majority, the Blue is the winner. The Octagon is used for the options that did not beat the default.
- Option 1 "Option 1"
- Option 2 "Option 2"
- Option 3 "Further Discussion"
In the following table, tally[row x][col y] represents the votes that option x received over option y. A more detailed explanation of the beat matrix may help in understanding the table. For understanding the Condorcet method, the Wikipedia entry is fairly informative.
| Option | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | |
| Option 1 | 133 | 208 | |
| Option 2 | 75 | 196 | |
| Option 3 | 25 | 36 | |
Looking at row 2, column 1, Option 2
received 75 votes over Option 1
Looking at row 1, column 2, Option 1
received 133 votes over Option 2.
Pair-wise defeats
- Option 1 defeats Option 2 by ( 133 - 75) = 58 votes.
- Option 1 defeats Option 3 by ( 208 - 25) = 183 votes.
- Option 2 defeats Option 3 by ( 196 - 36) = 160 votes.
The Schwartz Set contains
- Option 1 "Option 1"
The winners
- Option 1 "Option 1"
Debian uses the Condorcet method for voting.
Simplistically, plain Condorcets method
can be stated like so :
Consider all possible two-way races between candidates.
The Condorcet winner, if there is one, is the one
candidate who can beat each other candidate in a two-way
race with that candidate.
The problem is that in complex elections, there may well
be a circular relationship in which A beats B, B beats C,
and C beats A. Most of the variations on Condorcet use
various means of resolving the tie. See
Cloneproof Schwartz Sequential Dropping
for details. Debian's variation is spelled out in the
constitution,
specifically, A.6.
Debian Project Secretary