Constitutional Amendment General Resolution: Handling assets for the project

Time Line
Proposer
Seconds
Text
Quorum
Data and Statistics
Majority Requirement
Outcome

Time Line

Proposal and amendment	Monday, 12^th June, 2006	Friday, 21^st July, 2006
Discussion Period:	Friday, 21^st July, 2006	Saturday, 9^th September, 2006
Voting Period	Sunday, 10^th September, 00:00:00 UTC, 2006	Sunday, 24^th September, 00:00:00 UTC, 2006

Seconds

Don Armstrong [[email protected]]
Martin F. Krafft [[email protected]]
Aníbal Monsalve Salazar [[email protected]]
Anthony Towns [[email protected]]
Kalle Kivimaa [[email protected]]
Adrian von Bidder [[email protected]]

Constitutional Amendment GR: Handling assets for the project

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 4. The Developers by way of General Resolution or election
   4.1. Powers
    Together, the Developers may:

-   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.

-    6. Together with the Project Leader and SPI, make decisions about
-       property held in trust for purposes related to Debian. (See §9.1.)

========================================================================
 4. The Developers by way of General Resolution or election
   4.1. Powers
    Together, the Developers may:
+   3. Make or override any decision authorised by the powers of the Project
+      Leader or a Delegate.
+   4. Make or override any decision authorised by the powers of the Technical
+      Committee, provided they agree with a 2:1 majority.

+    6. Make decisions about property held in trust for purposes
+       related to Debian. (See §9.).
+    7. In case of a disagreement between the project leader and
+       the incumbent secretary, appoint a new secretary.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 5. Project Leader
   5.1. Powers
    The Project Leader may:
-   10. Together with SPI, make decisions affecting property held in trust
-       for purposes related to Debian. (See §9.)

===========================================================================
 5. Project Leader
   5.1. Powers
    The Project Leader may:
+   10. In consultation with the developers, make decisions affecting
+       property held in trust  for purposes related to Debian. (See
+       §9.). Such decisions are communicated to the members by the
+       Project Leader or their Delegate(s).  Major expenditures
+       should be proposed and debated on the mailing list before
+       funds are disbursed.
+   11. Add or remove organizations from the list of trusted
+       organizations (see §9.3) that are authorized to accept and
+       hold assets for Debian. The evaluation and discussion leading
+       up to such a decision occurs on an electronic mailing list
+       designated by the Project Leader or their Delegate(s), on
+       which any developer may post. There is a minimum discussion
+       period of two weeks before an organization may be added to
+       the list of trusted organizations.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. The Project Secretary
  7.2. Appointment
   If the Project Leader and the current Project Secretary cannot agree
-  on a new appointment they must ask the board of SPI (see §9.1.) to
-  appoint a Secretary.
===========================================================================
7. The Project Secretary
  7.2. Appointment
   If the Project Leader and the current Project Secretary cannot agree
+  on a new appointment, they must ask the Developers by way of
+  General Resolution to appoint a Secretary.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------
-9. Software in the Public Interest

    SPI and Debian are separate organisations who share some goals. Debian
-    is grateful for the legal support framework offered by SPI. Debian's
-   Developers are currently members of SPI by virtue of their status as
-   Developers.

-  9.1. Authority
-
-    1. SPI has no authority regarding Debian's technical or nontechnical
-       decisions, except that no decision by Debian with respect to any
-       property held by SPI shall require SPI to act outside its legal
-       authority, and that Debian's constitution may occasionally use SPI
-       as a decision body of last resort.
-    2. Debian claims no authority over SPI other than that over the use
-       of certain of SPI's property, as described below, though Debian
-       Developers may be granted authority within SPI by SPI's rules.
-    3. Debian Developers are not agents or employees of SPI, or of each
-       other or of persons in authority in the Debian Project. A person
-       acting as a Developer does so as an individual, on their own
-       behalf.

-  9.2. Management of property for purposes related to Debian

-   Since Debian has no authority to hold money or property, any donations
-   for the Debian Project must be made to SPI, which manages such
-   affairs.

-   SPI have made the following undertakings:
-    1. SPI will hold money, trademarks and other tangible and intangible
-       property and manage other affairs for purposes related to Debian.
-    2. Such property will be accounted for separately and held in trust
-       for those purposes, decided on by Debian and SPI according to this
-       section.
-    3. SPI will not dispose of or use property held in trust for Debian
-       without approval from Debian, which may be granted by the Project
-       Leader or by General Resolution of the Developers.
-    4. SPI will consider using or disposing of property held in trust for
-       Debian when asked to do so by the Project Leader.
-    5. SPI will use or dispose of property held in trust for Debian when
-       asked to do so by a General Resolution of the Developers, provided
-       that this is compatible with SPI's legal authority.
-    6. SPI will notify the Developers by electronic mail to a Debian
-       Project mailing list when it uses or disposes of property held in
-       trust for Debian.

========================================================================
+9. Assets held in trust for Debian

+  In most jurisdictions around the world, the Debian project is not
+  in a position to directly hold funds or other property. Therefore,
+  property has to be owned by any of a number of organisations as
+  detailed in §9.2
+
+   Traditionally, SPI was the sole organisation authorized to hold
+   property and monies for the Debian Project.  SPI was created in
+   the U.S. to hold money in trust there.
+
    SPI and Debian are separate organisations who share some
    goals. Debian is grateful for the legal support framework offered
+   by SPI.

+   9.1 Relationship with Associated Organizations
+
+     1. Debian Developers do not become agents or employees of
+        organisations holding assets in trust for Debian, or of
+        each other, or of persons in authority in the Debian Project,
+        solely by the virtue of being Debian Developers. A person
+        acting as a Developer  does so as an individual, on their own
+        behalf. Such organisations may, of their own accord,
+        establish relationships with individuals who are also Debian
+        developers.

+   9.2. Authority

+    1. An organisation 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 organisation shall require it to act outside its legal
+       authority.
+    2. Debian claims no authority over an organisation that holds
+       assets for Debian other than that over the use of property
+       held in trust for Debian.

+   9.3. Trusted organisations

+   Any donations for the Debian Project must be made to any one of a
+   set of organisations designated by the Project leader (or a
+   delegate) to be authorized to handle assets to be used for the
+   Debian Project.
+
+   Organisations holding assets in trust for Debian should
+   undertake reasonable obligations for the handling of such
+   assets.
+
+   Debian maintains a public List of Trusted Organisations that
+   accept donations and hold assets in trust for Debian
+   (including both tangible property and intellectual property)
+   that includes the commitments those organisations have made as
+   to how those assets will be handled.


------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quorum

With 1000 developers, we have:

 Current Developer Count = 1000
 Q ( sqrt(#devel) / 2 ) = 15.8113883008419
 K min(5, Q )           = 5
 Quorum  (3 x Q )       = 47.4341649025257

Quorum

Option1 Reached quorum: 242 > 47.4341649025257

For this GR, as always statistics shall be gathered about ballots received and acknowledgements sent periodically during the voting period. Additionally, the list of voters would be made publicly available. Also, the tally sheet may also be viewed after to voting is done (Note that while the vote is in progress it is a dummy tally sheet).

Majority Requirement

Since general resolution would require modification of a foundation document, namely, the constitution, it requires a 3:1 majority to pass.

Majority

Option1 passes Majority. 10.522 (242/23) > 3

Outcome

The outcome

The winner

Option 1 Amend the constitution [needs 3:1]

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 Amend the constitution [needs 3:1]
Option 2 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.

**The Beat Matrix**
	Option
	1	2
Option 1		242
Option 2	23

Looking at row 2, column 1, Further Discussion
received 23 votes over Amend the constitution [needs 3:1]

Looking at row 1, column 2, Amend the constitution [needs 3:1]
received 242 votes over Further Discussion.

Pair-wise defeats

Option 1 defeats Option 2 by ( 242 - 23) = 219 votes.

The Schwartz Set contains

Option 1 Amend the constitution [needs 3:1]

Debian uses the Condorcet methoda 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.

Manoj Srivastava