[Osmf-talk] Results of OSMF Member Vote

Lars Francke lars.francke at gmail.com
Sun Dec 27 17:37:22 UTC 2009


On Sun, Dec 27, 2009 at 17:35, Matthias Urlichs <matthias at urlichs.de> wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-12-27 at 03:27 +0100, Lars Francke wrote:
>> This is neither criticism nor should it be seen as an expression of my
>> opinion: I _believe_ that
>
> Umm, IMHO those two sentences are incompatible. Either you believe
> something, or you don't.

I believe what I wrote is true, that doesn't mean I'm expressing my
opinion for one side or the other.

My personal feeling is that should there be a genuinely ambivalent
vote, then the board should consider intervening and seek a consensus
for how to proceed.

>> … that those who are in favor of the license change
>> were more likely to vote as a non-vote can be more easily seen as a
>> rejection of the process.
>
> Why do you think so?

Well this is now a rather moot point as the vote does not require an
absolute majority but a simple one. I assumed (thus my question) that
such a change would require an absolute majority and if that were the
case a non vote would have the same effect as a negative vote.

> IMHO the reverse, i.e. people who want the change to continue are much
> less motivated to vote than those who oppose it, is much more likely.

Why do you think so?

> Silence doesn't mean either consent or opposition (at least in a free
> society). It simply means "I don't know" (for whatever reason), "I don't
> care", or perhaps "I don't care enough to bother, so I let the people
> who actually do care decide the result".

Unfortunately we cannot know why people didn't vote. That's why I used
"believe", it is only my personal theory/believe. But silence may have
meaning/effect depending on the voting system used and that isn't
necessarily dependent on the type of society.

> I reject any other implication of these numbers.

Umm...okay. I didn't want to implicate anything by those numbers. In
hindsight I should have just posted the numbers without additional
commentary.
But the percentage numbers I posted are correct regardless of my or
your or mine believes. I tried to formulate the points as carefully as
possible to avoid just this discussion. I calculated those numbers and
I just assumed that I wouldn't be the only one interested in it. It is
just one more addition to the tables that Matt provided and up to the
individual to interpret these numbers.

I'm really not interested to drag this out any further. If you feel
the need to discuss this more feel free to contact me via private mail
so we can do it in German and perhaps avoid a bit of the possible
ambiguity that is introduced by having to translate to English.

Lars




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