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To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
cc: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Commerical applications (was: Development and validation 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 21 Jan 1997 14:15:55 MST."
             <199701212115.OAA20003@phaeton.artisoft.com> 
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 15:07:05 -0800
Message-ID: <19473.853888025@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
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> A weighted democracy would be one open-ended growth soloution, as
> long as parametric changes could be made within the system.  I have
> suggested this before.  A trivial napkin drawing version:

The complexity of this scheme mitigates heavily against its long-term
success, as you might phrase it, and there are so many holes in the
concept that I can hardly even begin to cite them.  First off it's
complex, so someone (you?) would have to write a FAQ and explain this
byzantine process to each and every newcomer.  There is also no clear
picture of how these "tokens" accumulate.  Over time?  With commits?
Because someone likes you?  Who runs the votes and decides which
matters are voted on?  Voters also don't write bills, they just vote
on existing ones - who writes the bills and takes care of introducing
them?  What if no "bills" are generated - does the project just idle
along or are people allowed to still make changes?  What sorts of
changes?  When is a change considered a "bug fix" and when is it
considered something worthy of voting on?  Who decides this in cases
where there is dissent about the vote-worthiness of an issue (since
there would be some overhead in writing and presenting the bill), do
you have a vote on a vote? :-)

Lastly, who do we get to work on the project when all the existing
members quit in disgust over all this goddamn make-work which has
suddenly entered their lives.

Like most political systems weighted heavily towards bureaucracy, this
looks almost plausible on paper but is virtually guaranteed to be an
unmitigated disaster when put into practice.

Try again, and this time with a grounding strap firmly attached
please.

					Jordan