[Koha] Koha license upgrade voting method

[Thomas Dukleth]

Reply inline:


On Mon, January 10, 2011 01:15, Reed Wade wrote:

[...]

> And we could even set the bar pretty high for acceptance (? 80% approval).

I would like to think that we might obtain more than 90% approval for a
particular option with some procedure for voting to consensus.  However, I
worry that even 80% could be too high to be an appropriate measure of
consensus in a diverse electorate.

Our experience with community wide ballots is very small and we should be
very hopeful that the experience will improve over time as long as we do
not set ourselves up for disappointment with expectations uninformed by
sufficient experience.

An especially high degree of favour for any particular option may be
unlikely in such a diverse electorate as the Koha community at large.  The
issue of copyright license upgrade is to be put to the Koha community at
large directly.  Free software and the copyright licenses which support it
are for software user freedom.

Programmers tend to have some familiarity with the copyright licenses
under which they contribute code or under which they would like to
contribute code.  Programmers working on the same project may be liable to
share some common ideas about the choice of copyright license.

Most of the Koha community at large consists of non-programmers with more
diverse backgrounds.  Many librarians are involved with copyright in a
very different manner to the authorship contribution of programmers.  Many
librarians whom I have met are afraid of copyright while I have met few
programmers afraid of copyright.  Discussion and summaries of options need
to help better inform everyone.

The possibility of a division of the electorate in the wide Koha community
is one reason why voting to consensus is a good idea.

Having some minimum number of votes for the election result to be
meaningful seems reasonable.  We need merely be careful to not
overestimate the number of people willing to participate in a ballot.

Remember that the upgrade option has two possibilities allowing upgrade in
general to have a strong consensus while there may be more division on the
two upgrade possibilities.

Making a special effort to discover whether some people may have an
especially strong objection to a particular option is important for having
a full discussion to obtain a better consensus.

>
> This assumes my 'From what I can tells' are correct.
>
> The proportional voting schemes seem to make more sense if we're
> looking for more than one outcome--which we aren't. -- unless we want
> to have a certain percentage of the code under one license or the
> another, that would be kind of cool (no, I'm joking here, don't do
> that).

Voting methods under discussion intended to maximise voter preferences
especially when the electorate has to collectively adopt only one of a few
possible options.

Proportional representation in electoral systems is a different issue.

[...]


Thomas Dukleth
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