GSIP 141

GSIP 141 - Change GSIP voting rules from majority to three positive votes

Overview

Proposed By

Ben Caradoc-Davies

Assigned to Release

This proposal affects all GeoServer Improvement Proposals.

State

• Under Discussion
• In Progress
• Completed
• Rejected
• Deferred

Motivation

As the GeoServer Project Steering Committee has grown in size, the GSIP voting rules have had an unintended consequence: a GSIP with several supporters can be defeated by the +0 votes of well-meaning PSC members expressing their lack of concern. For example, voting for "GSIP 136 - Resource Notification Dispatcher" resulted in the initial defeat of the proposal by +0 votes that diluted the required majority. This GSIP would have passed if those voting +0 had simply failed to vote.

The problem with the current GSIP voting rules is that, because every PSC member has a conditional veto (-1 vote), negative votes are never considered in the calculation of a majority, so the vote becomes a contest between supporters and those not opposed to the GSIP, which is an absurd consequence that does not seem to be understood by PSC members.

Proposal

• Change the GSIP voting rule so that a GSIP is accepted if it receives three +1 votes and no -1 votes.

• Minor language clarifications to permit +0/0/-0 votes, which all have no impact on voting, but permit PSC members to have their vote and opinion recorded and express their active status.

Discussion

• One advantage of the current rule is that the need to obtain a majority of votes is a barrier to GSIPs that do not offer significant improvements to GeoServer. This might reduce the cruft included in the project and increase focus. PSC members will need to consider whether this is an advantage or whether cruft is better managed in the community module process.

• The problem of vote dilution has arisen through the increase in PSC size and activity. The change in voting rules reduces the threshold required for a GSIP to that required for a smaller PSC. The purpose of the increase in PSC size was to increase representation and the number of workers, not to increase the work required (+1 votes) to pass a single PSC.

Voting

Project Steering Committee:

• Alessio Fabiani:
• Andrea Aime:
• Ben Caradoc-Davies:
• Christian Mueller:
• Ian Turton:
• Jody Garnett:
• Jukka Rahkonen:
• Kevin Smith:
• Simone Giannecchini:

Links

• Mailing list discussion "GSIP 136 - Resource Notification Dispatcher"