Re: Fwd: Charter for GNU Herds (draft)

[Davi Leal]

Thanks Jay!


Jay Hammond wrote:
> Two preliminary comments; the register (style of prose) in your draft
> charter fluctuates between very formal, almost legalese and more
> informal. It's hard to avoid when there are many contributors.

  We add a task to keep track of this feedback.
    [task]: http://savannah.nongnu.org/task/?8183


> There is evidence that capitalisation is inconsistent. So much so,
> that I can't easily guess when there should be capitals and when not.
> In a legal document, a word with an initial capital is expected to
> have a special meaning compared to the lower-case version.  Such
> documents often have an early clause spelling out special meanings.
> Otherwise they are introduced on first use.

* "Code of Ethics" not defined yet, and maybe will never defined but it
   is usual in charters. Maybe we should define it or remove it from
   the charter.

* Maybe we should replace:
      Free Software
  by:
      free software

* "Committee" is introduced:
    "The Committee shall consist of the following: the members..."

* "Ethics Officer" is introduced:
    "The Ethics Officer will be appointed by..."

* Maybe we should replace:
      Association
  by:
      association

* "Free Software Foundation" is IMHO a well known term though maybe
  we should introduce it or at least add a HTTP link to it?
  Same for "the GNU Project".

* Maybe we should replace:
      An _Office_ term will be 4 years.
  by:
      An _office_ term will be 4 years.

* "Special Interest Group" is introduced:
    "Groups will be formed at the discretion of..."

* "Charter" is what is being defined in the Charter. I am not sure if
  it should be replaced by "charter".


What do you think?




> The other two points are easier to fix:


>  * Committee
>      "... with an officer they may vote her or his out of office."
>
> I suggest this read:              "vote her or him out of office."

Fixed.




>  * Voting
>      "Only if the time needed to discuss it is too long should there
>       be a vote."

[a]
> Can be confusing to read (see note 1 below) I suggest minimal change:
>     "...to discuss it is too long..."
> become:
>     "... for discussion is too long..."

[b]
> You may prefer a more direct guideline instead:
>     "You may use a vote to stop technical discussion taking too long."
>
> This makes a nice bridge between the technical and non-technical
> voting advice. It seems to be an exception to 'Do not vote on
> technical subjects.' but it's really saying "vote on non-technical
> issues" (like 'we don't have time or energy to pursue this further')

I propose "technical discussions" should be considered almost never "taking 
too long".

So, to make it clear that stop a technical discussion with vote will be a very 
exceptional situation I propose apply the [a] solution instead of the [b] 
one; due to the [b] one could imply that stopping technical discussions is 
handy and accepted by members without too much trouble.


  http://gnuherds.org/charter

Let me know if I am wrong.
As usual I have not committed the change yet.