[vote] Update OpenWrt rules

[Hauke Mehrtens]

Hi Imre,

Why did you not bring up these concerns in the previous discussions we 
had about these topics in the last 6 months? Mid of September I also 
wrote a mail to all OpenWrt commits directly asking them to read the 
current proposal of the rule change and raise any concerns. I haven't 
seen any comment from you in this hole process before the actual vote 
started.

The last mail from you, I can find on the mailing list, before this 
vote, was about the vote to rename the master branch to main in February 
2023, more than 2 years ago. The last commit where you are author or 
committer in the main repository is from March 2018.

On 10/28/25 13:07, Imre Kaloz wrote:
> On Tue, 2025-10-28 at 11:45 +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
>> If you don't have a strong opinion about a motion, there are two things
>> you can do:
>>
>>   1. Just don't vote at all.
>>   2. Explicitly cast a 'neutral vote' to say "I've seen this, and I
>>      don't mind either way".
> 
> So let's say we only vote for a few months about giving commit access to
> people who you don't support yet you are not against them getting access
> your two options are:
> 
> 1. "Just don't vote at all", and you are now inactive - congratulations!

This is wrong, you are not inactive when you do not vote, these are two 
different categorizes. When you did not vote in the last 6 months and 3 
votes you do not count to the quorum of the next vote automatically. You 
can still take part in the next vote and with your participation you 
will also be automatically be part of the quorum of the current vote you 
just participated in.

When you are in the inactive status you can just send a mail that you 
are now an active member again and automatically have all rights of 
active members and can also participate in the current running vote if 
there is any.

> 2. Explicitly cast your neutral vote and make it a half-approval.
> 
>> If people don't vote at all, that's when we have concerns about
>> gerrymandering, and votes being pushed through without sufficient
>> consensus. That's precisely *why* we have a requirement for quorum.
> 
> No, gerrymandering is about making sure that the voting ratios favor
> the outcome you want.
> 

In general I agree with David on this topic also in the following mails 
and can not add much to the discussion.

>> That's what the second option is for, to allow someone to explicitly
>> say that they *were* present and paying attention for the purposes of
>> quorum, but that they just didn't have a strong opinion about the
>> actual question.
> 
> The new proposal is taking away that option. What it achieves is basically
> whenever you don't fully support the vote, you should always go against
> it, even if it causes tension and drama in the community.
> 
> <snip>
> 
>>>> Also, while highlighting the importance of a vote is appreciated, stating
>>>> that "if you want further changes to this topic, please approve the vote
>>>> about this very topic" also sounds flawed to me - sorry Rich.
> 
>> Seems eminently sensible to me. We need to go and dig up dormant
>> contributors one last time (probably by direct email instead of the
>> openwrt-adm list which they're filing into a folder and ignoring), and
>> persuade them to vote. Otherwise the project is mired in bureaucracy
>> and can't ever make any decisions anyway. We can fine-tune the details
>> afterwards once we can be more agile.
> 
> Before the project rejoin happened, the agreement was that we will define
> the new rules together. After that, LEDE was busy adding as many voters
> as possible before the merge, keeping the agreement intact yet invalidating
> the faith it has been agreed on. I hope you don't think it's a coincidence
> that about 80% of the original developers are gone. Given most of those
> never have been added as voters, it seems that strategy is now biting back.

Where do I found your proposal for changes to the rules after the merge 
between LEDE and OpenWrt? If there is anything, why was it not brought 
up to a vote? All OpenWrt committers have the same rights.
>> The only reason to *object* to that is if you think it's some kind of
>> bait-and-switch and would allow the rules to be subsequently changed to
>> be completely different instead of just 'fine-tuning'. But you're not
>> even objecting to the substance of the "we need better management of
>> quorum requirements" anyway, are you?
> 
> If there is no bait-and-switch, just drop the one-of-a-kind-miracle-solution
> of counting neutrals as half-approvals, as I have a hard time finding any
> other project doing it.

Hauke