[vote] Update OpenWrt rules

[David Woodhouse]

On Tue, 2025-10-28 at 11:15 +0100, Zoltan HERPAI wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Thu, 23 Oct 2025, Hauke Mehrtens wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I propose to replace the current OpenWrt rules to the below
> > version.
> > This is an official vote. The vote should conclude on 27th November
> > 2025.
> > 
> > These are the old rules: https://openwrt.org/rules
> > 
> > This vote follows the old rules. It needs a two third approval rate
> > among all 
> > OpenWrt project members to get accepted.
> > 
> > 
> > Voting page: https://openwrt.org/voting/2025-10-23-rule-update
> [...]
> > _**Voting**_
> > 
> > * All active members have the right to vote and are encouraged
> >  to liberally exercise this voting right in order to
> >  maintain a broad consensus on project matters.
> > * To propose changes to project matters or the overall development
> >  direction, a formal proposal must be sent to the openwrt-adm
> > mailing
> >  list.
> >  The proposal must clearly describe the suggested changes
> >  and include a specific deadline for when the voting period will
> > end.
> >  A simple approval is required.
> > * All active members who participate in the new vote or voted in
> > the
> >  past 6 months before the new vote was started are considered
> > active
> >  voters.
> >  If less than 3 votes occurred in the past 6 months the last 3
> > votes
> >  are considered to determine the active voters.
> > * For a simple approval, the proposal must achieve a two-thirds
> > majority
> >  among the active members who participate in the vote.
> >  Additionally, it must receive approval from at least 50% of the
> > active
> >  voters, regardless of whether they participated in the vote.
> > * For a change to these rules, a 75% majority among the active
> > members
> >  who participate in the vote must approve,
> >  as well as 50% approval from the active voters.
> > * Neutral votes are considered half-approvals.
> > * Any votes and decisions will be made public on the project
> > website.
> > 
> > _**Infrastructure**_
> > 
> > * Project infrastructure should be outsourced to FOSS community
> > operated
> >  services whenever possible in order to allow members
> >  to focus on actual development efforts.
> > * Any infrastructure that is operated by the project
> >  itself shall be administered by at least three different people
> >  to reduce the likelihood of the project getting locked out
> >  due to administrators being unreachable.
> > * Responsible administrators for the various services shall be
> >  documented publicly.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> No. Can't see why abstaining should count as half-approval, this is a
> flawed idea, being close to the lines of gerrymandering.

It doesn't. Where did you get that idea?

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".

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.

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.

> I also don't agree on outsourcing our infrastructure - keeping it in-house 
> requires resources indeed, which we scarcely have. However, in case of 
> services going down or being shut down, keeping them in-house saves us 
> from being locked out from the very services we have or need without our 
> control ("when will XYZ service be back?"), whatever trusted the 
> outsourced service providers might be.

I think our experience has been that with services being maintained by
individual members, that tends to give a single point of failure which
community resources wouldn't have. But that's not a hard and fast
constitutional rule being proposed anyway; only a preference. We can
still make decisions on a case-by-case basis and not be bound be it.

> 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.

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?
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