c.u.wizards vs. c.u.internals

[Barry Shein]

From: jfh at rpp386.cactus.org (John F. Haugh II)
>Well, I'm tending to agree with Doug Gwyn.  Doug's statement was
>that he wouldn't be able to discuss UNIX internals because his
>license prohibited him from doing so.  Since I don't have a copy
>of the non-disclosure agreements I signed with AT&T and IBM, I
>think I too will have to bow out.
>
>This voting business is really beginning to look pretty silly.
>What we really need is a good backbone cabal.



I tend to agree also.

What we need is something akin to a *constitution*, some set of basic
rules/rights which no vote can violate (except a vote to change the
constitution, which should be made difficult tho not impossible.)

There also might be room for "special interest" votes, where the
groups in question are recognized as being special interest enough
that somehow the voting should be limited to interested parties (think
of it like the difference between "state's rights" and "federal
rights", the inherent problem of California being allowed to vote on
how Wyoming spends their internal revenues, eg., I know, it happens,
again, just an analogy.)

One might, in this example, have compiled a list of contributors to
c.u.w (perhaps some other groups, c.u.q) and restricted the vote to
them.

The fear being, members of another special interest "stuffing the
ballot boxes" in a destructive way, perhaps not even totally
maliciously, just misguided. Or even maliciously, or so
self-interested as to make a mockery of the process (some large
company voting against the creation of a group for a small competitor,
e.g.)

I think we are quite vulnerable to all these problems.

I'd sum up at least some of these particular voting results to
be:

	A group which was created to allow experts to chit-chat
	amongst themselves has now been re-structured with the
	hidden agenda to try to turn them into free consultants.

One should be able to see the conflict of interest here, the vast
majority would of course vote to "enslave" (again, I exaggerate) the
relatively few experts. Why not?

Why was it important at all to remove c.u.w? Why not just create some
magnet groups so wizards can have some peace to speak about relatively
wizardly matters? Was it to make sure that wizards had nowhere else to
go???
-- 
        -Barry Shein

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