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If you look at the results they link, the picture becomes clearer. They proposed 8 options. 2 directly called for resignations at FSF, 2 directly supported RMS

If you look at the results they link, the picture becomes clearer. They proposed 8 options. 2 directly called for resignations at FSF, 2 directly supported RMS, one said to stop working with FSF, one said to call for governance improvements at FSF, one was no comment, and one was discuss further. The two options in support of RMS were not majority held opinions, and were held by ~1/6-1/3 of voters. No comment beat "call for the removal of RMS" by only 8 votes. For me, the takeaway here is that while Debian will issue no comment, 2/3+ of voters in Debian supported calling for RMSs removal. It's clear which way the tide is moving, even if Debian says nothing. Source data: https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/results.txt https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/results.txt Edit: My 2/3+ estimate is a napkin math overestimate, and the number is probably closer to the 50-60% other comments have suggested below.

CameronNemo 6y ago
> 2/3+ of voters in Debian supported calling for RMSs removal How did you come to that number?
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Look at the row for option 2 in the data table, it will show you how many people preferred that option over other options. Roughly two thirds preferred removing RMS over "we should talk about this further", for example.
  - zajio1am 6y ago
    Row for option 2 is: Option 2 137 168 165 239 227 199 222 222 voted for option 2 over "we should talk about this further" (default position), which is ~53% (222/420).
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cbmuser 6y ago
> Debian will issue no comment, 2/3+ of voters in Debian supported calling for RMSs removal. It's clear which way the tide is moving, even if Debian says nothing. FWIW, some people didn’t want to vote because the results would be publicly with names. So the result of a secret vote might have been different.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Your hypothesis is that people voted opposite of their beliefs? Or that they chose not to vote at all? Both of those feel like possibilities, but probably not in any significant number. In absence of evidence to the contrary, I'd say it's reasonable to look at the results of a vote as evidence of how people actually feel. Edit: Vote numbers seem consistent with other votes in Debian's history, so it does not appear that a large number of people elected not to vote.
- tedunangst 6y ago
  They should have gated this vote with a yes/no vote on whether to vote.
  - cbmuser 6y ago
    No, it simply shouldn’t have been public. The DPL elections aren’t public either.
    - em-bee 6y ago
      correct, but the debian rules on this issue state that only the elections are not public. there are no provisions for private votes on resolutions. this may change in the future if enough people find that (optionally) private votes on resolutions are a good idea.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    The "Further discussion" option is meant to allow for that. Note that the options calling for a statement in support of RMS were even less preferred than "Further discussion", which is quite weird given the context so GP may well have a point.
zozbot234 6y ago
To clarify, 2/3 supported calling for removal over calling for RMS to stay, or "Further discussion". The option to not comment was clearly preferred over others, it was the only choice in the Schwarz set. There is no ambiguity at all about the outcome.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  I didn't imply there is ambiguity in the result. But there is a difference between "what we agree on as a whole community" and what the majority opinion is. The community agreed on no comment, full stop. A significant preference was also shown for removal over reinstatement.
fighterpilot 6y ago
Was it an anonymous vote?
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  No. Do you have evidence that anonymity would have mattered? The vote totals seem in line with historical votes.
  - fighterpilot 6y ago
    It's a politically controversial topic, and preference falsification is a well-documented sociological phenomenon in such circumstances. If you want to know what people really think without the possibile influence of preference falsification, it needs to be an anonymous poll.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > If you want to know what people really think without the possibile influence of preference falsification, it needs to be an anonymous poll. Which is exactly why we not only allow, but actually enforce it in elections. If your vote could have a strong impact on e.g. your future employment, you wouldn't be free to vote for what you think is best, you'd be compelled to vote for what you think is perceived best.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Except that's not Debian's agreed-to voting process. I'd also point out that secret ballot is not universal in the US. Certainly the votes of elected officials are not secret. But neither are open votes at, say, a town hall meeting.
        luckylion 6y ago
        > Except that's not Debian's agreed-to voting process. I'm not suggesting they'd have to do that, I'm saying that there's a very good reason why we usually do that. As organizations become more and more political, I expect that to hit harder and for more of them to adopt secret voting. > Certainly the votes of elected officials are not secret. And I find that reasonable. You want to know whether the person you voted for actually does what they said. In Germany, parliament votes are public, but important votes are secret. For the less important votes, they'll just ask for raised hands and note who won, but not who voted in what way (we now have TV channels film the votes and then use interns to determine who voted what). For important votes, they're done secretly: you can tell who voted, but not what they voted for. There's no way to hold them accountable, the system is working as intended.
ekianjo 6y ago
> It's clear which way the tide is moving It's only clear that the way this is measured is heavily biased: 4 options out of 8 are against current FSF/RMS' statu quo. Only 2 are for supporting the statu quo. And 1 is for indifference, and the last one for more discussion needed. If you overcharge the negative choices, it's kind of given most of the answers will fall in them. Survey design 101. For reference: - Option 1 "Call for the FSF board removal, as in rms-open-letter.github.io" - Option 2 "Call for Stallman's resignation from all FSF bodies" - Option 3 "Discourage collaboration with the FSF while Stallman is in a leading position" - Option 4 "Call on the FSF to further its governance processes" - Option 5 "Support Stallman's reinstatement, as in rms-support-letter.github.io" - Option 6 "Denounce the witch-hunt against RMS and the FSF" - Option 7 "Debian will not issue a public statement on this issue" - Option 8 "Further Discussion"
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > If you overcharge the negative choices, it's kind of given most of the answers will fall in them That's not how it works. The voters are asked to rank all options according to their preference, and a winner is chosen according to an extended Condorcet criterion. Adding similar options doesn't affect the outcome.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  You should read up on how they conduct votes. Every voter essentially gets a chance to rank every option against every other option. So the number of options should not impact the vote totals.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    You forget human perception. If I expose someone to 10 negative statements and only 2 positive ones, you believe that this does not affect their overall perception of the issue?
    - Pfhreak 6y ago
      I'm sure it does, but I don't believe it does materially in this case. People are going to have a perception of other terms, e.g. RMS, as well. While yes, what you describe may have influenced an emotional response, I see no evidence that would have changed the outcome.
gizmo686 6y ago
How do you get to 2/3rds? I am not familiar with Debian's voting system, but I get just under 1/2 in favor publically supporting removal. I define "support" as preferring an option over "Further Discussion". According to [0], there were 420 unique voters. Using 420 as the denominator, and collumn 8 [1] as the numerator, we get the following approval voting results: 1) Call for the FSF board removal, as in rms-open-letter.github.io - 203/420 = 48% 2) Call for Stallman's resignation from all FSF bodies - 222/42 = 53% 3) Discourage collaboration with the FSF while Stallman is in a leading position - 19/420 - 52% 4) Call on the FSF to further its governance processes - 221/42 = 53% 5) Support Stallman's reinstatement, as in rms-support-letter.github.io - 52/420 = 12% 6) Denounce the witch-hunt against RMS and the FSF - 84/420 = 20% 7) Debian will not issue a public statement on this issue - 277/420 = 65% 8) Further Discussion - N/A It does not look like individual votes have been released yet. If they were, I would like to see how accurate my assumption that no one "approves" of both his presence and absence from the board. The sum of approval for both 1 and 5 is 255 = 61%, so it seems like most of the no statement voters actively disprove of a statement in either direction (instead of simply preferring no statement) [0] https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/ https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/ [1] https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/results.txt https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/results.txt
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  I may be misinterpreting or misapplying how they do a "passes majority" check, which seems to indicate 222 for and 166 against for option two. So it might be more correct to say ~3/5s?
  - jlgaddis 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method
- kroeckx 6y ago
  You can look at the Majority results if you want to say how many people think an option is acceptable. That ratio is also in the graph. For option 1, 203 people indicated that it's acceptable, 186 said it was unacceptable, leaving 31 that didn't say anything about it. The 203/186=1.09 is in the graph. You could also see that as 52% find that option acceptable.
McScroogy 6y ago
So if "the tide is moving" in some direction, it's a foregone conclusion? Globally the tide seems to be moving towards socialism, so let's just get it over with?
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  Socialism has nothing to do with RMS’ disgusting behavior. The tide is turning in that people won’t accept this from the old guard anymore. It has nothing to do with political philosophy.
  - McScroogy 6y ago
    Of course socialism has a lot to do with this discussion. It is a symptom of the rise of the woke and SJWs, who want to establish control via their ideology (in this case, feminism as a vehicle for socialist control). Everybody who doesn't adhere to the ideology has to be cut down.
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      You don't have to be an "SJW" to be disgusted with Stallman. The vast, vast majority of people will not defend someone involved in a child sex trafficking ring. That doesn't make you a "socialist", it makes you a regular human with a modicum of empathy and functioning moral compass.
      - McScroogy 6y ago
        But you need to be a SJW to reject due process and the principle of charity, and opt for maximum moral outrage to exert control and power. Your claim that he defended somebody in a sex trafficking ring is not actually true, for example. Either you are unaware of that and simply run with the narrative of the SJW ideology, which would be exactly the goal, or you are deliberately misrepresenting it, which would also make the point that it is about politics, not personal disgust. Or explained in another way: apparently Stallman has not done anything illegal. So the people who insist on him being cut down want to install a new justice system. That's SJW ideology.
zajio1am 6y ago
> 2/3+ of voters in Debian supported calling for RMSs removal 2/3+ is overestimate. About 52% (228/439) preferred one option from 1-4 (anti-RMS) better than neutral options (7-8). If we ignore winning option 7, then 63% preferred 1-4 to default option 8, while 20% preferred 5-6 (pro-RMS) to option 8.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Yeah, it was definitely napkin math. I'll edit my comment.
salawat 6y ago
What in the hell is with that tabulation of data? You don't even have raw vote counts. You have that weird floating relative representation going on, and no formula is given for the totals, or I'm not aware the procedures are that line that out. Example: 2 dimensional matrix Value at (x, y) coordinates should be read as option X received <value> more votes than option Y. The diagonal is blank since it degenerates in this representation. Row 1 column 2 would assert that option 1 beat option 2 by 113 votes. Row 2, column 1 however asserts the opposite, that option 2 beat option 1 by 137. This is reading is articulated explicitly in those results. I see no way that isn't an indication of contradiction unless their tallying method is so bloody exotic I can't even imagine. Nor can I find the where they define their dividend for the majority calculation, but I'm assuming there is a tally of nay/abstain votes somewhere? What am I missing?
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- gizmo686 6y ago
  Voting procedure is documented here [0] section A.6 I agree that it would be nice to include the total number of ballots in the final results, but that isn't really relevant to the results. Each voter submits a ranked choice vote ballot. The table indicates that 113 ballots prefer option 1 over option 2, whicl 137 ballot prefer option 2 over option 1. The majority calculation is a bit weird. All Debian votes include default option, in this case that is option 8, "Further Discussion". Preferring an option over the default is seen as a general "approval" vote, while prefering the default is considered "disapproval". The "majority" votes looks at the ratio between approval and disapproval. For instance, option 1 had 203 votes to apporove and 186 votes to disaprove, giving it a ratio of 203/186 = 1.09 Voters are not required to vote on all options. Excluding private votes, they release every individual vote once voting is closed, so you can see how many abstensions an indidual option received; but it appears that this has not been released yet. [0] https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution

CameronNemo 6y ago

> 2/3+ of voters in Debian supported calling for RMSs removal How did you come to that number?

Pfhreak 6y ago
Look at the row for option 2 in the data table, it will show you how many people preferred that option over other options. Roughly two thirds preferred removing RMS over "we should talk about this further", for example.
- zajio1am 6y ago
  Row for option 2 is: Option 2 137 168 165 239 227 199 222 222 voted for option 2 over "we should talk about this further" (default position), which is ~53% (222/420).
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cbmuser 6y ago

> Debian will issue no comment, 2/3+ of voters in Debian supported calling for RMSs removal. It's clear which way the tide is moving, even if Debian says nothing. FWIW, some people didn’t want to vote because the results would be publicly with names. So the result of a secret vote might have been different.

Pfhreak 6y ago
Your hypothesis is that people voted opposite of their beliefs? Or that they chose not to vote at all? Both of those feel like possibilities, but probably not in any significant number. In absence of evidence to the contrary, I'd say it's reasonable to look at the results of a vote as evidence of how people actually feel. Edit: Vote numbers seem consistent with other votes in Debian's history, so it does not appear that a large number of people elected not to vote.
tedunangst 6y ago
They should have gated this vote with a yes/no vote on whether to vote.
- cbmuser 6y ago
  No, it simply shouldn’t have been public. The DPL elections aren’t public either.
  - em-bee 6y ago
    correct, but the debian rules on this issue state that only the elections are not public. there are no provisions for private votes on resolutions. this may change in the future if enough people find that (optionally) private votes on resolutions are a good idea.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  The "Further discussion" option is meant to allow for that. Note that the options calling for a statement in support of RMS were even less preferred than "Further discussion", which is quite weird given the context so GP may well have a point.

zozbot234 6y ago

To clarify, 2/3 supported calling for removal over calling for RMS to stay, or "Further discussion". The option to not comment was clearly preferred over others, it was the only choice in the Schwarz set. There is no ambiguity at all about the outcome.

Pfhreak 6y ago
I didn't imply there is ambiguity in the result. But there is a difference between "what we agree on as a whole community" and what the majority opinion is. The community agreed on no comment, full stop. A significant preference was also shown for removal over reinstatement.

fighterpilot 6y ago

Was it an anonymous vote?

Pfhreak 6y ago
No. Do you have evidence that anonymity would have mattered? The vote totals seem in line with historical votes.
- fighterpilot 6y ago
  It's a politically controversial topic, and preference falsification is a well-documented sociological phenomenon in such circumstances. If you want to know what people really think without the possibile influence of preference falsification, it needs to be an anonymous poll.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > If you want to know what people really think without the possibile influence of preference falsification, it needs to be an anonymous poll. Which is exactly why we not only allow, but actually enforce it in elections. If your vote could have a strong impact on e.g. your future employment, you wouldn't be free to vote for what you think is best, you'd be compelled to vote for what you think is perceived best.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Except that's not Debian's agreed-to voting process. I'd also point out that secret ballot is not universal in the US. Certainly the votes of elected officials are not secret. But neither are open votes at, say, a town hall meeting.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        > Except that's not Debian's agreed-to voting process. I'm not suggesting they'd have to do that, I'm saying that there's a very good reason why we usually do that. As organizations become more and more political, I expect that to hit harder and for more of them to adopt secret voting. > Certainly the votes of elected officials are not secret. And I find that reasonable. You want to know whether the person you voted for actually does what they said. In Germany, parliament votes are public, but important votes are secret. For the less important votes, they'll just ask for raised hands and note who won, but not who voted in what way (we now have TV channels film the votes and then use interns to determine who voted what). For important votes, they're done secretly: you can tell who voted, but not what they voted for. There's no way to hold them accountable, the system is working as intended.

ekianjo 6y ago

> It's clear which way the tide is moving It's only clear that the way this is measured is heavily biased: 4 options out of 8 are against current FSF/RMS' statu quo. Only 2 are for supporting the statu quo. And 1 is for indifference, and the last one for more discussion needed. If you overcharge the negative choices, it's kind of given most of the answers will fall in them. Survey design 101. For reference: - Option 1 "Call for the FSF board removal, as in rms-open-letter.github.io" - Option 2 "Call for Stallman's resignation from all FSF bodies" - Option 3 "Discourage collaboration with the FSF while Stallman is in a leading position" - Option 4 "Call on the FSF to further its governance processes" - Option 5 "Support Stallman's reinstatement, as in rms-support-letter.github.io" - Option 6 "Denounce the witch-hunt against RMS and the FSF" - Option 7 "Debian will not issue a public statement on this issue" - Option 8 "Further Discussion"

zozbot234 6y ago
> If you overcharge the negative choices, it's kind of given most of the answers will fall in them That's not how it works. The voters are asked to rank all options according to their preference, and a winner is chosen according to an extended Condorcet criterion. Adding similar options doesn't affect the outcome.
Pfhreak 6y ago
You should read up on how they conduct votes. Every voter essentially gets a chance to rank every option against every other option. So the number of options should not impact the vote totals.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  You forget human perception. If I expose someone to 10 negative statements and only 2 positive ones, you believe that this does not affect their overall perception of the issue?
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    I'm sure it does, but I don't believe it does materially in this case. People are going to have a perception of other terms, e.g. RMS, as well. While yes, what you describe may have influenced an emotional response, I see no evidence that would have changed the outcome.

gizmo686 6y ago

How do you get to 2/3rds? I am not familiar with Debian's voting system, but I get just under 1/2 in favor publically supporting removal. I define "support" as preferring an option over "Further Discussion". According to [0], there were 420 unique voters. Using 420 as the denominator, and collumn 8 [1] as the numerator, we get the following approval voting results: 1) Call for the FSF board removal, as in rms-open-letter.github.io - 203/420 = 48% 2) Call for Stallman's resignation from all FSF bodies - 222/42 = 53% 3) Discourage collaboration with the FSF while Stallman is in a leading position - 19/420 - 52% 4) Call on the FSF to further its governance processes - 221/42 = 53% 5) Support Stallman's reinstatement, as in rms-support-letter.github.io - 52/420 = 12% 6) Denounce the witch-hunt against RMS and the FSF - 84/420 = 20% 7) Debian will not issue a public statement on this issue - 277/420 = 65% 8) Further Discussion - N/A It does not look like individual votes have been released yet. If they were, I would like to see how accurate my assumption that no one "approves" of both his presence and absence from the board. The sum of approval for both 1 and 5 is 255 = 61%, so it seems like most of the no statement voters actively disprove of a statement in either direction (instead of simply preferring no statement) [0] https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/ https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/ [1] https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/results.txt https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_rms/results.txt

Pfhreak 6y ago
I may be misinterpreting or misapplying how they do a "passes majority" check, which seems to indicate 222 for and 166 against for option two. So it might be more correct to say ~3/5s?
- jlgaddis 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method
kroeckx 6y ago
You can look at the Majority results if you want to say how many people think an option is acceptable. That ratio is also in the graph. For option 1, 203 people indicated that it's acceptable, 186 said it was unacceptable, leaving 31 that didn't say anything about it. The 203/186=1.09 is in the graph. You could also see that as 52% find that option acceptable.

McScroogy 6y ago

So if "the tide is moving" in some direction, it's a foregone conclusion? Globally the tide seems to be moving towards socialism, so let's just get it over with?

solosoyokaze 6y ago
Socialism has nothing to do with RMS’ disgusting behavior. The tide is turning in that people won’t accept this from the old guard anymore. It has nothing to do with political philosophy.
- McScroogy 6y ago
  Of course socialism has a lot to do with this discussion. It is a symptom of the rise of the woke and SJWs, who want to establish control via their ideology (in this case, feminism as a vehicle for socialist control). Everybody who doesn't adhere to the ideology has to be cut down.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    You don't have to be an "SJW" to be disgusted with Stallman. The vast, vast majority of people will not defend someone involved in a child sex trafficking ring. That doesn't make you a "socialist", it makes you a regular human with a modicum of empathy and functioning moral compass.
    - McScroogy 6y ago
      But you need to be a SJW to reject due process and the principle of charity, and opt for maximum moral outrage to exert control and power. Your claim that he defended somebody in a sex trafficking ring is not actually true, for example. Either you are unaware of that and simply run with the narrative of the SJW ideology, which would be exactly the goal, or you are deliberately misrepresenting it, which would also make the point that it is about politics, not personal disgust. Or explained in another way: apparently Stallman has not done anything illegal. So the people who insist on him being cut down want to install a new justice system. That's SJW ideology.

zajio1am 6y ago

> 2/3+ of voters in Debian supported calling for RMSs removal 2/3+ is overestimate. About 52% (228/439) preferred one option from 1-4 (anti-RMS) better than neutral options (7-8). If we ignore winning option 7, then 63% preferred 1-4 to default option 8, while 20% preferred 5-6 (pro-RMS) to option 8.

Pfhreak 6y ago
Yeah, it was definitely napkin math. I'll edit my comment.

salawat 6y ago

What in the hell is with that tabulation of data? You don't even have raw vote counts. You have that weird floating relative representation going on, and no formula is given for the totals, or I'm not aware the procedures are that line that out. Example: 2 dimensional matrix Value at (x, y) coordinates should be read as option X received <value> more votes than option Y. The diagonal is blank since it degenerates in this representation. Row 1 column 2 would assert that option 1 beat option 2 by 113 votes. Row 2, column 1 however asserts the opposite, that option 2 beat option 1 by 137. This is reading is articulated explicitly in those results. I see no way that isn't an indication of contradiction unless their tallying method is so bloody exotic I can't even imagine. Nor can I find the where they define their dividend for the majority calculation, but I'm assuming there is a tally of nay/abstain votes somewhere? What am I missing?

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gizmo686 6y ago
Voting procedure is documented here [0] section A.6 I agree that it would be nice to include the total number of ballots in the final results, but that isn't really relevant to the results. Each voter submits a ranked choice vote ballot. The table indicates that 113 ballots prefer option 1 over option 2, whicl 137 ballot prefer option 2 over option 1. The majority calculation is a bit weird. All Debian votes include default option, in this case that is option 8, "Further Discussion". Preferring an option over the default is seen as a general "approval" vote, while prefering the default is considered "disapproval". The "majority" votes looks at the ratio between approval and disapproval. For instance, option 1 had 203 votes to apporove and 186 votes to disaprove, giving it a ratio of 203/186 = 1.09 Voters are not required to vote on all options. Excluding private votes, they release every individual vote once voting is closed, so you can see how many abstensions an indidual option received; but it appears that this has not been released yet. [0] https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution