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There's an interesting political science-ish question posed by this: Is it best to have a king first then later transition to democracy? It would seem that ki

There's an interesting political science-ish question posed by this: Is it best to have a king first then later transition to democracy? It would seem that kings followed later by parliament has been a very successful model for django. I don't know how far this generalizes.

unethical_ban 13y ago
Consider the ratification of the current US constitution. It was debated and written in secret, ratified with no 'general public' debate on the final draft.
- dalke 13y ago
  That doesn't jibe with my understanding. The Constitutional Convention began on May 25, 1787 and finished in September. It was presented to Congress (organized under the Articles of Confederation), who submitted it to vote by the States. By September 1788, 9 of the states had agreed to it, and Rhode Island was the 13th, in 1790. The Federalist Papers were written and distributed as part of the public debate, in order to sway those with anti-Federalist leanings. How is that "secret" and with no "'general public' debate"?
  - baddox 13y ago
    Don't forget the Anti-Federalist papers, which contained complaints such as the lack of a Bill of Rights.
  - unethical_ban 13y ago
    George Washington was unanimously elected president of the Convention,[9] and it was agreed that the discussions and votes would be kept secret until the conclusion of the meeting.[3]:11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Convention_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Convention_(Uni... Though it's been a long time since I studied it, my impression was that the actual votes and internal debate of the convention were under wraps until it was complete. This example might not match as well as I thought to OP's king->democracy proposal, though.
    - dalke 13y ago
      Ahh, yes, you're right about the "secret" part. Thanks for the link. I still believe there was a general debate about the final draft. With the proviso of course that the modern meaning of "public" doesn't mean the same in a nation without universal adult suffrage. BTW, it seems that secrecy was common practice of the time. Quoting from http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS20145.pdf http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS20145.pdf : > Both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention met in secret. The Senate met in secret until 1794, its first rules reflecting a belief that the body’s various special roles, including providing advice and consent to the executive branch, compelled it to conduct its business behind closed doors. ) I looked through "Journals of the Continental Congress", v32 and v33. Volume 32 proposes a meeting "for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the United States of America and reporting to the United States in Congress assembled and to the States respectively such alterations and amendments of the said Articles of Confederation as the representatives met in such convention shall judge proper and necessary to render them adequate to the preservation and support of the Union." Volume 33 contains a copy of the proposed constitution on page 488 (dated 20 September 1787), followed by a motion on 27 September that Congress cannot decide on matters which effectively replace the Articles of Confederation, and so this should be forwarded to the states. In looking through the journal, I see many references to Congress's secret journal, which helps me confirm that secrecy was pretty common back in that era.
  - scott_s 13y ago
    I think it is also important to keep in mind that they really did not have any legal authority to draft an entirely new constitution.
kmfrk 13y ago
I think that sounds like an good observation. At first, you have to establish the foundation and ground rules - and fight off all the usual people who try to claim the project for themselves and head it in their own direction. After that is done, and a culture has been established, your own role as a maintainer becomes more contributory than managerial.
- tomchristie 13y ago
  Absolutely this, yes. Projects need an initial strong voice to set the voice and direction. Once a community forms around that and starts reinforcing that identity the leaders can move into more of a passive maintainer role.
mseebach 13y ago
> Is it best to have a king Yes. Seriously, on the historical timescale of kingdoms, democracy is a very young concept. It's only really after WWII that democracy got promoted to this almost utopian ideal that we know it as today. It's not a all given that it's the "best" way to run a society - as Churchill famously noted, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms". To dial the abstraction a little back, it's a well known mode for software projects to die, when they cease being a labour of love of a small dedicated team with clear purpose and direction and starts trying to be all things to all people through "democracy"/"design by committee". Of course, plenty of projects have survived and flourished too.
- riffraff 13y ago
  while real "universal suffrage" is a very new thing smaller scale "democracies" in the past arguably worked okaysh[0] and are imo a better simile to how projects work. E.g. the plebe/end users have some saying but mostly stuff is run by the core devs/patricians.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    There are basically two interpretations of democracy. One, the more classic, is that the demos is the moral legitimacy of power, as opposed to, say, God ("I am the king because God made it so; if you disagree, you're a heretic, and you will be burned at the stake/hanged/stoned"). While the monarch isn't elected, he can only rule through the consent of the people (which, conveniently, is vaguely defined). David Hume explicitly reserved the right of revolution - for the people to withdraw consent. The more modern strand of democracy, the one I think may prove short lived, is that democracy means that the demos actually rules. With some checks and balances still in place, the prevailing narrative around "democracy" today is that as long as 50% kinda wants something, then there is full moral basis for doing it.
- VBprogrammer 13y ago
  Just to add the end of that quote, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
recuter 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnatus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnatus
jisaacstone 13y ago
The important distinction between a software project an a government is the ease of transition. Democracy is good because (if well designed) it protects the rights of the minority as well as the majority. But a dictatorship can use resources much more efficiently to accomplish it's goals. Since programmers can easily switch frameworks it is better to have each guided by a strong and idealistic central leader. I'm thinking about PHP vs Python
- saraid216 13y ago
  Maybe I'm not familiar enough with the PHP community, but "a strong and idealistic central leader" seems to describe Ramus fine?
  - gopalv 13y ago
    Rasmus wouldn't be idealistic (say compared to RMS). I have been in contact with both over different parts of my career. Rasmus is pragmatic. In some sense he would say "sure, go ahead and write that code" without telling you the "One PHP Way of function arguments" (yeah, look at the *sort funcs). Actually he does worse - he will put up a patch for review that I disagree with so that I will be unable to ignore it & the only way to defend my opinion it is to fix it "properly". That is the other extreme of being idealistic - it's being extremely pragmatic. Also being influential simply because he doesn't bother arguing on principle.
- baddox 13y ago
  How does a well-designed democracy protect the rights of the minority?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
dalke 13y ago
I don't think that makes much sense. Besides trying to understand what "best" means, what does "have a king" mean? Does the UK's queen count as still having a king? What about Canada's queen? Let's take Spain as a sample. The king abdicated in 1873, with the First Spanish Republic (parliament) until the end of 1874. Then was the Bourbon restoration where the king first had parliament, but later backed a dictator) until 1931. Then the Second Spanish Republic until 1939 and the rise of Franco's dicatorship, until 1976, followed by a transition to parliamentary democracy, with the first elections in 1977. That's 3 different transitions to a republican form of government. Two were not successful. Or, how do you count the English Civil War and the brief Commonwealth of England in the 1650s? What of the short-lived French Republic? The result of the Haitian Revolution? The democracy of Iran overthrown in 1953 by royalist forces supported and funded by CIA and MI6, and then the monarchy overthrown in 1979 by the Iranian Revolution? Or Weimar Republic Germany, after the imperialism of the First World War. It famously had to deal with hyperinflation from paying war reparations. In 1930, President Hindenburg assumed dictatorial emergency powers, leading towards the end of the constitution and the start of Nazi Germany in 1933. The belief in Germany at the time, I'm told, was that the Weimar era showed that democracy was a failure. Also, what's your baseline reference? "Is it best to have a king first then later transition to democracy" compared to ... what?
- argonaut 13y ago
  Don't get distracted by unimportant semantics. OP could rephrase the point as "strong central leader with absolutist powers vs. democracy." The fact that some of your examples fall on somewhere on a linear scale between the two doesn't really detract from your ability to evaluate the point.
  - dalke 13y ago
    Yes, that is one of the several possible interpretations I thought of. My goal was to point out that the query, as given, is too ambiguous for a meaningful response. In US history, this is our second organizational system. The Articles of Confederation was too decentralized, so we decided on a stronger federal system. So if the US system is judged as "the best", then it's an example of where a more decentralized form of government is better than going from a centralized power. The Swiss confederation might be another example. But change the meaning of "the best" slightly, perhaps so that Iceland tops the list, then there will be totally different answers.
enlightenedfool 13y ago
My country definitely needs a king or benevolent dictator. Democracy isn't working.
- aaronem 13y ago
  Which country, and why?
- pmr_ 13y ago
  I'm not sure if you are trying to make a joke here, but I'll respond in earnest anyway. The benevolent dictator model works in open-source projects because the power of the dictator is still limited by the willingness of the governed to participate in the project. This forces the "benevolent" part. Developers can always stop contributing, fork, or start up a new project. This isn't the case with governments. Unchecked power ends up corrupting the ones holding the power in the majority of cases even if they start to govern with the aim to be benevolent. And you cannot stop contributing, fork or rewrite a society. Most dictatorships also try very hard to prevent their subjects from leaving their domain, because not participating and contributing is the ultimate act of disobedience.
jrochkind1 13y ago
I would definitely not assume that the answer for a human society is the same as the answer for a collaborative software project.

unethical_ban 13y ago

Consider the ratification of the current US constitution. It was debated and written in secret, ratified with no 'general public' debate on the final draft.

dalke 13y ago
That doesn't jibe with my understanding. The Constitutional Convention began on May 25, 1787 and finished in September. It was presented to Congress (organized under the Articles of Confederation), who submitted it to vote by the States. By September 1788, 9 of the states had agreed to it, and Rhode Island was the 13th, in 1790. The Federalist Papers were written and distributed as part of the public debate, in order to sway those with anti-Federalist leanings. How is that "secret" and with no "'general public' debate"?
- baddox 13y ago
  Don't forget the Anti-Federalist papers, which contained complaints such as the lack of a Bill of Rights.
- unethical_ban 13y ago
  George Washington was unanimously elected president of the Convention,[9] and it was agreed that the discussions and votes would be kept secret until the conclusion of the meeting.[3]:11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Convention_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Convention_(Uni... Though it's been a long time since I studied it, my impression was that the actual votes and internal debate of the convention were under wraps until it was complete. This example might not match as well as I thought to OP's king->democracy proposal, though.
  - dalke 13y ago
    Ahh, yes, you're right about the "secret" part. Thanks for the link. I still believe there was a general debate about the final draft. With the proviso of course that the modern meaning of "public" doesn't mean the same in a nation without universal adult suffrage. BTW, it seems that secrecy was common practice of the time. Quoting from http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS20145.pdf http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS20145.pdf : > Both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention met in secret. The Senate met in secret until 1794, its first rules reflecting a belief that the body’s various special roles, including providing advice and consent to the executive branch, compelled it to conduct its business behind closed doors. ) I looked through "Journals of the Continental Congress", v32 and v33. Volume 32 proposes a meeting "for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the United States of America and reporting to the United States in Congress assembled and to the States respectively such alterations and amendments of the said Articles of Confederation as the representatives met in such convention shall judge proper and necessary to render them adequate to the preservation and support of the Union." Volume 33 contains a copy of the proposed constitution on page 488 (dated 20 September 1787), followed by a motion on 27 September that Congress cannot decide on matters which effectively replace the Articles of Confederation, and so this should be forwarded to the states. In looking through the journal, I see many references to Congress's secret journal, which helps me confirm that secrecy was pretty common back in that era.
- scott_s 13y ago
  I think it is also important to keep in mind that they really did not have any legal authority to draft an entirely new constitution.

kmfrk 13y ago

I think that sounds like an good observation. At first, you have to establish the foundation and ground rules - and fight off all the usual people who try to claim the project for themselves and head it in their own direction. After that is done, and a culture has been established, your own role as a maintainer becomes more contributory than managerial.

tomchristie 13y ago
Absolutely this, yes. Projects need an initial strong voice to set the voice and direction. Once a community forms around that and starts reinforcing that identity the leaders can move into more of a passive maintainer role.

mseebach 13y ago

> Is it best to have a king Yes. Seriously, on the historical timescale of kingdoms, democracy is a very young concept. It's only really after WWII that democracy got promoted to this almost utopian ideal that we know it as today. It's not a all given that it's the "best" way to run a society - as Churchill famously noted, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms". To dial the abstraction a little back, it's a well known mode for software projects to die, when they cease being a labour of love of a small dedicated team with clear purpose and direction and starts trying to be all things to all people through "democracy"/"design by committee". Of course, plenty of projects have survived and flourished too.

riffraff 13y ago
while real "universal suffrage" is a very new thing smaller scale "democracies" in the past arguably worked okaysh[0] and are imo a better simile to how projects work. E.g. the plebe/end users have some saying but mostly stuff is run by the core devs/patricians.
- mseebach 13y ago
  There are basically two interpretations of democracy. One, the more classic, is that the demos is the moral legitimacy of power, as opposed to, say, God ("I am the king because God made it so; if you disagree, you're a heretic, and you will be burned at the stake/hanged/stoned"). While the monarch isn't elected, he can only rule through the consent of the people (which, conveniently, is vaguely defined). David Hume explicitly reserved the right of revolution - for the people to withdraw consent. The more modern strand of democracy, the one I think may prove short lived, is that democracy means that the demos actually rules. With some checks and balances still in place, the prevailing narrative around "democracy" today is that as long as 50% kinda wants something, then there is full moral basis for doing it.
VBprogrammer 13y ago
Just to add the end of that quote, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

recuter 13y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnatus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnatus

jisaacstone 13y ago

The important distinction between a software project an a government is the ease of transition. Democracy is good because (if well designed) it protects the rights of the minority as well as the majority. But a dictatorship can use resources much more efficiently to accomplish it's goals. Since programmers can easily switch frameworks it is better to have each guided by a strong and idealistic central leader. I'm thinking about PHP vs Python

saraid216 13y ago
Maybe I'm not familiar enough with the PHP community, but "a strong and idealistic central leader" seems to describe Ramus fine?
- gopalv 13y ago
  Rasmus wouldn't be idealistic (say compared to RMS). I have been in contact with both over different parts of my career. Rasmus is pragmatic. In some sense he would say "sure, go ahead and write that code" without telling you the "One PHP Way of function arguments" (yeah, look at the *sort funcs). Actually he does worse - he will put up a patch for review that I disagree with so that I will be unable to ignore it & the only way to defend my opinion it is to fix it "properly". That is the other extreme of being idealistic - it's being extremely pragmatic. Also being influential simply because he doesn't bother arguing on principle.
baddox 13y ago
How does a well-designed democracy protect the rights of the minority?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

dalke 13y ago

I don't think that makes much sense. Besides trying to understand what "best" means, what does "have a king" mean? Does the UK's queen count as still having a king? What about Canada's queen? Let's take Spain as a sample. The king abdicated in 1873, with the First Spanish Republic (parliament) until the end of 1874. Then was the Bourbon restoration where the king first had parliament, but later backed a dictator) until 1931. Then the Second Spanish Republic until 1939 and the rise of Franco's dicatorship, until 1976, followed by a transition to parliamentary democracy, with the first elections in 1977. That's 3 different transitions to a republican form of government. Two were not successful. Or, how do you count the English Civil War and the brief Commonwealth of England in the 1650s? What of the short-lived French Republic? The result of the Haitian Revolution? The democracy of Iran overthrown in 1953 by royalist forces supported and funded by CIA and MI6, and then the monarchy overthrown in 1979 by the Iranian Revolution? Or Weimar Republic Germany, after the imperialism of the First World War. It famously had to deal with hyperinflation from paying war reparations. In 1930, President Hindenburg assumed dictatorial emergency powers, leading towards the end of the constitution and the start of Nazi Germany in 1933. The belief in Germany at the time, I'm told, was that the Weimar era showed that democracy was a failure. Also, what's your baseline reference? "Is it best to have a king first then later transition to democracy" compared to ... what?

argonaut 13y ago
Don't get distracted by unimportant semantics. OP could rephrase the point as "strong central leader with absolutist powers vs. democracy." The fact that some of your examples fall on somewhere on a linear scale between the two doesn't really detract from your ability to evaluate the point.
- dalke 13y ago
  Yes, that is one of the several possible interpretations I thought of. My goal was to point out that the query, as given, is too ambiguous for a meaningful response. In US history, this is our second organizational system. The Articles of Confederation was too decentralized, so we decided on a stronger federal system. So if the US system is judged as "the best", then it's an example of where a more decentralized form of government is better than going from a centralized power. The Swiss confederation might be another example. But change the meaning of "the best" slightly, perhaps so that Iceland tops the list, then there will be totally different answers.

enlightenedfool 13y ago

My country definitely needs a king or benevolent dictator. Democracy isn't working.

aaronem 13y ago
Which country, and why?
pmr_ 13y ago
I'm not sure if you are trying to make a joke here, but I'll respond in earnest anyway. The benevolent dictator model works in open-source projects because the power of the dictator is still limited by the willingness of the governed to participate in the project. This forces the "benevolent" part. Developers can always stop contributing, fork, or start up a new project. This isn't the case with governments. Unchecked power ends up corrupting the ones holding the power in the majority of cases even if they start to govern with the aim to be benevolent. And you cannot stop contributing, fork or rewrite a society. Most dictatorships also try very hard to prevent their subjects from leaving their domain, because not participating and contributing is the ultimate act of disobedience.

jrochkind1 13y ago

I would definitely not assume that the answer for a human society is the same as the answer for a collaborative software project.