Superseded: Constitutional amendment: disambiguation of 4.1.5

Proposal-0009: Superseded by a GR in 2003

Date
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Opposition
Amendments
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Text

 4. The Developers by way of General Resolution or election

   4.1. Powers

    Together, the Developers may:
     1. Appoint or recall the Project Leader.
     2. Amend this constitution, provided they agree with a 3:1 majority.
     3. Override any decision by the Project Leader or a Delegate.
     4. Override any decision by the Technical Committee, provided they
        agree with a 2:1 majority.
-    5. Issue nontechnical policy documents and statements.
+    5. Issue, modify, and withdraw nontechnical policy documents and
+       statements.
        These include documents describing the goals of the project, its
        relationship with other free software entities, and nontechnical
        policies such as the free software licence terms that Debian
        software must meet.
        They may also include position statements about issues of the day.
     6. Together with the Project Leader and SPI, make decisions about
        property held in trust for purposes related to Debian. (See
        s.9.1.)

Rationale: The clause being modified has been seen recently to be quite ambiguous. Since the original wording appeared to be amenable to two wildly different interpretations, this change adds clarifying language to the constitution about _changing_ or withdrawing nontechnical documents. Furthermore, this amended proposal does not include any orthogonal issues such as whether there exist any specific nontechnical documents that should require unusual amendment procedures. I think such issues should be decided on separately, since it is quite possible that reasonable developers can feel that the above is a reasonable clarification of the Constitution with such belief necessitating a particular position on the issues of special nontechnical documents, their identity, or their amendability.