Koha Copyright License Upgrade Ballot IRC Meeting 2010-07-13

[In consequence of lack of timely availability from some principle advocates following the meeting, proceeding with developing a ballot and holding a community vote, as resolved at the meeting, has been delayed until after KohaCon10. The issue of the delay was raised at the next General IRC Meeting, 11 August 2010.]

Place

1. koha IRC channel (IRC server irc.katipo.co.nz).

Time

Tuesday, 13 July at 19:00 UTC+0

Conversions to your local time:

• Time and Date.com converter for various local times.

Agenda

1. Follow-up on actions from General IRC Meeting, 2 June 2010 about the question of upgrading the copyright license for Koha 3.4.
2. Forming the question.
3. IRC voting, email ballot, or other ballot type?

Attendees

• atz: Joe Atzberger, Equinox
• brendan: brendan gallagher, bywater solutions
• cait: Katrin Fischer, BSZ
• chris: chris cormack, RM 3.4
• chris_n: Chris Nighswonger, FBC, 3.2 Release Maintainer
• Colin: Colin Campbell, PTFS-Europe
• collum: Garry Collum - Kenton County Public Library
• davi: Davi Diaz, worker for software.coop
• dpavlin: Dobrica Pavlinusic, FFZG, Croatia
• fredericd: Frédéric Demians, Tamil
• gmcharlt: Galen Charlton, 3.2 RM
• jcamins: Jared Camins-Esakov, American Numismatic Society and elsewhere
• joetho: Joe Tholen / SEKLS / Kansas
• jwagner: Jane Wagner, PTFS
• Nate: Nate Curulla; ByWater Solutions
• owen: Owen Leonard, Nelsonville Public Library
• rhcl: Greg Lawson - Rolling Hills Consolidated Library
• sekjal: Ian Walls, ByWater Solutions
• slef: MJ Ray, past RM, worker-member of software.coop, Somerset
• tajoli: Zeno Tajoli, CILEA (Italy)
• thd: Thomas Dukleth, Agogme, New York
• wizzyrea: Liz Rea, NEKLS

Summary

Galen Charlton chaired the meeting.

Discussion of Options

Advocates for various options for upgrading the copyright license for Koha were given limited time to express their views.

[The advocacy discussion at the beginning was a bit of a mess but the chair moved on to manage the rest of the meeting brilliantly.]

Procedures for Ballot Options and Conducting the Vote

Votes were held on procedures for developing a ballot of options on the question of upgrading the Koha copyright license and procedures for holding a vote for the Koha community at large as had been done with a ballot of options for initially forming a legal entity for the Koha project.

Motions which were superseded by a later amended form of the same question are not included in the following summary. The full transcript is available. Spelling has been corrected for readability of quotations from the transcript.

Exclusion of Deficient Ballot Options

The issue was raised of the undesirability of upgrading the copyright license without the license being invoked with an or later version option. Choosing only from invocations with an or later version option will allow any user to upgrade the license when conveying copies of modified versions and preserves the option for the project as whole to upgrade the license in future.

Motion: "may I have +1/0/-1 on going with the "version n or later" for GPL/AGPL options that get voted on?"

Result: The motion carried.

"then, as far as options that have been significantly discussed it looks like we have
0. GPL2+
1. GPL3+
2. AGPL3+"

[0-2 is an ordered list of equal options where the particular number is not an evaluation as in lists in which items are numbered starting with 0.]

Voting Announcement and Duration

Motion: "voting is to start at a specific time (to be annonced at least three weeks in advance) and end at a specific time (at least two weeks after voting starts)"

Result: The motion carried.

Amendment to Voting Duration

Motion: "we have a motion for the voting duration to be at least three weeks"

Result: The motion carried.

Form of Announcement before Voting Period

Motion: "minimum require announcement of the vote itself to be: emails to koha and koha-devel on a weekly basis prior to the vote, starting at least three weeks before vote; blog update on koha-community.org; placement in koha newsletter, and encouraging to all Koha stakeholders to blog about it personally"

Result: The motion carried.

Voter Qualifications

Motion: "electorate = all individual people who self-identify as Koha stakeholders; voting to be non-anonymous; voter to state nature of stakeholdership during voting"

Result: The motion carried.

Thomas Dukleth raised "I think that relationship [to Koha] should be a blank box not a drop down list." There was one concurrence but no vote on the issue raised for reasons of not making it too easy for people who do not have an actual relationship to Koha to pretend to have one for the sake of voting.

Voting Method

Preference Voting with Revoting Allowed

There was some discussion of preference voting methods.

MJ Ray introduced the idea of revoting to consensus. In conventional one time voting (voting to division), each person votes by a choice opted and may be divided from others by that choice. In revoting to a consensus, a concsensus can be built over the duration of an extended voting perioriod during which time each voter can always cast a different vote and is able to use knowledge of at least the number of unique votes for a particular option allowing each voter the opportunity to use the voting of others as a factor in reevaluting which option to choose. There was concurrence with MJ Ray's suggestion of voting to a consensus and in the idea of allowing revoting during the voting period generally.

Motion: "voting is to be done using some form of preference voting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_voting) with revoting allowed during the voting period"

Result: The motion carried.

Particular Preference Voting Method

Motion: "specific preference vorting method to be deferred to discussion on koha mailing list; discussion to take at least one week but no more than two"

Result: The motion carried.

Ballot Options

Motion: "initial ballot to be proposed will have following items 1. GPL2+ (status quo) 2. GPL3+ 3. AGPL3+"

Result: The motion carried.

MJ Ray raised an objection to the use of Latin for no change. Immediate discussion concentrated on a misspelling corrected for clarity of the summary. There was no amended motion but the issue will be subject to discussion on the mailing list.

Summary of Ballot Options

Motion: "by two weeks from now, brief descriptions of the ballot options to be prepared; where brief = 150 words in English + link to koha-community.org wiki; descriptions to be written by a known proponent(s) of the option"

Result: The motion carried.

MJ Ray volunteered to write a summary for the no change option of GPL 2 with an or a later version invocation.

Chris Nighswonger, Thomas Dukleth, and Davi Diaz volunteered to write a summary for upgrading GPL 3 with an or a later version invocation.

Thomas Dukleth and Davi Diaz volunteered to write a summary for upgrading AGPL 3 with an or a later version invocation.

[Obviously in need of rescheduling as explained at the top of this page.]

Forum for Discussion

Motion: "discussion of all ballot issues, and the ballot itself, to take place on the main Koha mailing list (AKA the katipo.co.nz one)"

Result: The motion carried.

Voting Schedule

'Motion: "September 11th is a bit late, I think - how about 23 August => 19 September (four week voting period)"

Result: The motion carried.

[Obviously in need of rescheduling as explained at the top of this page.]

Confirmations

Motion: "and as a possible final administrative item - time for vote to be confirmed at next general meeting ... [and the voting method] would be reconfirmed by that point"

Result: The motion carried.

[As explained at the top of this page, the issue was deferred at the next general #koha IRC meeting for the temporary lack of availability of some principle advocates of some options.]

Transcript

http://irc.koha-community.org/koha/2010-07-13#i_471342