BUIP116: (closed) Articles of Federation Clarification

[Griffith]

BUIP116: Articles of Federation Clarification
Submitted by: Griffith
Date: 2019/3/27
Revised: 2019/4/14
edit 2019/5/5 by solex

Summary
There are currently inconsistency issues with the AOF that should be clarified.
- There is currently no section 2.5
- It is unclear between sections 2.9 and 2.10 if a no-confidence BUIP can be filed against a non-officer member or not. This is allowed via standard BUIP as was clarified by solex but it is unclear that this is the case.
- It is unclear that section 2.9 applies only to removal from an officer position, not the BU organization entirely.

NOTE
It is important to point out that regardless of this BUIP passing, since it is already written in the articles, members can be kicked out via a standard BUIP. This BUIP simply adds a section to clearly define the rules regarding non-officer member removal as it is not immediately clear while reading the articles. It also clarifies that article 2.9 applies only to the removal of an officer from their officer position, not removal of an officer as a BU member entirely.

Proposal
this BUIP would fix these issues by making the following changes in the order stated:

- section 2.6 has its number changed 2.5

- section 2.7 has its number changed to 2.6

- section 2.8 has its number changed to 2.7

- a new section 2.8 is added with the following text in an effort to clarify non officer member removal:
A member who does not hold an officer position (henceforth non-officer member) can be removed via a "no confidence" BUIP. This BUIP follows the normal schedule, however it must pass with a 75% super-majority of voters with at least 25% of members voting or greater than a 50% majority vote with at least 50% of members voting. A BUIP advocating for the removal of a particular non-officer member may not be occur within 4 months of a prior unsuccessful proposal advocating for the removal of that member. Multiple non-officer member removal BUIPs are not allowed. Submit them separately.

- section 2.9 is amended to the following in an effort to clarify that this article only applies to removal from the officer position:
An officer can be removed from their position via a "no confidence" BUIP. This BUIP follows the normal schedule, however it must pass with a 75% super-majority of voters, with at least a third of members voting. A BUIP advocating for the removal of a particular officer from their position may not be occur within 4 months of a prior unsuccessful proposal advocating for the removal of that officer. Removal proposals will be managed by an officer who is not affected by the BUIP. Multiple officer removal BUIPs are not allowed. Submit them separately.

- section 2.10 is amended to the following to clarify the difference between sections 2.8 and 2.9:
If actions of the President, Secretary, Developer, Pool Operator, or Member is in violation of these rules, that is grounds for removal. Any member may submit a "no confidence" BUIP against a non-officer member as per section VIII. Any member may submit a "no confidence" BUIP against an officer as per section IX. Members are exhorted to vote based on their belief as to whether the individual broke these rules rather than their personal opinion of the individual. A removed member may re-apply for membership. A removed officer may re-run for any position.

Motivation
Clarification of the articles is needed due to an inconsistency that makes it unclear what the process for member removal is as well as the distinction between removal from an officer position and member removal.

 

[imaginary_username]

>who does not hold an elected position or has not contributed code to either the BU, ABC, or BSV client repository in 2019

Would this not be open to trivial manipulation from the repo maintainers, i.e. members who wish to automatically keep their position might lobby their favorite repo to let the "contribute" trivial changes?

 

[Griffith]

hmm... you are right. it does. meaningful changes is too subjective...

I am changing it to be between 2019/1/1 and 2019/3/20. that is roughly a 3 month period but isnt subject to maniplation because the cutoff has already passed.

i am also going to add clarification that the code must have been merged in that time frame. to prevent people who have open PRs from claiming contribution

 

[kostialevin]

> who does not hold an elected position or has not contributed code to either the BU, ABC, or BSV client repository in 2019

I'm here since the beginning so I'm not an elected member nor a developer (to say the truth I am a developer but I've no time to contribute to BU code).
My contribution stays mainly in promoting BU and explaining bitcoin. I do it whenever and wherever I can.

Many times I feel I should have less power than the devs, we all know who they are, but I know that I have a clear idea of what bitcoin is and what BU should do. For sure I'm not acting "maliciously towards the organization".

Instead of purging, we could put a bit more attention on new applications, but I agree that the people that do the work (real work on the code), should have more voice than the simple supporter like me.

 

[Griffith]

unfortunately @kostialevin, that is the downside to this BUIP. the people in the situation who havent acted maliciously towards the org would get kicked along with everyone else who isnt a code contributor or elected member. i do not really see any other way to approach the issue though.

We could evaluate everyone individually but are then stuck with the decision of who should do the evaluations. The people tasked with evaluations would also end up having a lot of work suddenly dumped on them.

Non-code contributions are hard to quantify which i why i chose to take that path.

i guess this buip boils down to a "if you have done nothing wrong you will be fine" situation which i hate because it is a terrible way to look at things but i do not see a better option
[doublepost=1553677517][/doublepost]this has been changed to BUIP 116 instead of 115

 

[Griffith]

@solex can you please verify that this buip doesnt breach the articles somewhere

 

[torusJKL]

The articles give the possibility to remove members via a "no confidence" BUIP.
My interpretation is that such a BUIP should be per member.

In addition please note that such a BUIP must pass with a 75% super-majority of voters, with at least 33% of members voting.

 

[Griffith]

@torusJKL I dont know if i would consider this a no-confidence BUIP so much as a total member restart, although that is why i asked solex above to verify that this BUIP doesn't breach the articles.

EDIT: my interpretation of the paragraph in which percentages you mentioned are from (2,9) makes it seem like those only apply to specifically officers

 

[torusJKL]

2,X applies also to members and it refers to 2,IX.

X. If actions of the President, Secretary, Developer, Pool Operator, or Member is in violation of these rules, that is grounds for removal. Any member may submit a "no confidence" BUIP as per section IX.

 

[Griffith]

hmm.. yes, the list of potential subjects of a no confidence is inconsistent between the two.

 

[79b79aa8]

> I am open to feedback on who gets to keep membership and who does not. I thought using client contributions would be fair because it is an easy way to quantify who is actually contributing.

BU was set up the way it was precisely so that non-devs would help orient the work of the devs. It is an inclusive organization that recognizes that different areas of expertise all impinge on the development of bitcoin. As a result, it has so far avoided mistakes made by others (specifically: Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin ABC).

From the Articles of Federation:

"The Bitcoin Unlimited project seeks to provide a voice, in terms of code and hash power, to all stakeholders in the Bitcoin ecosystem."

"VI. Politics: Bitcoin is interdisciplinary
The voices of scientists, scholars, developers, entrepreneurs, investors and users should all be heard and respected."

To want to exclude peers form participation because you disagree with their views is profoundly, scandalously undemocratic. It is also ensures failure, as the BU founders saw.

 

[Griffith]

I am not trying to exclude anyone from voting. i never said we should stop people from being able to vote. i was asking for feedback on how to quantify who is actually contributing in helpful way and who isnt. it is much easier to evaluate tangible/measurable things. hence why i chose my original suggestion


edit: this is a pretty radical proposal for a BUIP, i think it is more than likely that solex will comment on this thread telling me it needs to be adjusted in multiple ways


edit edit: to be clear, i am perfectly ok with everyone except elected board members being kicked (which does mean i would be kicked too). and restarting membership from the ground up.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

So what ... having 51% attack to dissolve BU?

 

[theZerg]

This BUIP definitely breaks the right of membership given to members in the Articles.

Modification of the articles is only possible via a 66% majority with a minimum of 75% of the current members voting.

I would recommend that you reword this BUIP to explicitly amend the articles, but @solex has the final call on this.

Additionally, I'd like to gently note that its not @solex's job to do research for you. Its your job.

Although there are few limits to BUIP submissions, they do consume members time and should be carefully considered and worded. This is why the officers are allow to slow down BUIP submissions, requesting rewrites for clarity, etc. before the BUIP is formally opened to member comment. For this BUIP, @solex is responsible (I do it for technical ones).

Finally, I would like to say that I personally disagree with the premise of this BUIP. This organization was founded to encourage discourse and diverse voices, not to restrict them. This means that there will be internal disagreement. Internal disagreement is intrinsic to democracy. You and I may have our preferred fork, but this does not justify the removal of people with a different opinion.

If mutual respect means we support both forks, then we need to support them.

It is a powerful notion that the BUIP process essentially predicted the financial disaster that was the BCH/BSV fork. If BU member votes had been "in charge" of the chain, the fork and subsequent price decline would not have happened. We need to preserve this value in our organization.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Well, basically it's like proposing the firing of all members of a parliament because you suppose some being malicious.

 

[Griffith]

this BUIP has been updated to reflect specific changes in the AOF. feedback on the updates are welcome.

 

[imaginary_username]

In light of recent events, I will urge all members with any shred of conscience to vote for this adjustment, so we can remove @Norway from membership as soon as possible following proper procedure. His presence within the BU roster is a disgrace to the organization and hampers the chance of success of all future activities due to reputation damage. http://archive.ph/vujiz

 

[Peter Tschipper]

I disagree with this BUIP. While I understand the reasons for it I do think this is a slippery slope to BU becoming just another tyranny. The Articles are there for a purpose, just like any Constitution, to grant rights to it's members. It's of little use if we say, you are a member but you can't speak your mind or we might kick you out for disagreeing with the majority thought processes. I think at the minimum the BUIP should be amended in a way that if someone is going to get the boot it has to be for some tangible offence...not just because most people think the guy is jerk or don't like what he has to say...it has to be something tangible and serious that can be proved, like being caught for palgiarism...(Sitting here thinking, I find it hard to even come up with any other tangible offenses since we do most of our work online and separate from each other.)

 

[imaginary_username]

I can find at least one other, and I did - active doxxing is an act of personal endangerment, I do not consider it "have something to say" whatsoever. We might as well classify calls to arson as free speech if that's the case.

 

[Peter Tschipper]

@imginary_username that's a good one, I would definitely agree there...