This is a poor take on how to deal with the tyranny of the majority, in my opinion. I wasn’t saying it necessarily applied here, and was only bringing it up as a caution against absolute democracy. Here’s a longer form example:
Say you have a software project that operates as an absolute democracy. Each and every new software feature that the developers work on is decided by a vote of all users and contributors to the project. For vote after vote, the feature “implement screen-reader support” is passed over for shinier and more exciting new features, after all the vast majority of voters don’t use a screen-reader.
Wouldn’t you say that it is fair if eventually the developers told the community “Nope, we’re going to implement screen-reader support as the next feature”? Or do you believe the blind users should have to fork the project and implement screen-reader support for themselves? After all, they’ve been “free” to do that the whole time.
California just voted to keep slavery of inmates legal, as another example of tyranny of the majority.
Bleys is right, the community should’ve been in the loop earlier. We were (ironically) worried about potentially upsetting Ada and we just kept making the wrong decisions. Obviously, the move without a (at the bare minimum) heads up was the wrong one.
This is a poor take on how to deal with the tyranny of the majority, in my opinion. I wasn’t saying it necessarily applied here, and was only bringing it up as a caution against absolute democracy. Here’s a longer form example:
Say you have a software project that operates as an absolute democracy. Each and every new software feature that the developers work on is decided by a vote of all users and contributors to the project. For vote after vote, the feature “implement screen-reader support” is passed over for shinier and more exciting new features, after all the vast majority of voters don’t use a screen-reader.
Wouldn’t you say that it is fair if eventually the developers told the community “Nope, we’re going to implement screen-reader support as the next feature”? Or do you believe the blind users should have to fork the project and implement screen-reader support for themselves? After all, they’ve been “free” to do that the whole time.
California just voted to keep slavery of inmates legal, as another example of tyranny of the majority.
Bleys is right, the community should’ve been in the loop earlier. We were (ironically) worried about potentially upsetting Ada and we just kept making the wrong decisions. Obviously, the move without a (at the bare minimum) heads up was the wrong one.