Jim Jagielski wrote: > At 12:52 PM +0100 11/9/02, Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote: > >>I used wrong words. >>I meant to say that "the other side has equally compelling arguments that seem to demonstrate that the justification is not valid. >> >>- A commits. >>- B vetos and says why, and the justification is rational. >>- A says that the justification of B doesn't stand, and it's rational too. >>- The community is split between the two opinions. >> > > In the above case, the veto cannot be rational and non-rational at > the same time, at least I don't see how without a real-world example. I took some time to think this over, and these are the resulting thoughts. Given a determinate context and background, it's possible that something can be both rational or non-rational. Extreme example: I can say it's 2 o'clock, and cite the local radio, you can say it's 8 o'clock, and cite your nuclear watch. The fact is that we are in different timezones, and thus our explanations appear perfectly valid to us and invalid to others. The broader and more high-level the scope of a project and the bigger the nubmer of sub-projects, the higher is this possibility. Add to this a common context, on which all others depend, and we have a problem. This is part of what IMHO has happened with Avalon. At a point, we asked ourselves what Avalon was for us, and got wildly different results on some points. Avalon is also highly fragmented in implementation, and we all have a common ground that is the framework. Given these thoughts, I still wonder how we managed to get along this far. Anyway, I'm happy that we are seriously discussing the formation of our PMC, and (re)starting from our common ground, the framework. All other stuff will eventually spin off, ask to come here, go to Apache Commons, to Jakarta Commons or be assimilated in the new united Avalon. It's painful, but cathartic nevertheless. -- Nicola Ken Barozzi nicolaken@apache.org - verba volant, scripta manent - (discussions get forgotten, just code remains) ---------------------------------------------------------------------