[r6rs-discuss] Now, where were we?

[Alan Bawden]

   Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 21:48:46 +0000
   From: David Rush <kumoyuki at gmail.com>

   2009/2/22 Brian Harvey <bh at eecs.berkeley.edu>:
   >> (4) None of the Editors may be a member of the Steering Committee.

   ...
   > What on earth is the rationale for this rule?

   Conflict of interest. The SC could theoretically change the rules to
   favor a particular editor.

Don't jump to too many conclusions about the reasons for this.  Consulting
the archives of the group who drafted the charter I find:

An initial draft of the charter contained no language about dual
membership.  I argued that we should explicitly state whether it was
permitted or disallowed.  I didn't care much myself either way, but I
sensed that other people were assming that dual membership was disallowed,
so I suggested a sentence that said it explicitly.  Somebody else said that
was probably the right thing, and so my sentence was included in the next
draft.  But the notion of "conflict of interest" was never explicitly
discussed.  The charter grew that way because it just felt reasonable to
us all at the time.

I suppose we might have reconsidered this restrition if there were any
people who -obviously- belonged in both groups.  But that just didn't
happen.

The new Steering Committee inherits the power to ammend the charter (which
the current Steering Committee were extremely cautious about exercising),
and so they can change things like this.  They can even pull a full 1787
and replace our Articles of Confereration with a brand new Constitution.

- Alan