Governance and responsibility

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Russell Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> writes:

> Ian Lance Taylor writes:
>  > The community did not entrust you with anything.  You don't speak
>  > for the community.
> 
> You just spoke for the community.  Why can you do it but we can't?

I don't claim to speak for the community.  The OSI (sometimes) does
claim to.

When I say that the OSI doesn't speak for the community, I'm not
speaking for the community, only for myself.  To the extent that I am
part of the community, and to the extent that others in the community
agree with me that the OSI does not speak for us, then the OSI does
not speak for the community.  I don't have to speak for the whole
community to make OSI's claim to speak for the whole community false.

It could be that the OSI speaks for the vast majority of the community
and I have an extreme minority viewpoint which can fairly be
discounted.  But the OSI doesn't know that, and at present can't know
that, except by guessing.  The same is, of course, true for me.  The
difference is that I don't claim to speak for others.

Ian