Re: GR Proposal: replace "Chairman" with "Chair" throughout the Debian Constitution

Gunnar Wolf <[email protected]> Sun, 24 Jul 2016 17:16:01 -0500

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.vote,gmane.linux.debian.curiosa
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Wouter Verhelst dijo [Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 11:15:57AM +0200]:
> Hi Marga,
> 
> I second this amendment, although it introduces a minor awkwardness:
> 
> On Fri, Jul 08, 2016 at 03:27:56PM +0200, Margarita Manterola wrote:
> > -  <li>The Technical Committee and/or its Chairman;</li>
> > +  <li>The Technical Committee and/or its Chair;</li>
> 
> A "Chairman" is a person. A "Chair" may be an object.
> 
> I don't think anyone will misinterpret your proposed new wording into
> thinking the TC has a physical chair that someone sits on, but the
> s/Chairmain/Chair/ you apply does to me seem to introduce some
> grammatical ambiguity that could make the text of the constitution less
> clear than it might be.

Given the technical advances we see every day, this would allow a
future Technical Committee to appoint an AI agent, which could be
enclosed in an IoT-enabled chair (think of a system in the fashion of
the classic Cray X-MP¹) — Of course, given it runs on a completely
DFSG-free stack.

This change will allow the Technical Committee to do the best once
such free AI reaches the needed maturity level, without needing a new
constitutional amendment.

I, for one, welcome our sitting-enabling overlords.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray_X-MP

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