logoalt Hacker News

stavros • yesterday at 4:12 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

> That OMB rule, in turn, defines "consensus" as follows: "general agreement, but not necessarily unanimity, and includes a process for attempting to resolve objections by interested parties, as long as all comments have been fairly considered, each objector is advised of the disposition of his or her objection(s) and the reasons why, and the consensus body members are given an opportunity to change their votes after reviewing the comments".

From https://blog.cr.yp.to/20251004-weakened.html#standards, linked in TFA.

Replies

vitus • yesterday at 8:19 PM

To add to this: rough consensus is defined in BCP 25 / RFC 2418 (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2418#section-3.3):

   IETF consensus does not require that all participants agree although
   this is, of course, preferred.  In general, the dominant view of the
   working group shall prevail.  (However, it must be noted that
   "dominance" is not to be determined on the basis of volume or
   persistence, but rather a more general sense of agreement.) Consensus
   can be determined by a show of hands, humming, or any other means on
   which the WG agrees (by rough consensus, of course).  Note that 51%
   of the working group does not qualify as "rough consensus" and 99% is
   better than rough.  It is up to the Chair to determine if rough
   consensus has been reached.
The goal has never been 100%, but it is not enough to merely have a majority opinion.
➕ show 1 reply