Do you love Microsoft?

I should have made clearer that the last point in the previous post only applies to what you should do at the BRM (Ballot Resolution Meeting). For we also have:

(8) the only sensible vote in the letter ballot currently in progress is “No with comments” or more formally “disapproval … for technical reasons to be stated”.

Abstaining because your relevant national committee cannot achieve consensus or 2/3 majority or whatever, is stupid. The only possible benefit of abstaining is to achieve rejection for lack of P-member quorum, but that is a fairly unlikely outcome, and risky to try during the letter ballot when you have no idea who else will end up abstaining. The problem with abstention is that you are out of it.

On the other hand, a “No with comments” (A) is likely to result in the obviously necessary “cleaning up” changes being made, (B) leaves you the flexibility of voting Yes or No later during the BRM (maybe by that time your national committee has managed to achieve consensus). If your national committee remains deadlocked, you can still abstain in a BRM vote and you have lost nothing.

A Yes vote makes you look like an obvious MS shill. If you are determined to vote Yes no matter what, it is better to put down “No with comments” listing a few trivial changes you would like, then you can switch to Yes in the BRM! Remember that even if the letter ballot gives a huge majority of Yes votes, there is still a BRM to consider the comments (and someone is bound to make comments). So the current vote is just to secure your place at the BRM for the real vote.