Hi,
Splitting this one off too because it's a rather different discussion,
although related.
On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 11:03 AM, Nathaniel Smith <n...@pobox.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Formalizing our governance/decision making
> ==========================================
>
> This was a major focus of discussion. At a high level, the consensus
> was to steal IPython's governance document ("IPEP 29") and modify it
> to remove its use of a BDFL as a "backstop" to normal community
> consensus-based decision, and replace it with a new "backstop" based
> on Apache-project-style consensus voting amongst the core team.
Here's a plea to avoid a 'core' structure if at all possible.
Historically it seems to have some severe risks, and experienced
people have blamed this structure for the decline of various projects
including NetBSD and Xfree86, summaries here:
http://asterisk.dynevor.org/melting-core.html
http://asterisk.dynevor.org/xfree-forked.html
In short, the core structure seems to be characteristically associated
with a conservatism and lack of vision that causes the project to
stagnate.
There's also evidence from the NetBSD / OpenBSD split [1] and the
XFree86 / X.org split [2] - that the core structure can lead to bad
decisions being taken in private that no or few members of the core
group are prepared to defend. I guess what is happening is that
distributed responsibility leads to poor accountability, and therefore
poor decisions.
So, I hope very much we can avoid that trap in our own governance.
Best,
Matthew
[1] http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/1994/12/23/0000.html
[2] http://www.xfree86.org/pipermail/forum/2003-March/001997.html
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