Live data from Hacker News

Python gets a new governance model

lwn.net

151–160 of 191 posts

Re: Python gets a new governance model

#151
post #44

In my opinion, Debian has the best open-source governance model out of all the projects without a BFDL. Because it basically emulates it by appointing a single person to be responsible for the entire vision, yet making him still accountable to others[1]. Thus the horror of the "design by committee"[2] is avoided. [1] https://www.debian.org/devel/leader [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee

I'm not sure your "virtual BDFL" works.

If it did, a virtual BDFL would have been able to stop the whole systemd vote from happening, declare that systemd would be the default going forward, and require that some number of developers come forward to take maintainership of alternate init system if init decoupling were to be a requirement in Debian. And Debian depends on a human WoT anyway. So a reasonable amount of developers saying, "Ok, we'll make sure everything can work on multiple init systems going forward," would be enough. And if that turned out to be untenable, they could make a different decision down the road.

But that couldn't have happened because it would have gone against the democratic spirit of Debian.

Compare to what Linus did with the pull request for kdbus. He said he trusted his maintainer who did the request, but also pointed out the amount of work and problems that could come from maintaining it. Maintainers argued, but ultimately it was the maintainers who retained agency and who ultimately maintained a sense of trust among each other.

Now imagine if instead there had been a vote of Linux users/foundation members/whatever to decide whether to include kdbus. Linux would have bled developers regardless of the outcome. Because that model of governance would have given them less agency to make decisions about the direction of the project.

Re: Python gets a new governance model

#152

> Steering council members will serve for the length of single Python feature release; after each release, a new council will be elected. Won‘t that get old really soon?

This was borrowed straight from Django's process; our technical board gets re-elected every release cycle.

It's a pretty low-traffic and low-turnover group in Django. I've done it four releases in a row, for example. When there's only one feature release in most years, it's not an issue at all to do a quick call for volunteers. In Django's case, often there's not a real need for an "election" since you only get as many volunteers as there are spots on the technical board.

Re: Python gets a new governance model

#153

I find it fascinating that programmers like to discuss governance at such great lengths without any reference to the vast knowledge of Political Theory that lies at their fingertips. At the end of the day, I suppose this is simply yet another form of NIH

I think it goes beyond NIH, although NIH certainly part of the problem. I think the moment political theory is mentioned, the response is basically that politics are gross and we should do better than that. This appears to stem from the idea that politics and all the negative aspects of it stem from some location other than people haggling over limited resources. This thought process is both ridiculously naive and a…

[flagged]

Re: Python gets a new governance model

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it goes beyond NIH, although NIH certainly part of the problem. I think the moment political theory is mentioned, the response is basically that politics are gross and we should do better than that. This appears to stem from the idea that politics and all the negative aspects of it stem from some location other than people haggling over limited resources. This thought process is both ridiculously naive and a…

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Python gets a new governance model

#155

I find it fascinating that programmers like to discuss governance at such great lengths without any reference to the vast knowledge of Political Theory that lies at their fingertips. At the end of the day, I suppose this is simply yet another form of NIH

[deleted]

Re: Python gets a new governance model

#156
post #44

In my opinion, Debian has the best open-source governance model out of all the projects without a BFDL. Because it basically emulates it by appointing a single person to be responsible for the entire vision, yet making him still accountable to others[1]. Thus the horror of the "design by committee"[2] is avoided. [1] https://www.debian.org/devel/leader [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee

I'm not sure your "virtual BDFL" works. If it did, a virtual BDFL would have been able to stop the whole systemd vote from happening, declare that systemd would be the default going forward, and require that some number of developers come forward to take maintainership of alternate init system if init decoupling were to be a requirement in Debian. And Debian depends on a human WoT anyway. So a reasonable amount of de…

> I'm not sure your "virtual BDFL" works.

My point was that a "virtual BDFL" works better than the "design by committee", not that it works better than a real BDFL. It doesn't. I completely agree with you.

Re: Python gets a new governance model

#158
post #157

The three alternatives. - https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8010/ - https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8012/ - https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8016/

Voting result linking to the six alternatives: https://discuss.python.org/t/python-governance-vote-december...

Re: Python gets a new governance model

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it goes beyond NIH, although NIH certainly part of the problem. I think the moment political theory is mentioned, the response is basically that politics are gross and we should do better than that. This appears to stem from the idea that politics and all the negative aspects of it stem from some location other than people haggling over limited resources. This thought process is both ridiculously naive and a…

[flagged]

> This only serves to express your view (or rather, ideology) that we're living in a post-ideological world in which battles are no longer fought over beliefs but only material access to resources.

I said no such thing. I also note the use of ideology as a subtle dig, as if I’m some extremist.

> This is only valid as a pretty bad caricature of Marxism, in fact.

The idea that my post was anti-Marxist exists only in your own head.

> The left not only opposes capital but tyranny too.

I know this is probably shocking, but a one sentence summary wasn’t intended to be a complete explanation for an entire system of political thought.

> If you've read any leftist works after the year 1920

I’m not sure where accusing someone of being poorly read is an acceptable debate tactic, but it’s not one here. Stop.

> you'd know that most of them deal with various 'gross' ideas.

The hilarious thing is that I’m encouraging people to engage with these ideas, and you’re attacking me as if I’d said the exact opposite.

> What you're saying seems to imply we must abandon (i) any and every plan towards a better society (ii) any superindividual critique of totality, because both are doomed in failure due to the human condition. This is known as the 'human nature' argument against social projects and it's not very convincing.

What you imagined to be your grand coup de grâce is rather soiled by completely misunderstanding my original point.

At no point did I say that improvement is impossible, that’s an obvious and shoddy strawman of an argument. My point is that politics comes from humans, thus any attempt to completely eliminate politics is doomed to failure. This is an encouragement for people to engage with political systems and political theory in order to improve our existence.

Re: Python gets a new governance model

#160
post #44

In my opinion, Debian has the best open-source governance model out of all the projects without a BFDL. Because it basically emulates it by appointing a single person to be responsible for the entire vision, yet making him still accountable to others[1]. Thus the horror of the "design by committee"[2] is avoided. [1] https://www.debian.org/devel/leader [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee

There are many horrors that can happen, and the issue which caused the current governance discussion for Python was not "design by committee".
Post reply on HN