On 6/15/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">Talin</b> <<a href="mailto:talin@acm.org">talin@acm.org</a>> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Michael Chermside wrote:<br>> I agree. If we have a PEP with rules for acceptance, then every time we<br>> don't follow those rules exactly we will be accused of favoritism. If<br>> we have informal rules like today and decide things on a case-by-case
<br>> basis, then everything is fine.<br><br>Let me make a suggestion that might help resolve the disagreement.<br><br>One of my favorite podcasts is "Life of a Law Student",<br>(<a href="http://www.lifeofalawstudent.com/">
http://www.lifeofalawstudent.com/</a>) in which a first year law student<br>named Neil Wehneman makes a daily podcast of what he learned in law<br>school that day. One of the ideas that he talks about (Intro to the Law<br>
#2) is the difference between a "Rule" and a "Standard":<br><br>A 'rule' is a definitive test, intended to provide certainty. An example<br>is the speed limit - you are either exceeding the speed limit, or you
<br>aren't.<br><br>A 'standard', on the other hand (at least, in its legal definition) is a<br>set of factors to be weighed by a judge when making a decision. Its<br>purpose is to provide flexibility, allowing human judgement to stay in
<br>the loop, but at the same time giving a framework for making those<br>judgements in a consistent way.<br><br>An example of a standard is fair use under copyright law. When a judge<br>decides whether something is fair use, they use a standard consisting of
<br>a number of factors, including the amount of the work copied, the<br>commercial or non-commercial use of the work, and so on.<br><br>Note that none of these factors are a simple "yes/no" decision -<br>instead, a judgement must be made as to how much a particular case fits
<br>the standard. A use of a work can be completely commercial, completely<br>noncommercial, or something inbetween. To the extent that it is<br>noncommercial, that weighs in favor of it being declared fair use; To<br>the extent that it is commercial, that weighs against.
<br><br>So what I would suggest, then, is the creation of a standard (in this<br>legal sense) for what factors should be considered in deciding whether<br>to include something in the stdlib.<br><br>Moreover, the standard should be clearly labeled as such - to prevent
<br>people from interpreting the document as a set of hard rules that they<br>can use to beat other people over the head with.<br><br>So for example, it might say something like: "To the extent that the<br>module has enjoyed widespread adoption and use within the Python
<br>community, this weighs in favor of inclusion." and so on.</blockquote><div><br>At this point, I am dropping the PEP idea and I am going to make it a general doc at <a href="http://python.org/dev/">python.org/dev/
</a> when a take my intro doc (<a href="http://www.python.org/dev/intro/">http://www.python.org/dev/intro/</a>) and break it out into individual docs for bugs, patches, committing, and getting things into the stdlib or language.
<br><br>So basically I am going with the Standards approach. =)<br><br>-Brett<br></div><br></div><br>