On Fri, 31 Aug 2018 at 01:52, Donald Stufft <donald@stufft.io> wrote:
I also know that Nick has a few concerns with accessibility to the wider community, which I believe I addressed in the other email thread, but to reiterate, I don’t think that the wider community cares one way or another, and I think the biggest benefit comes from being able to tailor this process to what we need. So we can adjust it as we go along to what makes the most sense to us, without having to go to python-dev and get them to change their process to fit our needs.
I don't think the wider community necessarily participates in discussions, but nevertheless I feel that the *ability* to do so is essential. There's already an undercurrent of feeling that the PyPA make decisions without considering the community[1], which I think we need to address. It's important to me that anyone in the community can comment on proposals and be heard (and that's not just "technically has the ability to", but rather it's "knows how to, and has the information they need to do so"). Currently, the PEP process is well known, and "everyone" knows how to participate (more accurately, they know they can, and that if they want to they can find out how to do so). Any new PyPA process *won't* be well known, by definition, and when decisions made using that process impact the public, there is naturally going to be a feeling that those decisions were made by an exclusive group. One way we can mitigate that is by pointing at a well-publicised, dirt simple process for people to contribute, plus a clear process of keeping "the community" up to date with progress of ongoing discussions. That's more than the current PEP process provides, but I think we *need* to provide more, simply to overcome the barrier of being an unfamiliar new process. I do agree that having a process that suits us, and isn't tied to Python-dev's different needs, is probably beneficial in the longer term. But we need to make sure that in the short term, we maintain the trust of the community that the new process is at least as open and accessible as the PEP process - and ideally more so (because it's better if the new process has benefits for both the community and ourselves, rather than just benefiting us). I need to review the proposal, because I can't recall right now what it says on the matter of a replacement for the PEP process, so maybe this is already covered. If not, it's something we should consider. [1] I'm not giving examples at the moment - if people want me to, I can, but if we are all aware of that sentiment, I don't think focusing on details is that important. Also, to give examples I'd have to choose between giving pip-specific ones, which don't feel like they make the point that this is a PyPA issue, or making comments about other projects' decisions, which I don't want to do. My examples aren't necessarily "PyPA governance" level issues, but in this context I don't think the community distinguishes between the PyPA and the individual projects (nor do I think they should - we should hold our individual projects to a similar standard of behaviour as we hold ourselves as a group).
All in all, I’m a big fan of the proposal, and I think it is the right direction for us to move in.
Overall, I think it's reasonable, and the change to have separate authorities over particular areas addresses my main concern over process. But I do think (as noted above) we need to take care over the question of openness. Paul