The steering council was asked to address the idea of code ownership in the project, and so we wanted to publicly state that we view everything as communally owned by everyone on the development team. That means no one has exclusive control over any part of the code base.
Having said that, we do recognize that there are experts who should be consulted as appropriate for various parts of the project. Their expertise should be listened to and weighed appropriately. But if there is a disagreement you can always appeal to the steering council to help in resolving the issue.
The council doesn't view this as a policy shift, just reiterating a pre-existing one. We also just wanted to emphasize that the steering council can act as arbitrator if a disagreement arises.