Since 1179 (and with a few very minor exceptions in the centuries right after then -- none since 1612), the Catholic Church requires a super-majority of 2/3 to elect a new Pope. I don't see how the choice of a BDFL is so much more important to the Python community, than the choice of a Pope is to the Catholic Church; thus, requiring 90% rather than "just" 2/3 seems unwarranted.

In fact, a 90% requirement gets dangerously close to a requirement for unanimity -- allowing any member of the Sejm to shout "Nie pozwalam!" and thus end the session and nullify every decision made in the session. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto puts it, "Many historians hold that the liberum veto was a major cause of the deterioration of the Commonwealth political system" all the way to the partitions of Poland.

Let's steer well clear of this: those who cannot remember the past, etc, etc...


Alex


On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 11:07 AM Łukasz Langa <lukasz@langa.pl> wrote:

> On Jul 18, 2018, at 11:54 AM, Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> wrote:
>
> Are you saying that we should use some method besides voting, or that a higher percentage of yea votes is required?  If the latter, I have no problem with 66% or 75%.

The cleanest way would be for Guido to choose but he already said he wants to stay out of the process.

With that in mind, one alternative is for the President of the PSF to choose ;-)

...so realistically the only alternative is a vote. Given the gravity of the situation (a decision on how future decisions are made; long-term consequences), I propose:

1. Define a committer as anybody with GitHub privileges. While not everybody on this mailing list decided to get GitHub credentials, they can do it at any point. At the same time, by defining the committer set as GitHub contributors, we solve the issue of inactive contributors. And this is important because...

2. Require 90% participation for the vote to be valid.

3. Require 90% votes in favor for the proposal to pass.

If 2. or 3. fail, back to the drawing board. I'd lower those requirements only after a few consecutive votes fail.

- Ł
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