On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 8:22 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 1:13 AM, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Sep 13, 2016 at 9:03 PM, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 10:25 AM, Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 1:37 AM, Eric Larson <larson.eric.d@gmail.com> wrote:
My feeling is that having a clear leader in place is important, so I'm also leaning away from the numpy model towards one where responsibilities are more explicitly assigned. Exactly how to best make that assignment is still unclear to me.
+1 for BD(FL) / leader-style from me, too. I like Matthew's suggestion of the top 5 active folks discuss to see which of them are actually interested in taking on that role.
Thanks for the feedback everyone. Looks like everyone likes this suggestion so far, so we'll give that a try.
Hi all, I'm happy to report that we've worked this out. Pauli was our preferred candidate, and he has agreed to take up the role of BDFL!
<snip>
The main question I'd like to raise, is whether we really want a BDFL, as opposed to an elected projected leader.
I think a BDFL makes sense where there's one person who started the project, wrote most of the code (at least at some point in the project's history), has been in charge since the beginning, and is still very active. I think that does correspond to the situation for Linus / Linux; Guido / Python; and Fernando / IPython. I don't think we have anyone matching that description in Scipy.
On the other hand, I do think it's important to have a project leader, with final authority on the direction of the project, and who takes responsibility for the health of the project.
So, I propose, rather than have a BDFL, we have a system for choosing a leader,
Which is exactly how it worked this time --- using the system of your suggestion, https://mail.scipy.org/pipermail/scipy-dev/2016-September/021476.html
say every 4 years, where we may or may not have limits on the number of consecutive terms.
While I agree that this model is better in the vast majority of situations, it feels to be a bit of over-engineering for scipy.
We can use that 4 year cycle to make sure we're reconsidering the direction of the project regularly, and thinking about where we could improve, and where we might be messing up. It provides a natural way to give people a rest from the job, if they want one. If one leader steps back, and sees another leader doing something better than they did, they can learn from that when they next have a leadership term.
I agree it's worth it to periodically sit down and think about the direction of the project. I'm not sure though there is benefit in tying this up to a machinery of fixed-time leadership terms, holding formal elections and so on.
Of course that requires some formalization, but I think it's a considerably better system than the BDFL, for our case.
It seems to me that the effort needed to formalize it is not worth the benefit, specifically in our case. My 2 cents, Evgeni