[Numpy-discussion] Governance model request

Tue Sep 22 01:01:51 EDT 2015

On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 8:24 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Travis, and all,
>
> You might have seen I was advocating for having someone who takes
> final responsibility for the project, partly to get discussions
> unstuck, as you said.
>
> I agree with Chris, that at this stage, there is no-one who could be
> Benevolent Dictator for the project.  It seems to me that (nearly)
> everyone would agree that, if there is a leader, we would not want a
> person who dictates, but someone who is good at putting in the hard
> work and time it takes to hear all the arguments, and guide people to
> agreement, where that is possible.  If there is a leader, I think we
> should select them for those skills.
>

I don't really agree that someone couldn't be found.   I think the key is
that 1) the person would be able to make a decision about what needs to be
done if the community is stuck and 2) their is not really a "for life"
clause in that their would be a way to call for a replacement.

> For the proposal that you join the steering committee, I see two problems.
>
> The first is, that the members of the steering committee have to be
> the people who are keeping in touch with the day to day work of the
> project.   I am sure you would agree that, in the past, you have not
> had enough time for that.  Your recent emails about the new work you
> want to do, also imply that you may be too busy to get involved in the
> detailed discussions needed for getting the code merged.  In any case,
> I think you'd also agree that in the past you have hoped that you
> would have more time for numpy than you did.
>

I don't think this is true.   The steering committee would only be called
upon to unstick things and make decisions.    At those times, it would not
take long to come up to speed on the issues and make a decision.

> The second problem is that you have a potential conflict of interest,
> in that it is possible for the needs of Continuum to conflict with the
> needs of numpy.

I think this is a red-herring and should not be an issue --- except for
obvious situations where I would have to not participate in a "vote" (such
as whether or not Continuum would be an institutional sponsor or something
like that).

Everyone has associations and affiliations and goals and plans that could
lead to conflicts of interest.    This kind of requirement un-necessarily
limits the governance to only certain kinds of people who have only
"volunteer" time.   This is actually quite damaging as it limits the
ability for people to get paid to work on NumPy.    This feels like a
world-view debate that is actually best left to a different mailing list.

>  I believe, from previous emails on this list, that
> you don't think that is very important, but I continue to disagree
> about that.

For example, see this interview with Linus Torvalds,
> where he talks about going out of his way to make sure that people can
> trust his decisions, despite the fact he is paid to work on Linux [1].
>

But this is in a BDFL role and not a steering committee role with 9 other
members.     I don't think the situation compares or applies at all.   The
unwarranted fear this kind of reasoning can create in the mind of otherwise
reasonable people is unfortunate.

>
> In practice, the most obvious step that I can think of, is to defer
> the decision as to whether you are on the steering committee for six
> months.  I guess over that time you will be working with the other
> numpy developers more closely.
>

Fundamentally the "steering committee" is too big.     I think the
committee should be much smaller (no more than 5 and really three is the
right size for what it is supposed to actually do).   I've had experience
with small committees and large committees.   Large councils make it very
difficult to move things forward.

If it is to remain that big, I think it needs people on it like me, Robert
Kern, or David Cournapeau who have a longer history with the project and
understand why some of the things are the way they are.   I still hear far
too many conversations that start from a lack of understanding of the early
conversations that led to why NumPy is the way it is.   This lack of
context is not helpful and potentially dangerous.   The advanced indexing
discussions happening right now and the renewed array-scalar discussions
for example are both examples of features that have had previous
discussions and have a long history of back and forth between various
people.

>
> I should say that Stefan and I are working on a governance proposal,
> in this case for scikit-image, where we split the governance into 1)
> the developers doing the work and making the day to day decisions and
> 2) the trustees, usually from other relevant projects, or
> no-longer-active developers, who make sure the project does not go off
> the rails.   I think you'd be an excellent and obvious trustee, in
> that model.
>

I like the trustee model too and think such an addition to the NumPy
concept would help alleviate my concerns about actually being on a
"steering committee" but my preferred outcome is actually that the agreed
upon steering council be smaller and that people who have a right to vote
on things like the make-up of the steering committee be comprised of people
who have been significantly involved in the past 3 years (not just the past
one year).

-Travis

>
> Cheers,
>
> Matthew
>
>
> [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18419231
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-- 

*Travis Oliphant*
*Co-founder and CEO*

@teoliphant
512-222-5440
http://www.continuum.io
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