PEP 772: Packaging governance process

[barry (Barry Warsaw)]

@malemburg

I would use the term “voting members” instead of “community members”

+1

@malemburg

Are those non-profits you listed allowed to nominate 7 members each, or 7 members in total

Our thinking was 7 each.

@malemburg

The section should also clarify how these initial members are selected

Agreed that this needs more details. I’ll think on it, consult with my co-authors, and we’ll propose some more detail. In the meantime, I’m sure we’d welcome concrete proposals.

@malemburg

I too would remove the “non-profit” limitation from the list

+1 - it seems like consensus is converging on that.

@malemburg

Getting that quorum is going to be much harder than achieving simple majority, esp. as the number of voting members grows. I would not define a quorum requirement.

I remember some discussions among the co-authors about this, but unfortunately, I don’t remember the details. Maybe @Deb or @pradyunsg do. (PEP 13 also doesn’t specify a quorum.) I will put this and your other related suggestions on the list.

@malemburg

I would add a way for the voting members and the PPC to call for votes of the membership. The PEP currently does not include this possibility, but there may well be situations where the PPC is not clear about a certain direction, or where the voting members would like to push for a certain change to a policy, e.g. a change to this PEP.

@malemburg

Aside: PEP 13 also doesn’t spell out this possibility. Something we should probably consider as well.

Both true, but I’m not sure about the need. The PEP does describe how to change itself, which largely mirrors PEP 13. Obviously we don’t want to allow those whom the document governs to be able to make changes unilaterally.

The SC I think generally operates effectively even without this possibility, although I’m biased and others may disagree! Generally speaking, people can and do put any topic in front of the SC by way of its public tracker, can and do use SC Office Hours for F2F conversations (although not as often as we’d like!), and do conduct polls on DPO both at the request of the SC and on their own. If folks disagree with the SC decisions or priorities, they can (and I think do) make their disagreements known through the voting process, which seems like the right balance. I don’t think the analogy to the EuroPython Society or PSF Bylaws is a convincing one, for me at least. Ultimately the PC (and SC) are technical steering bodies, not directly in charge of legal or financial decisions. Therefore all the regular and established open source communication and influence channels are the way for the membership to help advise the PC are IMO most effective. For really egregious violations of the community’s trust, there are recalls and annual voting to take care of that.