(This is an additional thing that we’re discussing on top of the existing process, which is intentionally out of scope of the PEP – can one of the moderators please move the discussion on PyPA’s use of PEPs + sponsors discussion into a new topic?)
If the choices are many PyPA members needing sponsor for PEPs vs moving to a separate process entirely, I strongly prefer the former.
To be clear, I don’t think status quo is a problem. The fact that I’d need a sponsor for PEPs that I propose, is not a major concern for me personally.
There’s > 5 core developers who are also PyPA committers. They’re all reasonable people. If that count reduces substantially, we can look into ways to address that problem – I’d prefer that we deal with it when it’s a more real issue.
If we’re at a point where no core developer (regardless of whether they’re a PyPA member) is willing to even sponsor a packaging-related PEP, we probably have a different problem that’s manifesting as no sponsor for said PEP. In the worst cases, we’d still have the SC to escalate to if things go south.
As for folks who are PyPA+CPython core developer, it’s fine that they don’t need a sponsor? They’re already wearing two hats, both of them come with responsibility of keeping the process from not loosing effectiveness and I’m willing to trust them on that front.
I’ll echo this sentiment.
I think that a separate process would also be sub-optimal, if we plan to continue calling PyPA an “authority” (see here) and we should to prevent unnecessary churn like that.