Straw poll: Which governance proposals do you like best?

[brettcannon]

Me and PEP 8010

@njs

I think Brett is very courageous to be willing to stand for the PEP 8010 technical leader. I’ve been impressed by Brett’s contributions to Python. I have absolutely no idea whether Brett would make a good leader in the PEP 8010 sense, because it’s a completely different skillset.

First, thanks for the kind words.

Ironically I have heard the exact opposite reasoning against me being elected the GUIDO if PEP 8010 were to transpire: that I can lead folks but I don’t have enough technical chops to replace Guido. So does the union of people’s opinion count?

PEP 8010 and 8011 compared to community voting

So Mariatta said:

@Mariatta

I think that our inability to come up with consensus up to this point is one reason why community-based voting can’t always work. But that’s just my personal opinion.

Which led to:

@pitrou

I’m not sure I understand you. You were complaining about our inability to come to consensus. But with a decisive vote (i.e. a vote whose outcome entails a decision), the community will be able to move forward. So I don’t understand what kind of situation you’re worried about.

For me I think the key point for the PEPs that are very community-driven is that our inability to stick to what was outlined in the voting PEP suggests running things that way might get a bit troublesome. So for me that’s a plus for any of the PEPs that have a more structured system of how things should operate with some high-order power to keep things in line. So while having a time table for voting might keep things from dragging out, it’s also a bit harder to enforce if it’s a bit less defined who’s in charge to enforce such things (which varies from PEP to PEP).

There’s also more of a “us versus them” mentality when things are decided by votes (even with anonymous ballots people will know in general how people voted so it won’t really be unknown). Under Guido we seemed to be reasonably good at saying to ourselves, “well, that decision was made, so that is that”. But with voting it won’t be like that and people will end up taking sides and it will start to be obvious who is driving the language a certain way and that may lead to some bitterness because those people voted that way. Now it’s also quite possible it won’t work this way as much as people being just a bitter towards a single or triple of people, but I know for me I don’t expect things to necessarily run smoother if we are suddenly voting on everything after how things have gone down recently.

“Trying out” new governance models

@njs

I’m not a big fan of testing new governance models “in prod” on CPython.

That can also swing the other way of testing a new governance model for us. While you can argue that PEP 8010 is unique by electing a dictator, it is what we are used to, with 8011 going along that theme somewhat. But the other PEPs are new to this group of people and we don’t know how we will take to any of them as compared to having a singular leader.

Caring about a consistent vision

@njs

I’m personally not really worried about the consistent vision issue. If Python were a brand new language, then yeah, having a strong leader inventing the vision would be valuable. But that’s not where we are.

Personally, I’m worried. For me, “vision” goes beyond language design. It also extends to question like “do we rework the C API for potential performance, and if so how should that look?” Or how about “in the modern era of PyPI do we cut down on the batteries in the stdlib?” I think there are still plenty of question which will come down to a vision of how things should function as a whole which extend beyond just a choice on syntax or whether we want a None-aware operator.

Having this poll

@Mariatta

It seems like this is just to try to convince people to vote certain way?

I think a lot of us are curious how others are thinking. But I do understand the worry of people using the results of such an informal poll to unconsciously sway opinion. Luckily the voting system that we landed on is designed to help fight this sort of thing, so as long as people do try to vote the way they feel and not the way some people who chose to publicly state it will vote then it should help alleviate any unconscious bias.

I personally haven’t decided if I want to participate in the poll, but I think that if I do it will be extremely broad so as to not make any other PEP I would be okay with seemingly look like it has no support.