Vote to promote Abhilash Raj as core developer

Committers
1
  • Promote Abhilash Raj
  • Do not promote Abhilash Raj
0 voters

I am formally proposing Abhilash Raj to be promoted to core developer status. Abhilash’s primary contributions will at least initially be for the email package, a library in need of additional contributors.

Abhilash is already well established as a contributor to Python. He is the project lead for GNU Mailman and serves as both a Mailman administrator and postmaster on mail.python.org. He has been instrumental in the migration from Mailman 2 to Mailman 3 on our infrastructure, and regularly helps out with postmaster duties. I have worked very closely with Abhilash since he originally came to the GNU Mailman project as a Summer of Code student. Over the years, he has continued to impress me with his technical abilities and sensibilities, his leadership, and his strong and considerate collaboration skills. When I stepped down as GNU Mailman project leader in 2017, Abhilash was the clear, unanimous choice to take over that roll.

In addition to that, he has a proven track record of contributions to the email package. I have mentored him in his recent PRs and have full confidence in his ability to manage bugs and commit directly to CPython. He has a good understanding of the workflow, policies, and procedures such rights would grant. He is kind to contributors and eagerly works with them to find the right solution.

From PEP 13:

… It is granted by receiving at least two-thirds positive votes in a core team vote that is open for one week and with no veto by the steering council."
PEP 13 – Python Language Governance | peps.python.org

Here is a list of contributions from Abhilash:

Merged PRs

Reviewed PRs:

Issues on bpo:

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I know that it can be awkward to discuss someone’s capabilities in an open forum, but I’m wondering if anyone (particularly those voting -1) would be interested in explaining their vote?

I have not voted yet, mainly because I haven’t had time to review his contributions, but I can say that I think Abhilash provided useful feedback and review for this PR of mine, and if the rest of his contributions are similarly high quality (a few spot checks indicates that they are) I don’t have any objection to him joining the core team.

I will also note that we can definitely use someone knowledgeable about the email module who can provide core review and merges - it’s sprawling, complicated and I think reasonably widely used.

The reason I think it would be especially good to have some people make the case against Abhilash is that if the vote does not succeed, it would be good to have a clear metric for improvement rather than a black box. From what I’ve seen so far, the main reason I could think for not promoting Abhilash is that he does not have a very long contribution history to CPython - but that is an inherently temporary situation and it would be nice to get it on the record for if there is a second vote. If it’s something else, then it would be a helpful guide for the core devs currently mentoring Abhilash.

(P.S. I do hope that this does not come off as in any way a criticism of anyone’s behavior - I think it is 100% fair to vote without explaining. I just want to encourage a constructive outcome no matter the result of the vote.)

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Previous discussion about promoting Abhilash Raj, last May: python-committers: Promote Mark Sapiro and Abhilash Raj as core developers. I gave him the bug triage permission at May 14 on the recommendation of Barry Warsaw.

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I quickly ready through Abhilash’s PR submissions and code reviews. They look generally reasonable and competent. So I’d like to give my vote for him.

On the other hand, I see that several people voted against him becoming a core developer. Could they give some reasons? It would help me make my mind.

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I’m also rather surprised at the no votes, and would like some additional details if you’re so inclined to post them here. If you have questions or concerns which you don’t want to air publicly, please reach out to me via email.

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4 posts were split to a new topic: Handling when people vote “no” on a core dev promotion poll

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Well… I’m gonna vote “yes” for now. Will revisit if some convincing argument pops up :slight_smile:

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+1 from me. Abhilash also came to PyCon mentored sprint for diverse beginners as a mentor for mailman project.

For the record I’ve requested that Abhilash be added to the new Python Triage team.

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I voted “no” and I already summarized what I’m looking for when I’m voting in Vote to promote Cheryl Sabella as a core developer. If I see someone who has been active on bugs.p.o, reviewing PRs, and writing high quality patches for more than a year, I vote “yes”.

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As per PEP 13:

It is granted by receiving at least two-thirds positive votes in a core team vote that is open for one week and with no veto by the steering council.

With 76% yes votes, and no veto by the SC, please join me in welcoming @maxking as the latest core developer!

7 Likes