Hello, I’ve been working on updating our organization: https://github.com/django/django/pull/2947
This proposal attempts to address several issues with our current organization.
There’s no short version and any simplistic interpretation will be wrong. Here
are the main factors at play.
1) In theory, the core team is the group of committers, each of whom has been
judged capable of making code design decisions. (Astute readers will have
noticed that it isn’t true in practice.) This restrictive approach to staffing
makes it hard to cover all of our HR needs. Specifically:
a) It creates a chasm between non-core and core contributors, which has
perverse side effects and creates tons of frustration.
b) It drives away would-be contributors whose help wouldn’t involve
committing code to the main Django repository.
c) Even if such contributors are found, it’s hard to convince the core
team to bring them on board.
2) Since the BDFLs have stepped down, there’s no obvious way to counteract
honest mistakes made by core developers. This is making the core team
uncomfortable at times. While BDFLs hardly ever had to intervene, their mere
existence played a role. We need to recreate that role in a more democratic
fashion.
3) We’re good at burning out our most prolific contributors. Since we lack
structure, it’s too easy to become responsible for everything, until you can’t
handle it anymore and throw the towel. We must classify roles, write down who
takes what role, fill the gaps with new volunteers, and remove pressure around
stepping down.
4) As we have grown, having no explicit organization within the core team makes
it complicated for newcomers to figure who does what and how they fit in the
picture. It doesn’t erase the power structure. It merely hides it.
My proposal builds upon years of discussions at DjangoCons. It has gone through
many rounds of feedback inside the core team already. It’s an evolution, not a
revolution. It takes into account the growth of the project, acknowledges and
formalizes some things that we’re already doing, and introduces just enough
formal organization to make everyone comfortable.
It doesn’t encompass everything we could do to improve our organization. In
particular I expect some follow up work on how we manage roles in order to
avoid burnout.
I would like to ask the core team for a formal vote on this pull request,
according to our guidelines. [1] Please vote by the end of July in UTC
(2014-08-01T00:00:00Z).
Obviously, I’m voting +1.
Thank you,
--
Aymeric.
[1]
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/internals/contributing/bugs-and-features/#how-we-make-decisions
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