On Thu, Sep 25, 2014, at 10:59 PM, Alex Harui wrote: > In a past discussion about by-laws, some folks were adamant that voting > for new committer and PMC members be consensus votes so a single person > can block the adding of a candidate. > > Do any projects use some form of majority voting for new committers? > What are the reasons for allowing vetoes?
Yes, some projects have lazy majority/no veto for committer votes. CouchDB for example: http://couchdb.apache.org/bylaws.html Some reasons I'd give in favor of the veto model: * Consensus on decisions around new committers/PMC members is pretty important. A majority vote that overrides concerns of one or more PMC members rather than working through those concerns may not be good for the community. * You can usually re-visit a discussion to vote on a new committer or PMC member, but once they're voted on it's more difficult to undo it. If the no voter(s) are saying "not yet convinced," giving some additional time to work that out may be better for the community than forcing it and later regretting it. Reason *not* to have a veto: * It could be abused, or simply cause harm to a community because one or more PMC members are too conservative about adding new committers. Contributors lose interest and the community stagnates. [Other folks probably have different reasons they'd give in favor of or against vetoes, many of whom have been around much longer than I -- so I hope others will chime in as well.] Generally, I lean towards having a veto. If one member has a real concern, I'd prefer to see it worked through and achieve consensus rather than overriding someone. Best, jzb -- Joe Brockmeier j...@zonker.net Twitter: @jzb http://www.dissociatedpress.net/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
