Afternoon Zeev, I am not sure how much of the voting RFC I want to reform right now. I am responding to specific problems that seem to be best fixed just by raising the acceptance criteria. I do realize that these issues are difficult to tease apart however, so intend to at least try to suggest reformations for more than one section of the voting RFC.
Maybe it is time to have some of these conversations again. We do need to decide between us what is a legitimate contributor and what is not, in addition to who has a legitimate stake (such a FIG reps) ... All of us probably have ideas about that, but there isn't any consensus, so it's hard to suggest a change in this area. If a clear consensus emerged from discussion back then, it is reasonable to assume a clear consensus would emerge today, even if it changed. When you say that the voting RFC was rushed, this is news to me. Perhaps you can understand it being treated as a bible if you consider that we don't remember the bad old days, and these are the only rules we know how to play by. When new contributors come along, they don't have the benefit brought by the historical knowledge of PHP, they have to read the words in these RFC's and take them as ... gospel. I'm pleased to hear more ideas whatever. Cheers Joe On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 1:27 PM, Zeev Suraski <z...@zend.com> wrote: > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: kalle....@gmail.com [mailto:kalle....@gmail.com] On Behalf Of > Kalle > > Sommer Nielsen > > Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2016 8:46 PM > > To: Joe Watkins <pthre...@pthreads.org> > > Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net> > > Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Abolish 50%+1 Votes > > > > 2016-11-17 19:22 GMT+01:00 Joe Watkins <pthre...@pthreads.org>: > > > Afternoon Kalle, > > > > > > We have to start with the assumption that everyone that votes, does so > > > with good intentions. > > > > Ofcourse, but I just don't think it is fair that someone who made an RFC > and > > never contributed anything else to the project, can have an impact on > the future > > of PHP just because they got a wiki account or someone who got a VCS > account > > for a pear package they never released > > 10 years ago, but still got approved. I fully respect everyone who have > > contributed to PHP now and in the past for all their hard work, but I > would also > > like to see a line drawn. > > > > > I'm sympathetic to the view that active contributors should somehow > > > carry more weight with their words, or vote. But, I shy away from > > > actually saying that we should only listen to those people. > > > > I agree that we should listen to everyone, else it becomes this closed > gentleman's > > club it kinda used to be. Alternatively we can have a community vote, > which can > > be a factor to the end result ofcourse. > > FWIW, the current situation when everyone that has a VCS account gets an > equal vote to someone with a thousand commits to php-src was never intended. > > The Voting RFC talked about code contributors, and when it was discussed > verbally - we agreed we'll come up with specific criteria to what that > means. That never happened, and instead, the voting system was rolled out > simplistically giving voting rights to anybody with a VCS account or even > wiki access. In the same way, we agreed to provide leaders of OS projects > and prominent Internals contributors a right to vote - and here too, we > agreed (outside the scope of the RFC) that we'd come up with criteria for > that, but we never did. Long story short, what ended up happening de-facto > with the Voting RFC was very very different from the discussed intent. If > all those 'TBDs' strike you as odd, note that before the Voting RFC, things > were waaay less formal in the PHP world, and I, for one, was surprised at > how quickly the Voting RFC (as well as other RFCs) as well as the > newly-created status-quo that followed it became somewhat of a constitution > or a bible. If you take a look at it (wiki.php.net/rfc/voting), even > with a quick glance it's clear it was basically a pretty much first draft, > that miraculously became unanimously approved despite lacking clear > definitions and depth, and containing many flaws. > > I think it's much more difficult to fix it today, but I still think it's > worth it. E.g., regarding the Community voice, we could perhaps provide > FIG reps with voting rights, and practically say they represent the > community at large - instead of the vague and inactionable language we have > there today. We didn't have that option back in 2011. We now also have > github, where we can easily check the level of contribution of each VCS > holder, and perhaps come up with a certain bar on what constitutes enough > contribution for a vote. Those are of course just ideas, perhaps we can > come up with better ones. > > Ultimately, who gets to vote should be better defined; Pass criteria > should be better defined (in the neighborhood of what Joe's doing) along > with different types of votes; And we should also clarify how these rules > can be amended. Ultimately, all of these are at least somewhat > inter-connected. > > Zeev > >
