Hi, On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Travis Oliphant <tra...@continuum.io> wrote: >> >>> Linux: Technically, everything you say is true. In practice, good luck >>> convincing Linus or a subsystem maintainer to accept your patch when >>> other people are raising substantive complaints. Here's an email I >>> googled up in a few moments, in which Linus yells at people for trying >>> to submit a patch to him without making sure that all interested >>> parties have agreed: >>> https://lkml.org/lkml/2009/9/14/481 >>> Stuff regularly sits outside the kernel tree in limbo for *years* >>> while people debate different approaches back and forth. >> >> To which I'd add: >> >> "In fact, for [Linus'] decisions to be received as legitimate, they >> have to be consistent with the consensus of the opinions of >> participating developers as manifest on Linux mailing lists. It is not >> unusual for him to back down from a decision under the pressure of >> criticism from other developers. His position is based on the >> recognition of his fitness by the community of Linux developers and >> this type of authority is, therefore, constantly subject to >> withdrawal. His role is not that of a boss or a manager in the usual >> sense. In the final analysis, the direction of the project springs >> from the cumulative synthesis of modifications contributed by >> individual developers." >> http://shareable.net/blog/governance-of-open-source-george-dafermos-interview >> > > This is the model that I have for NumPy development. It is my view of how > NumPy has evolved already and how Numarray, and Numeric evolved before it as > well. I also feel like these things are fundamentally determined by the > people involved and by the personalities and styles of those who participate. > There certainly are globally applicable principles (like code review, > building consensus, and mutual respect) that are worth emphasizing over and > over again. If it helps let's write those down and say "these are the > principles we live by". I am suspicious that you can go beyond this in > formalizing the process as you ultimately are at the mercy of the people > involved and their judgment, anyway.
I think writing it down would help enormously. For example, if you do agree to Nathaniel's view of consensus - *in principle* - and we write that down and agree, we have a document to appeal to when we next run into trouble. Maybe the document could say something like: """ We strive for consensus [some refs here]. Any substantial new feature is subject to consensus. Only if all avenues for consensus have been documented, and exhausted, will we [vote, defer to Travis, or some other tie-breaking thing]. """ Best, Matthew _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
