[SciPy-Dev] SciPy governance model

[Matthew Brett]

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 7:38 PM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 5:01 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 4:15 PM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 3:32 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 3:24 PM, Evgeni Burovski
>>>> <evgeny.burovskiy at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 8:22 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> [...]
>>>>>> Of course that requires some formalization, but I think it's a
>>>>>> considerably better system than the BDFL, for our case.
>>>>>
>>>>> It seems to me that the effort needed to formalize it is not worth the
>>>>> benefit, specifically in our case.
>>>>
>>>> Well - as a broader community, I think we'll have to do this anyway.
>>>> For example, I know that Stefan vdW wants to set up this model for
>>>> scikit-image.   I am sure he'd be happy to help draft it, I know I
>>>> would.  Maybe we could do that in relation to this PR, making sure
>>>> that we set some reasonable time limit for getting it done, say 3
>>>> weeks.
>>>
>>> It's still the case that this is a novel social organization you
>>> invented that AFAICT has never been tested by any F/OSS project, and
>>> directly goes against the F/OSS community's hard-won cultural
>>> knowledge about what kinds of organizations work well (see e.g. [1]).
>>> Now- these are not necessarily bad things! Our community is
>>> legitimately different than a "traditional" group of F/OSS developers
>>> in a variety of ways, and less encultured to the "traditional" way of
>>> doing things. And social experimentation is great -- how else can we
>>> find better ways to live? While there's a lot of wisdom and experience
>>> in Karl Fogel's book, it's surely not the final word.
>>>
>>> But... we should also be realistic that when someone shows up saying
>>> "hey I've worked out a better method of social organization based on
>>> first principles and thinking really hard, it'll 100% definitely be
>>> awesome", then historically it *usually* doesn't quite work out so
>>> nicely as promised. And it's often difficult to effectively do this
>>> kind of experimentation at the same time as doing the actual work of
>>> like, developing software. "Choose boring technology" [2] applies to
>>> social technology too.
>>
>> * I agree with boring technology, but I doubt you're really arguing
>> that choosing a leader at regular intervals is novel in open source or
>> elsewhere.
>
> I'm arguing exactly that. (In open source, obviously; scipy is not a
> nation-state.)

or an arm of local government or a school or a ...

>> Debian is an obvious example [1];
>
> But the Debian Project Leader is *nothing at all* like a BDFL. In fact
> their powers are extraordinarily limited; mostly it's just "convince
> people to do stuff by talking to them" (i.e. "exercising leadership")
> and "serve as a project figurehead". Which is what your links says!
> They explicitly *cannot* make decisions about the technical direction
> of the project; in the Debian system that power is delegated in a
> complicated way to individual maintainers, mailing list consensus, the
> CTTE, and GRs.

Look - please - calm down.   We can have serious calm discussion about
this.  Sure, Debian uses it's leader in a different way, as could we,
I don't think we have to bring out the shotguns here.

> If I seem frustrated in discussing these topics with you, then this is
> why :-(. As is probably obvious to everyone, I actually love geeking
> out about this kind of thing! But when you make such misleading and
> hand-wavy arguments it feels lazy, like you're more interested in
> vague in-principle discussions than in actually trying to put together
> a real system that can be implemented and help the project move on and
> accomplish its real goals.

So - this is really very frustrating.  I just proposed writing up a
document, and comparing to the current one, in a short and reasonable
period.   I told you that Stefan, who's credentials as a project
leader can't reasonably be challenged, is also thinking hard about
this.  It's terribly tiring to have to justify my good faith every
time we have this discussion.

 I know that's not your intention and I'm
> sorry if that sounds harsh. But at this point I'm having trouble
> seeing how your comments are helping move things forward in any kind
> of practical way.

I don't know about harsh, but it certainly sounds impatient and patronizing.

Incidentally, I had hoped you'd provide a couple of examples of BDFL
projects where the BDFL was not the founder / major author.  Maybe the
discussion could get better if we covered stuff like that.

>> * I don't know if an 'election' is the right method of choosing
>> someone, that's really up for debate.  Obviously an election is a very
>> standard way of doing that;
>> * I don't personally know of a BDFL system working well in the absence
>> of the criteria I put above, but it would certainly be useful to have
>> a look at a few examples.  Can you suggest a few to consider?
>>
>>> If scikit-image is set on doing this, maybe the pragmatic thing to do
>>> is wait and see how it works out for them? I've seen zero appetite
>>> from anyone else on this list for elections and such.
>>
>> I think your idea here is the BDFL is low risk and choosing a leader
>> is high risk, but it seems to me that both have risks, and that the
>> best way of assessing the relative risks is to consider and refine a
>> couple of concrete proposals, with discussion of prior experience,
>> where applicable.
>>
>> For the appetite thing, you are probably referring to the nervous
>> atmosphere that surrounds any discussion of governance, which is
>> presumably due to the strong reactions against any such discussion in
>> the past.   I'm sure you'd agree that that 'get it over with as
>> quickly as possible' is not the best way to come to a good solution.
>> Having said that, if Ralf and / or Pauli do not have much interest in
>> this topic, discussion will quickly become futile and
>> counterproductive, and we will have to stop quickly to avoid making a
>> mess.
>
> I'm more referring about the part where scipy *has* a governance
> document now that seems perfectly workable. It's not identical to the
> one I would have written, but so what, there are lots of workable
> models and this looks like one of them. I'm not seeing folks jumping
> in eager to redo that process for unclear benefits.

I had hoped to cover that in my previous email.   In practice, if Ralf
and Pauli do not want to discuss this, this discussion is pointless,
and we should stop this right now.   However, contrary to your
apparent assumption, I did not start this discussion to annoy, confuse
or impress, I started it in the hope of finding the best possible
model for Scipy governance,

Best,

Matthew