8 ms·

Python gets a new governance model

414 points by OrangeTux 8y ago

Hendrikto 8y ago
> Steering council members will serve for the length of single Python feature release; after each release, a new council will be elected. Won‘t that get old really soon?
- mjw1007 8y ago
  I expect in most cases the same people will stand and be re-elected. One advantage of doing things this way is that it makes it easy for people to step down when they've had enough.
- zrail 8y ago
  Python feature releases are not very frequent. The document notes that the second council (first to serve a full term) will serve for 18 months.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  It's only every 18 months. It'll probably be mosyly the same people all the time, Guido and Tim Peters could probably hold seats as long as they want them.
- porpoisely 8y ago
  Do you know if council members can be re-elected? Does "new council" imply a brand new set of council members? If so wouldn't that hurt institutional knowledge?
  - mcherm 8y ago
    > Do you know if council members can be re-elected? Yes, they can, and likely will be in many cases.
    - porpoisely 8y ago
      Thanks, that's what I figured. So the vote would be a formality most of the time and not something revolutionary.
      - fesoliveira 8y ago
        Well, it creates a way for other members of the core team to replace someone they disagree with without having to call for a no-confidence vote all the time. I don't know what you mean by "revolutionary", but the point of these kinds of councils is to uphold the vision and principles of the language, and so long as the people in the council are making the correct calls in those regards, there would be no reason to replace them.
  - zapzupnz 8y ago
    Because in any discussion about "new councils" ever, it never means that the entire council would be different. Be it a parliament, city council, a church committee, or a software project — the point isn't who is in it or for how long but rather that an election (or any other sort of opportunity for rearrangement) has been held. "New council", in this circumstance, is shorthand for "holding an election for the council".
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  This was borrowed straight from Django's process; our technical board gets re-elected every release cycle. It's a pretty low-traffic and low-turnover group in Django. I've done it four releases in a row, for example. When there's only one feature release in most years, it's not an issue at all to do a quick call for volunteers. In Django's case, often there's not a real need for an "election" since you only get as many volunteers as there are spots on the technical board.
chrisseaton 8y ago
Councils, committees, multiple obtuse voting systems, governance documents, 'courts' of appeal... Why are they so keen to construct such a grim bureaucracy for themselves?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  Zizek is famous for pursuing a line very much against the grain; people intellectually similar to him argue for a society organised informally and locally, like a commune - but he argues that he'd rather be living in a bureaucracy in which he doesn't have to worry about all the smallest decisions and direct democracy. To him, the trouble of the USSR wasn't all the bureaucracy, it was that it wasn't bureaucratic enough to the point where it was easy to game the system. >Žižek now believes that efficient bureaucracy is the necessary corollary of any successful future state. While often alluding to the utopian impulse that imagines a political community beyond “what is”—including Derrida’s “democracy of the future”—such imagining should not exceed the strictures imposed on the world by technological complexity, sprawling populations and megalopolises. In fact one should be able to take utilities and health services for granted. Freedom of choice should not have to extend to one’s electricity vendor and Internet provider, or even what hospital one wants to convalesce in.[0] and, >I think he agrees with Laclau and Mouffe, that every radical solution is temporary, 'lives in borrowed time'. This means that an 'organizational structure' must not become sedimented, but remain open. This probably sounds a bit abstract, but it matters, as it assumes the position opposite of e.g. Stalinism.[1] On some level I agree with him, as much as it's contrary to the self-organizing semi-anarchist hacker spirit. [0] https://criticaltheoryresearchnetwork.com/2017/08/10/bureaucratic-socialism-zizek-illusion-future/ https://criticaltheoryresearchnetwork.com/2017/08/10/bureauc... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/zizek/comments/6mmtpg/what_kind_of_organizational_structure_does_zizek/dk2rn7m/ https://www.reddit.com/r/zizek/comments/6mmtpg/what_kind_of_...
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    > Zizek Who? This person? [1] I'm at a loss. Could you explain what this has to do with this topic? From what I understand it seems to be in agreement with the principles of Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone [2]. "The book describes the socio-political tactic of creating temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control.[1] The essay uses various examples from history and philosophy, all of which suggest that the best way to create a non-hierarchical system of social relationships is to concentrate on the present and on releasing one's own mind from the controlling mechanisms that have been imposed on it. In the formation of a TAZ, Bey argues, information becomes a key tool that sneaks into the cracks of formal procedures. A new territory of the moment is created that is on the boundary line of established regions. Any attempt at permanence that goes beyond the moment deteriorates to a structured system that inevitably stifles individual creativity. It is this chance at creativity that is real empowerment." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone
stoicjett2 8y ago
This comment section is proof positive of why the Steering Committee was a good choice.
- forgottenpass 8y ago
  "<Mixed or negative reaction> to <thing I like> is proof that <thing> is good" is among the worst arguments in the world. It applies equally well to any non-unanimous change, therefore it means nothing.
  - ectospheno 8y ago
    It is a reversed argumentum ad populum and just as wrong.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    Ugh, yes. "Everyone thinks I'm wrong, which proves that I'm right!" has been a thing since Usenet at least, and it didn't make sense then either.
onlydeadheroes 8y ago
If it is anything like the Linux kernel, it is to prepare for the incoming purge of non-corporate-approved contributors...
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  Linux has never purged any of those. It is more like it got "conquered" by money and resources allocating developer time. For that matter, so will any truly important and developed FOSS. Not sure what do you expect, Mozilla model with an NGO, who can still be pushed by competition and wealth into irrelevancy? Ask about RedHat and their push for dominance in both init system, package management, GUI and audio server, conquering even Debian and Arch in the end, making Gentoo less relevant, making BSD compatibility hard. Countered only somewhat by Android and its practices, Google's money and software market.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - onlydeadheroes 8y ago
    Theo Tso fought against the backdooring of /dev/random by the NSA. That this backdooring was attempted was confirmed by Snowden leaks. New York times: "By this year, the Sigint Enabling Project had found ways inside some of the encryption chips that scramble information for businesses and governments, either by working with chipmakers to insert back doors or by exploiting security flaws, according to the documents." Later when the code of conduct was added to the Linux project, Theo Tso was attacked with bullshit accusations on the first day...
    - dooglius 8y ago
      Not that I disagree with your point, but the Snowden leaks only confirmed that the NSA does backdooring in general, not that the Intel rdrand instruction in particular was backdoored.
      - 8y ago
krn 8y ago
In my opinion, Debian has the best open-source governance model out of all the projects without a BFDL. Because it basically emulates it by appointing a single person to be responsible for the entire vision, yet making him still accountable to others[1]. Thus the horror of the "design by committee"[2] is avoided. [1] https://www.debian.org/devel/leader https://www.debian.org/devel/leader [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  And yet they take in many of RedHat solutions and decisions... mostly due to lack of manpower for the alternatives I suppose. Design by committee is avoided by using designs of someone else.
  - kibwen 8y ago
    Every design either comes from one person, or it comes from a committee. A project like Python has long since scaled far beyond the capability of one person to feasibly design. The same is true of any other major (or minor) programming language. Vague anxiety about design-by-committee is always in vogue, but it doesn't do us any good.
  - simonh 8y ago
    And RedHat takes projecys ftom upstreams they don’t contribute to and bundle them in their systems. Sorry, but this is a particularly mean spirited attitude. The open source model has always been to share your work On one hand and selectively use others work yourself where it makes sense. That’s what opens source is for. It’s what it means. BSD is free to commit their resources to those areas where they feel they can offer value or meaningful differentiation, and they do so.
  - ThePhysicist 8y ago
    I think there's nothing wrong with re-using good solutions that others have worked out instead of building your own just for the sake of being different. That's the open-source idea even, no? Freely reuse and build upon the work of others, so that we don't have to reinvent things again and again.
d--b 8y ago
Note that this is a 5-people committee, not a universal voting mechanism. That these guys will change often is a problem though.
- snuxoll 8y ago
  There are no term limits for steering council members, assuming they are doing the job adequately the core team can just let them continue in their seat. Giving a moderately frequent way to change up less-than-stellar-but-not-malicious council members without a no-confidence vote is a Good Thing (TM).
xg15 8y ago
It's curious that there was so much discussion about how to vote, while there seemed to be no question who would vote. The article mentions there was a pool of 94 eligible individuals but doesn't explain further where they come from. Does anyone have more info about that?
- jack6e 8y ago
  The link to the actual vote results [0] states that the electorate was "CPython core developers with a known email-address." [0] https://discuss.python.org/t/python-governance-vote-december-2018-results/546 https://discuss.python.org/t/python-governance-vote-december...
  - xg15 8y ago
    Ah, I see. Thanks for the info!
m23khan 8y ago
I hope that with this change, Python rise to popularity continues. It is a great language IMHO and good to see it being adapted so widely.
airstrike 8y ago
I find it fascinating that programmers like to discuss governance at such great lengths without any reference to the vast knowledge of Political Theory that lies at their fingertips. At the end of the day, I suppose this is simply yet another form of NIH
- village-idiot 8y ago
  I think it goes beyond NIH, although NIH certainly part of the problem. I think the moment political theory is mentioned, the response is basically that politics are gross and we should do better than that. This appears to stem from the idea that politics and all the negative aspects of it stem from some location other than people haggling over limited resources. This thought process is both ridiculously naive and a highly ineffective way to go about running a community. This thought process is not unique to engineering. You see it all the time in various utopian projects on both the left and the right. The idea that you can escape the grossness of political processes to a land of total freedom from capital/tyranny (left & right respectively) is extremely popular, and extremely silly. Time and time again we see these movements immediately recreate the problems they decry because the problem was people all along.
  - airstrike 8y ago
    You put it much more eloquently than I ever could. Thanks and couldn't agree more...
  - claudiawerner 8y ago
    >all the negative aspects of it stem from some location other than people haggling over limited resources. This only serves to express your view (or rather, ideology) that we're living in a post-ideological world in which battles are no longer fought over beliefs but only material access to resources. This is only valid as a pretty bad caricature of Marxism, in fact. >to a land of total freedom from capital/tyranny (left & right respectively) The left not only opposes capital but tyranny too. If you've read any leftist works after the year 1920 or so you'd know that most of them deal with various 'gross' ideas. >because the problem was people all along. No. The work in political philosophy isn't only to criticise our systems we currently have, it's to explain how these systems arise out of individuals and perpetuate themselves. Of course the problem was "people all along" - but people also have a habit of conjuring systems bigger than themselves[0]. Societies change people but people also change society[1]. The very notion of utopia has been criticised on the left, in particularly of course in the light of the Soviet experiment. What you're saying seems to imply we must abandon (i) any and every plan towards a better society (ii) any superindividual critique of totality, because both are doomed in failure due to the human condition. This is known as the 'human nature' argument against social projects and it's not very convincing. [0] "Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells." (Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto) [1] "The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice." (Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach)
marcoperaza 8y ago
It's incredible how infectious the democracy meme is. It makes most sense when determining how violence will be used within a society (i.e. the fundamental function of government). It makes a lot less sense for running projects and organizations that people are free to come and go from. But the idea's intellectual stranglehold is just too strong to resist. The merits of singular vision, unity of design, counter-majoritarian good judgment, predictability, and decisiveness should really get more credit in these contexts. As should the downsides of bureaucracy and democratic decision making: infighting, politics (the sacrifice of sincerity for popularity), gridlock, disunity of design, etc.
- B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
  > how infectious Hey, there's people working hard on that, it's not just some accidental freebie ... The system, however, does have positive feedback - the more you advertise, the more resources you have for advertising.
ksec 8y ago
I have to confess, I was always envy of Python. Look at those PEPs! Yes it may be a little too formal, but there are lots of PEPs, many discussions, and progress. Well the word progress might not be entirely correct, but lots of activities. Look at Guido! He was always on the front battling, arguing or trying to steer the ship. Look at Python and Data Science, it went from good programming language to learn to must have for Data Scientist and Machine Learning. PyPy! I have to confess, I was very envy of Python. I wish Ruby had something similar to PEPs, many more suggestions, Matz making more decisions, Ruby entering more Domains. Ruby could have grown itself 5x and its usage will still possibly be counted as a niche language. MJIT! That was until past few months. It wasn't until Guido Steps down from being BDFL for Python, before the simplest question pops, What happens to Ruby if Matz suddenly step down because of a similar "lively" discussions on features? And now looking at this "governance model", the bureaucratic nature of it. Makes me appreciate a lot more of how Ruby is being handled. This isn't to say the Python model is wrong, far form it. Java have a similar model and it is brilliant. During one of the recent talks Matz said he is already starting to work on Ruby 4.0, which is not about features or speed, but testing a model of future Ruby without Matz when he retire. He is enjoying life, and he is still having fun, but it will come a day when he retires, so he is preparing for it. Despite their syntax being somewhat similar, Ruby's values and culture that makes it a lot different to Python.
- bayindirh 8y ago
  When you need to inherit something that big (a corporation, programming language, a missle, etc.), you need to make sure that it won't be cannibalized or just killed outright. So you delegate your powers to a group of optimal number of people. Yes it's boring, yes it's slow, yes it's bureaucratic, but it's realistic and pragmatic. Python will continue to grow if they can run this governance model well. They can become debian of the programming languages.
kensai 8y ago
The three alternatives. - https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8010/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8010/ - https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8012/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8012/ - https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8016/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8016/
- detaro 8y ago
  Voting result linking to the six alternatives: https://discuss.python.org/t/python-governance-vote-december-2018-results/546 https://discuss.python.org/t/python-governance-vote-december...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
craftyguy 8y ago
OP posted a subscriber link to LWN... if you like the content then subscribing to support LWN is well worth it! They are one of (if not THE) highest quality Linux news sites out there.

414 points by OrangeTux 8y ago

> Steering council members will serve for the length of single Python feature release; after each release, a new council will be elected. Won‘t that get old really soon?

mjw1007 8y ago
I expect in most cases the same people will stand and be re-elected. One advantage of doing things this way is that it makes it easy for people to step down when they've had enough.
zrail 8y ago
Python feature releases are not very frequent. The document notes that the second council (first to serve a full term) will serve for 18 months.
hannasanarion 8y ago
It's only every 18 months. It'll probably be mosyly the same people all the time, Guido and Tim Peters could probably hold seats as long as they want them.
porpoisely 8y ago
Do you know if council members can be re-elected? Does "new council" imply a brand new set of council members? If so wouldn't that hurt institutional knowledge?
- mcherm 8y ago
  > Do you know if council members can be re-elected? Yes, they can, and likely will be in many cases.
  - porpoisely 8y ago
    Thanks, that's what I figured. So the vote would be a formality most of the time and not something revolutionary.
    - fesoliveira 8y ago
      Well, it creates a way for other members of the core team to replace someone they disagree with without having to call for a no-confidence vote all the time. I don't know what you mean by "revolutionary", but the point of these kinds of councils is to uphold the vision and principles of the language, and so long as the people in the council are making the correct calls in those regards, there would be no reason to replace them.
- zapzupnz 8y ago
  Because in any discussion about "new councils" ever, it never means that the entire council would be different. Be it a parliament, city council, a church committee, or a software project — the point isn't who is in it or for how long but rather that an election (or any other sort of opportunity for rearrangement) has been held. "New council", in this circumstance, is shorthand for "holding an election for the council".
ubernostrum 8y ago
This was borrowed straight from Django's process; our technical board gets re-elected every release cycle. It's a pretty low-traffic and low-turnover group in Django. I've done it four releases in a row, for example. When there's only one feature release in most years, it's not an issue at all to do a quick call for volunteers. In Django's case, often there's not a real need for an "election" since you only get as many volunteers as there are spots on the technical board.

chrisseaton 8y ago

Councils, committees, multiple obtuse voting systems, governance documents, 'courts' of appeal... Why are they so keen to construct such a grim bureaucracy for themselves?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
claudiawerner 8y ago
Zizek is famous for pursuing a line very much against the grain; people intellectually similar to him argue for a society organised informally and locally, like a commune - but he argues that he'd rather be living in a bureaucracy in which he doesn't have to worry about all the smallest decisions and direct democracy. To him, the trouble of the USSR wasn't all the bureaucracy, it was that it wasn't bureaucratic enough to the point where it was easy to game the system. >Žižek now believes that efficient bureaucracy is the necessary corollary of any successful future state. While often alluding to the utopian impulse that imagines a political community beyond “what is”—including Derrida’s “democracy of the future”—such imagining should not exceed the strictures imposed on the world by technological complexity, sprawling populations and megalopolises. In fact one should be able to take utilities and health services for granted. Freedom of choice should not have to extend to one’s electricity vendor and Internet provider, or even what hospital one wants to convalesce in.[0] and, >I think he agrees with Laclau and Mouffe, that every radical solution is temporary, 'lives in borrowed time'. This means that an 'organizational structure' must not become sedimented, but remain open. This probably sounds a bit abstract, but it matters, as it assumes the position opposite of e.g. Stalinism.[1] On some level I agree with him, as much as it's contrary to the self-organizing semi-anarchist hacker spirit. [0] https://criticaltheoryresearchnetwork.com/2017/08/10/bureaucratic-socialism-zizek-illusion-future/ https://criticaltheoryresearchnetwork.com/2017/08/10/bureauc... [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/zizek/comments/6mmtpg/what_kind_of_organizational_structure_does_zizek/dk2rn7m/ https://www.reddit.com/r/zizek/comments/6mmtpg/what_kind_of_...
- Fnoord 8y ago
  > Zizek Who? This person? [1] I'm at a loss. Could you explain what this has to do with this topic? From what I understand it seems to be in agreement with the principles of Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone [2]. "The book describes the socio-political tactic of creating temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control.[1] The essay uses various examples from history and philosophy, all of which suggest that the best way to create a non-hierarchical system of social relationships is to concentrate on the present and on releasing one's own mind from the controlling mechanisms that have been imposed on it. In the formation of a TAZ, Bey argues, information becomes a key tool that sneaks into the cracks of formal procedures. A new territory of the moment is created that is on the boundary line of established regions. Any attempt at permanence that goes beyond the moment deteriorates to a structured system that inevitably stifles individual creativity. It is this chance at creativity that is real empowerment." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone

stoicjett2 8y ago

This comment section is proof positive of why the Steering Committee was a good choice.

forgottenpass 8y ago
"<Mixed or negative reaction> to <thing I like> is proof that <thing> is good" is among the worst arguments in the world. It applies equally well to any non-unanimous change, therefore it means nothing.
- ectospheno 8y ago
  It is a reversed argumentum ad populum and just as wrong.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  Ugh, yes. "Everyone thinks I'm wrong, which proves that I'm right!" has been a thing since Usenet at least, and it didn't make sense then either.

onlydeadheroes 8y ago

If it is anything like the Linux kernel, it is to prepare for the incoming purge of non-corporate-approved contributors...

AstralStorm 8y ago
Linux has never purged any of those. It is more like it got "conquered" by money and resources allocating developer time. For that matter, so will any truly important and developed FOSS. Not sure what do you expect, Mozilla model with an NGO, who can still be pushed by competition and wealth into irrelevancy? Ask about RedHat and their push for dominance in both init system, package management, GUI and audio server, conquering even Debian and Arch in the end, making Gentoo less relevant, making BSD compatibility hard. Countered only somewhat by Android and its practices, Google's money and software market.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- onlydeadheroes 8y ago
  Theo Tso fought against the backdooring of /dev/random by the NSA. That this backdooring was attempted was confirmed by Snowden leaks. New York times: "By this year, the Sigint Enabling Project had found ways inside some of the encryption chips that scramble information for businesses and governments, either by working with chipmakers to insert back doors or by exploiting security flaws, according to the documents." Later when the code of conduct was added to the Linux project, Theo Tso was attacked with bullshit accusations on the first day...
  - dooglius 8y ago
    Not that I disagree with your point, but the Snowden leaks only confirmed that the NSA does backdooring in general, not that the Intel rdrand instruction in particular was backdoored.
    - 8y ago

krn 8y ago

In my opinion, Debian has the best open-source governance model out of all the projects without a BFDL. Because it basically emulates it by appointing a single person to be responsible for the entire vision, yet making him still accountable to others[1]. Thus the horror of the "design by committee"[2] is avoided. [1] https://www.debian.org/devel/leader https://www.debian.org/devel/leader [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee

AstralStorm 8y ago
And yet they take in many of RedHat solutions and decisions... mostly due to lack of manpower for the alternatives I suppose. Design by committee is avoided by using designs of someone else.
- kibwen 8y ago
  Every design either comes from one person, or it comes from a committee. A project like Python has long since scaled far beyond the capability of one person to feasibly design. The same is true of any other major (or minor) programming language. Vague anxiety about design-by-committee is always in vogue, but it doesn't do us any good.
- simonh 8y ago
  And RedHat takes projecys ftom upstreams they don’t contribute to and bundle them in their systems. Sorry, but this is a particularly mean spirited attitude. The open source model has always been to share your work On one hand and selectively use others work yourself where it makes sense. That’s what opens source is for. It’s what it means. BSD is free to commit their resources to those areas where they feel they can offer value or meaningful differentiation, and they do so.
- ThePhysicist 8y ago
  I think there's nothing wrong with re-using good solutions that others have worked out instead of building your own just for the sake of being different. That's the open-source idea even, no? Freely reuse and build upon the work of others, so that we don't have to reinvent things again and again.

d--b 8y ago

Note that this is a 5-people committee, not a universal voting mechanism. That these guys will change often is a problem though.

snuxoll 8y ago
There are no term limits for steering council members, assuming they are doing the job adequately the core team can just let them continue in their seat. Giving a moderately frequent way to change up less-than-stellar-but-not-malicious council members without a no-confidence vote is a Good Thing (TM).

xg15 8y ago

It's curious that there was so much discussion about how to vote, while there seemed to be no question who would vote. The article mentions there was a pool of 94 eligible individuals but doesn't explain further where they come from. Does anyone have more info about that?

jack6e 8y ago
The link to the actual vote results [0] states that the electorate was "CPython core developers with a known email-address." [0] https://discuss.python.org/t/python-governance-vote-december-2018-results/546 https://discuss.python.org/t/python-governance-vote-december...
- xg15 8y ago
  Ah, I see. Thanks for the info!

m23khan 8y ago

I hope that with this change, Python rise to popularity continues. It is a great language IMHO and good to see it being adapted so widely.

airstrike 8y ago

I find it fascinating that programmers like to discuss governance at such great lengths without any reference to the vast knowledge of Political Theory that lies at their fingertips. At the end of the day, I suppose this is simply yet another form of NIH

village-idiot 8y ago
I think it goes beyond NIH, although NIH certainly part of the problem. I think the moment political theory is mentioned, the response is basically that politics are gross and we should do better than that. This appears to stem from the idea that politics and all the negative aspects of it stem from some location other than people haggling over limited resources. This thought process is both ridiculously naive and a highly ineffective way to go about running a community. This thought process is not unique to engineering. You see it all the time in various utopian projects on both the left and the right. The idea that you can escape the grossness of political processes to a land of total freedom from capital/tyranny (left & right respectively) is extremely popular, and extremely silly. Time and time again we see these movements immediately recreate the problems they decry because the problem was people all along.
- airstrike 8y ago
  You put it much more eloquently than I ever could. Thanks and couldn't agree more...
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  >all the negative aspects of it stem from some location other than people haggling over limited resources. This only serves to express your view (or rather, ideology) that we're living in a post-ideological world in which battles are no longer fought over beliefs but only material access to resources. This is only valid as a pretty bad caricature of Marxism, in fact. >to a land of total freedom from capital/tyranny (left & right respectively) The left not only opposes capital but tyranny too. If you've read any leftist works after the year 1920 or so you'd know that most of them deal with various 'gross' ideas. >because the problem was people all along. No. The work in political philosophy isn't only to criticise our systems we currently have, it's to explain how these systems arise out of individuals and perpetuate themselves. Of course the problem was "people all along" - but people also have a habit of conjuring systems bigger than themselves[0]. Societies change people but people also change society[1]. The very notion of utopia has been criticised on the left, in particularly of course in the light of the Soviet experiment. What you're saying seems to imply we must abandon (i) any and every plan towards a better society (ii) any superindividual critique of totality, because both are doomed in failure due to the human condition. This is known as the 'human nature' argument against social projects and it's not very convincing. [0] "Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells." (Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto) [1] "The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice." (Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach)

marcoperaza 8y ago

It's incredible how infectious the democracy meme is. It makes most sense when determining how violence will be used within a society (i.e. the fundamental function of government). It makes a lot less sense for running projects and organizations that people are free to come and go from. But the idea's intellectual stranglehold is just too strong to resist. The merits of singular vision, unity of design, counter-majoritarian good judgment, predictability, and decisiveness should really get more credit in these contexts. As should the downsides of bureaucracy and democratic decision making: infighting, politics (the sacrifice of sincerity for popularity), gridlock, disunity of design, etc.

B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
> how infectious Hey, there's people working hard on that, it's not just some accidental freebie ... The system, however, does have positive feedback - the more you advertise, the more resources you have for advertising.

ksec 8y ago

I have to confess, I was always envy of Python. Look at those PEPs! Yes it may be a little too formal, but there are lots of PEPs, many discussions, and progress. Well the word progress might not be entirely correct, but lots of activities. Look at Guido! He was always on the front battling, arguing or trying to steer the ship. Look at Python and Data Science, it went from good programming language to learn to must have for Data Scientist and Machine Learning. PyPy! I have to confess, I was very envy of Python. I wish Ruby had something similar to PEPs, many more suggestions, Matz making more decisions, Ruby entering more Domains. Ruby could have grown itself 5x and its usage will still possibly be counted as a niche language. MJIT! That was until past few months. It wasn't until Guido Steps down from being BDFL for Python, before the simplest question pops, What happens to Ruby if Matz suddenly step down because of a similar "lively" discussions on features? And now looking at this "governance model", the bureaucratic nature of it. Makes me appreciate a lot more of how Ruby is being handled. This isn't to say the Python model is wrong, far form it. Java have a similar model and it is brilliant. During one of the recent talks Matz said he is already starting to work on Ruby 4.0, which is not about features or speed, but testing a model of future Ruby without Matz when he retire. He is enjoying life, and he is still having fun, but it will come a day when he retires, so he is preparing for it. Despite their syntax being somewhat similar, Ruby's values and culture that makes it a lot different to Python.

bayindirh 8y ago
When you need to inherit something that big (a corporation, programming language, a missle, etc.), you need to make sure that it won't be cannibalized or just killed outright. So you delegate your powers to a group of optimal number of people. Yes it's boring, yes it's slow, yes it's bureaucratic, but it's realistic and pragmatic. Python will continue to grow if they can run this governance model well. They can become debian of the programming languages.

kensai 8y ago

The three alternatives. - https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8010/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8010/ - https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8012/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8012/ - https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8016/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8016/

detaro 8y ago
Voting result linking to the six alternatives: https://discuss.python.org/t/python-governance-vote-december-2018-results/546 https://discuss.python.org/t/python-governance-vote-december...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

craftyguy 8y ago

OP posted a subscriber link to LWN... if you like the content then subscribing to support LWN is well worth it! They are one of (if not THE) highest quality Linux news sites out there.