[License-discuss] The political / technical dichotomy

[Chris Jerdonek]

On Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 3:55 PM Bruce Perens <bruce at perens.com> wrote:

> We should keep this in mind as we consider processes like PEP. They are
> designed to create consensus, and their subject has mainly been technical
> issues where consensus is easier to form. Just how will they handle a
> failure to achieve consensus?
>

Python's PEP process definitely isn't designed to create consensus and
doesn't claim to reach consensus. For example, Python's relatively recent
PEP 572 ("Assignment expressions") from a year ago was highly contentious--
https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0572/
Some informal polls at the time indicated that an extremely high percentage
of core developers (something like on the order of 90%, IIRC) were opposed
to the PEP, and yet it was adopted. This is because Python was using the
BDFL model at the time. (Now Python is using a 5-member steering council
process to make decisions.) So the way of deciding on a proposal is
separate from the format of the PEP document itself. OSI can use whatever
method it wants (voting?).

The PEP format is largely a documentation issue. It doesn't say anything to
the effect that all objections need to be accommodated. Rather, they just
need to be documented for posterity, with an explanation of why the
objection was rejected.

--Chris



>
>     Thanks
>
>     Bruce
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