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“I'm basically giving myself a permanent vacation from being BDFL”

(mail.python.org)
2024 points randlet | 4 comments | 12 Jul 18 15:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.897s | source
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VikingCoder ◴[12 Jul 18 16:40 UTC] No.17516310[source]▶
I've begged GitHub to institute forms of government for repos.

For X action to happen, Y percent of the pool of people in the Z list need to approve it.

Membership of the Z list is granted when W percent of the T pool approve it.

Modifying the rules of government of this repo can only happen when L percent of the R pool approve it.

And on and on...

I could imagine a city or state government actually having its laws encoded in Github, and Github itself enforces the governmental system of checks and balances. Congress. Senate. President. Veto. Overriding a Veto. Laws of succession. Elections. On and on.

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smsm42 ◴[12 Jul 18 16:54 UTC] No.17516453[source]▶
Why Github? It's like begging your electrical company to institute rules for how multi-tenant building is governed. Github is just a (admittedly major) infrastructure provider, they are not and should not be in business of enforcing governance in open-source communities, which have very diverse governance models and it's great.
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VikingCoder ◴[12 Jul 18 18:46 UTC] No.17517470[source]▶
Because I don't want an individual (or small group of individuals) to have authoritarian power (BDFL) over a repo.

It's the governance of the repo that I want encoded. I make a pull request, and it's decided upon by the government system.

That needs to be encoded into Github.

And yes, "the very diverse governance models" is a challenge. One I think needs to be taken up, eventually.

I don't want one jerk to have the ability to ruin a repo. I don't want to have to fork a repo when the one owner dies. When I disagree with the owner of a repo, I'd like a process to resolve it.

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1. smsm42 ◴[12 Jul 18 20:07 UTC] No.17518180[source]▶
> Because I don't want an individual (or small group of individuals) to have authoritarian power (BDFL) over a repo.

And the solution is to trust Github (proudly owned by Microsoft) to be the rule enforcer? Hmm...

BTW, there's nothing wrong with small groups of individuals having power over repos - millions of small software projects are governed that way, with exclusive control of one person or small team of people over them. For the project of Python size and influence, it's not a good idea, but for many others it's fine.

> And yes, "the very diverse governance models" is a challenge. One I think needs to be taken up, eventually.

No, it's not a challenge, that is a natural diversity of life. Which should not be approached with one-size-fits-all attitude.

> I don't want one jerk to have the ability to ruin a repo.

With open source and proper distributed version control, it is not possible anyway.

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2. VikingCoder ◴[12 Jul 18 20:33 UTC] No.17518367[source]▶
If you trust Github to hold your repo, and to implement the mechanics of modifying your repo, but you don't trust them to implement a system of governance over that, then I think you're odd.

If Github screws up any of this, you fork to a different location.

> BTW, there's nothing wrong with small groups of individuals having power over repos

I'm not saying that shouldn't exist.

I'm saying that's inappropriate for some use cases. I'm asking for an optional feature that I would want to use, sometimes.

> Which should not be approached with one-size-fits-all attitude.

Which is why I said that it's a challenge to handle the different use cases appropriately.

> With open source and proper distributed version control, it is not possible anyway.

I'm asking for a feature which makes it less likely that I'll have to abandon a repo for a fork, in some circumstances.

If you don't want the feature, or if you don't trust people who use that feature, you're free to fork.

Why are you going out of your way to shit on my feature request, considering it does you absolutely zero harm?

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3. smsm42 ◴[13 Jul 18 22:41 UTC] No.17527493[source]▶
> If you trust Github to hold your repo, and to implement the mechanics of modifying your repo, but you don't trust them to implement a system of governance over that, then I think you're odd.

It's a complete non-sequitur. It's like saying "if you trust water company with delivering your drinking water, you should allow them to raise your children". Keeping bits in place (protected by crypto hashes so any shenanigans would be noticed by people holding copies of the repo very quickly) is not the same as letting them govern the projects. Technical and social functions are completely different. Moreover, the issue of trust and control are completely different - there are a number of people who I trust, but I don't let them run my life for me.

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4. VikingCoder ◴[14 Jul 18 20:09 UTC] No.17532108{3}[source]▶
...sigh...

I don't want the ability to accept a Pull request.

I want three of the five owners of this repo to have to accept it.

I propose that Github automate taking the votes, and taking the action if the vote passes. And preventing the action unless the vote happens.

That way I can trust that nothing happens without the proper procedures.

Your comparison is absurd.