python-peps/pep-8014.rst

PEP: 8014
Title: The Commons Governance Model
Author: Jack Jansen
Status: Active
Type: Informational
Content-Type: text/x-rst
Created: 2018-09-16

Abstract
========

This PEP proposes a governnance model with as few procedures, defined terms and
percentages as possible. It may also be called *The Anarchist Governance Model*
but uses *Commons* for now because of possible negative connotations of the
term *Anarchist* to some audiences.

The basic idea is that all decisions are voted on by a subset of the
community. A subset, because although the whole community is in principle
entitled to vote in practice it will always be only a small subset that vote
on a specific decision. The vote is overseen by an impartial council that
judges whether the decision has passed or not. The intention is that this
council bases its decision not only on the ratio of yes and no votes but
also on the total number of votes,  on the gravity of the proposal being
voted on and possibly the individual voters and how they voted. Thereby this
council becomes responsible for ensuring that each individual decision is
carried by a sufficient majority.

Introduction
============

The Commons Governance Model tries to ensure that all decisions are endorsed
by, or at least is acceptable to, a sufficient majority of the Python
community.

Unfortunately the previous paragraph has two terms that are very hard to
quantify in the general case: *sufficient majority* and *Python community*.
This is because both terms in reality depend on the *specific* case that is
being decided. To give an example of this difficulty: for a PEP that
proposes a backward-compatible change to some API a simple majority of the
core developers that were interested in voting on the PEP in the first place
is probably sufficient. But for a change that has more farreaching
consequences such as a Python3 to Python4 transition a real majority may be
wanted, and a demonstration that at least there seems to be sufficient
support in the user base. And for a change that transcends the
Python-the-language, such as decisions on abolishing non-inclusive language,
it becomes very vague.

The Commons Governance Model attempts to sidestep this issue by *not*
defining what the terms *sufficient majority* and *Python community* mean in
the general case, by proposing a body that will decide so in *specific*
cases.

The model proposes creating a *Council of Elders* that oversees the decision
process, determining whether a specific proposal has enough support on a
case by case basis. There will be a vote on every individual PEP (or
PEP-like decision), and the Council of Elders will declare whether the
outcome of the vote is sufficient to carry the decision.

The model addresses only the roles traditionally held by the BDFL in the
decision process, not other roles.

The term Commons_ in the model name is loosely based on its historic use as
a shared resource to be used by all and cared for by all. The picture you
should have in mind with this model is a sizeable group of peasants
discussing some plan for the future on the village green on a warm summer
evening, after which the vote is taken and the village elders pronounce
the outcome. Then the banquet begins.

.. _Commons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons

The Commons Governance Model shares some principles with some of the other
proposed models, and I can imagine it being merged with those.

Rationale
=========

The rationale for the model is that a model that casts everything in concrete will
have unintended negative side effects. For example, a governance model that
assigns voting rights to Python committers may cause an individual not
to be accepted as a committer because there are already a lot of committers
from the company the new candidate works for. 

As another example, setting a fixed percentage for PEP acceptance may lead
to party-formation amongst the voters and individual PEPs no longer be being
judged on individual merit but along party lines (if you support my PEP I
will support yours).

There is also the issue that one-person-one-vote is not the best model for
something like Python. Again an example: the opinion of core developer Guido
van Rossum should probably outweigh the opinion of core developer Jack
Jansen. Trying to formalize this in a voting model is going to lead to a
very complex model, that is going to be wrong on boundary cases anyway. The
model presented here leaves deciding on such issues to the (hopefully
sensible) council of elders.

Decision Process
================

All decisions go through a PEP process (if it turns out that this pollutes
the PEP namespace too much we create another namespace, such as Python
Decision Proposal, with a very similar structure). Each PEP has someone
responsible for it, called the *author* here, but that does not have to be a
single person, and it does not have to be the person that actually wrote the
text. So for author you could also read *champion* or *shepherd* or
something like that.

The PEP author is responsible for organizing a vote on the PEP. This vote is
public, i.e. the voters are identified and the results are known to all.
Voting may be simple +1/0/-1, but might also be extended with +2/-2 with a
very terse explanation why the voter feels very strong about the issue. Such
an annotation would serve as an explanation to the Council of Elders. Voters
are annotated with their community status (core developer, etc). 

The vote is clearly separated from the discussion,  either by using a
special mailing list or special subject, or a different technical method
(such as a website vote.python.org where people have to log in so their
community status can be automatically added, and their identity can be somewhat
confirmed).

The PEP author presents the PEP and the vote results to the Council of Elders. 
The council ponders the PEP content and its implications and the vote results.
They pronounce a tentative decision and this decision is published.

If the decision is that the vote results do not demonstrate enough support
from the community for the decision the burden is on the author to try and
gather more support and resubmit the vote at a later date. Alternatively the
author can retract the proposal.

If the tentative decision is that the results *do* demonstrate enough support
a fairly short waiting period starts (in the order of weeks). During this
period anyone can appeal to the Council of Elders, but *only* on the grounds
that the vote does not reflect a sufficient majority of the community.
After the waiting period the council pronounces a final decision. The PEP
is either accepted or, if the council is swayed by an appeal, goes back to
the state where more support has to be demonstrated.


Council of Elders
=================

The intention of the Councel of Elders is that they, together, are capable
of judging whether the will of the Python community is upheld in a specific
vote. 

The Council of Elders is *not* a replacement of the BDFL by a group of
people with the same power as the BDFL: it will not provide guidance on the
direction of Python, it only attempts to ensure the outcome of a vote
represents the will of the community. 

The Council of Elders is *not* like the US Supreme Court, which has actual
decision power, the council only oversees the voting process to ensure that
the community is represented in the vote. And the Council of Elders is most
definitely not like the Spanish Inquisition, because fear, surprise and
ruthless efficiency are things we can do without (but there is some merit in
using the cute scarlet regalia). The council is somewhat like the dutch
`Hoge Raad`_ (which is unfortunately often translated as Supreme Court in
English) in that they judge the process and the procedures followed and can
only send cases back for a renewed judgement.

.. _Hoge Raad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_Netherlands

Council operation
-----------------

The council members are volunteers, and most likely have other roles within
the Python community as well (not to mention a life outside Python). This
means that the workload on the members should be kept to a minimum. It also
means that it should be clear when an individual council members speak as
council member and when they speak as themselves. And we should care about
the emotional load: council members should not be held accountable for
decisions by random flamers on the Python mailing list.

The proposal attempts to minimize the workload through two methods:

- Most of the actual work is to be done by the PEP author and the community,
  the Council of Elders does not organize the vote and tally the results.
- The idea behind the first tentative decision is that this allows the Council
  of elders to make mistakes (by misjudging how far-reaching a PEP is) because
  the community has a chance to point out these mistakes. 
  
  Practically speaking this means that the tentative decision can be taken by
  a subset of the council, depending on the community to correct them.
  Getting seven hard-working professionals together every two weeks, even by
  email, may be a bit much to ask.
  
Clarifying when an individual Elder speaks on behalf of the Council is
probably best done by using a special email address, or some other
means that unequivocally flags this fact. There is an analogy with the Pope
speaking `Ex Cathedra`_ or just as himself (in which case he is not
infallible). The elders are most likely respected members of the community
and it would be a bad idea if they feel they cannot voice their personal opinion on
a PEP because they are on the council.

The decisions of the Council of Elders should be seen as decisions of the
council as a whole, not as decisions of the individual members. I am unsure
whether it is a good idea to have the whole council use a single email address
to ensure anonymity, because it is unclear whether this works in the first place
and it may take things too far. I am also unsure whether the discussions within
the council are private or open. I lean towards having individual email
addresses and keeping the discussions private, but I do not really know why.

.. _Ex Cathedra: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility

Council composition
-------------------

The council should not be too big nor too small, probably somewhere between
5 and 10 members. There is probably no reason to fix this number.
The members should be knowledgeable about Python and the
Python community, and willing to be impartial *while operating as part of
the council*.

Everyone in the community should feel represented by the council so it would
be good if the council is diverse: 

- scientists and technologists, 
- progressives and conservatives (with respect to the Python language),
- people with different cultural backgrounds, genders, age,
- etc

But: this should hold for the council as a whole. Individual council members
should not be seen as representing a specific interest group.


Council membership
------------------

Because the powers of the council are purely procedural it is probably good
if members serve for a fairly long time, and there are no things like yearly
re-elections with fixed terms and all that. 

Appointing members to the council could be done through voting, for example
under the PSF umbrella or by the core developer community (similar to how 
core developers are ordained currently). But it may be that co-optation works
just as well and is a lot simpler. Council members should be free to retire at 
any time. There may need to be a procedure whereby one council member can
be removed through a unanimous vote of the remaining members but this is
probably overkill.

There does need to be an "emergency brake" procedure to remove the whole
council but as it is intended to never be invoked it can be heavy-handed
(for example a true majority vote from all PSF members or all core
developers).

Selection of the initial council is to be determined. We could ask the old
BDFL to suggest some names. Or again we could have some initial names
circulate amongst the core developers or the PSF and vote on those.

Discussion
----------

This PEP does not handle other roles of the BDFL, only the voting process.
Most importantly, the direction of Python in the long term is not expected
to be handled by the Council of Elders. This falls to the community as a whole
(or to individual members of the community, most likely). There is also
the role of figurehead or spokesperson to represent Python and the Python
community to the outside world. Again, this is not a role that should be
handled by the Council of Elders, in my opionion, but by some other
person or body.

The proposal most likely favors conservatism over progression. Or, at least, the
danger of it leading to stagnation is bigger than the danger of it leading
to reckless blazing ahead into unknown territories. But: we should realise
that it is unlikely that a PEP like PEP 572 will pass if this model is in
place.

There are three open issues that need to be resolved before this PEP
is in a state where it is implementable:

- Openness of the decision process within the council, and whether the
  council speaks as a collective only (which would require a closed decision
  process) or not is still an open issue.
- The selection procedure for the initial Council of Elders needs to be defined.
- The procedure through which the Council of Elders is renewed and extended
  needs to be defined.
- The technical details of the voting process need to be worked out.

Copyright
=========

This document has been placed in the public domain.



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