Forwarding from members@ (with permission) some comments about PMC's and releases, apropos the announce@a.o moderation discussion last week. The bracketed edit is by the original author.
> Roy T. Fielding wrote on Fri, 29 May 2020 03:52 +00:00: > > [...] we expect TLPs to be self-governing. > > > > Generally speaking, that means we expect a TLP to adhere to ASF > > policies when making decisions about what to release, and to use their > > own judgement regarding how that applies to a specific package. In > > turn, the PMC relies on the individual judgement of each PMC member to > > evaluate a package and decide whether the proposed release is better > > than the last release by the same name (within the same version scope). > > > > That decision is made by binding vote of the majority of PMC members. > > It's very unlikely that anyone outside the specific project will have > > sufficient understanding of the existing code base and releases to make > > a "better" decision, unless there is something in the package that > > would be illegal to release and the project is not yet aware of that > > fact. > > > > [...] and it simply is not true that a release needs to be held up > > until it meets one person's ideal. A release should go out as soon as > > it is legal and better than the last release. > > > > Specifically, a project performing a beta release is in a better > > position to make a release decision than a drive-by member with an > > opinion based on their experience in other projects/podlings. [Three people > > voting +1 and a majority positive is enough to make a decision.] > > > > > What is [our] general opinion about that? Are there regulations in place > > > to address such issues in TLPs? > > > > We don't have a general opinion. We have people who are responsible for > > making judgement calls for their own projects. As you can see, someone > > like me (who wrote the license and the original Apache release > > guidelines) might have very different minimum requirements than someone > > else. That's fine. What matters to us is that the people on the > > project, who have been granted the power to make this decision on > > behalf of the ASF, have done so as a PMC (using a lazy-consensus > > majority vote). > > > > We trust each PMC to do the right thing. They are the ones doing the > > work to improve each release. They are the ones who decide when to > > release. They are the ones who will help out their users if a release > > turns out to be a dud.
