Hi everyone, I want to start a conversation about the Technical Board and its role in Django, and how I'd like to change it, including its name.
Since its inception, the Technical Board has effectively only functioned as a backstop vote for large features that require DEPs, of which there have been only two in the last five years. I believe it can be much more useful than this, while still not dominating Django's direction. I would like to initially suggest the following high-level changes, that I will start formalising into a process DEP if we reach broad agreement: *Eligibility requirements are loosened and made less code-oriented* Anyone who demonstrates a "decent" history of contributing to Django in any fashion, and who does not have any conflicts of interest, and clearly wants to work in the best interests of the framework, would be eligible. (Yes, this is going to be fun to define in a DEP). The current eligibility requirements include the need to have participated in discussions about the direction or development of Django in the last two years, which given the relative lack of big discussions in the last two years makes it rather problematic. *A more active role is taken in suggesting features* A regular "call for big ideas" is taken by the Board, and a clear set of "these are the technical/design/process/etc. ideas that we'd like to do" is published. This list would be, among other things, useful to raise money for grants to work directly on those features. DEP 10 already mostly provides for this - it says that the Board should "put out calls for proposals and ideas for the future technical direction of Django", so this would more be us just Doing The Thing rather than changing too many rules. *The name is changed to "Steering Council"* (like Python) I believe this is a more accurate reflection of what the group *should* be doing and a reflection that you should not need to be directly coding Django every day to participate - and names have meaning, and thus power. *The overall election process, other powers, and current members remain the same* I think this part works relatively well. I did consider if we should allow simultaneous Technical Board/Steering Council membership *and* DSF Board membership, as this is currently banned, but I think the reasons behind this still hold for now. This of course would be a "major change" and trigger a lot of procedure, notably a supermajority vote of the current Board, and a DSF Board vote, but I do believe it is in the best interests of the framework. I am very interested in any feedback on these suggested ideas, including any additional changes you think might be appropriate that I have not covered here. Andrew -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers (Contributions to Django itself)" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/django-developers/4d7a9a73-f231-4f01-93c9-59ba32b67a99%40app.fastmail.com.
