Re: [python-committers] Identify roles of the BDFL

[Brett Cannon]

On Sat, Jul 14, 2018, 15:56 Brett Cannon,  wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 17:11 Carol Willing,  wrote:
>
>> On Jul 13, 2018, at 11:39 AM, Brett Cannon  wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 13 Jul 2018 at 03:44 Victor Stinner  wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> 2018-07-12 19:12 GMT+02:00 Mariatta Wijaya :
>>>
>>>
>>> * Diversity. Last years, the BDFL was a strong player to enhance the
>>> diversity of core developers and contributors by mentoring directly
>>> Mariatta Wijaya, and suggesting regularly to mentor more people from
>>> minorities whenever possible. He also likes to wear PyLadies t-shirt
>>> and support DjangoGirls ;-)
>>>
>>
>> I lump this into the community and PR bucket as I don't know if we need
>> to be worrying about appointing a head of diversity right now as that
>> doesn't tie into governance. If, once this is all over, we want to take our
>> diversity efforts to another level then a diversity SIG could be formed,
>> but I don't see this as a BDFL thing and more of a team thing that someone
>> choose to spearhead.
>>
>>
>> Brett,
>>
>> I'm wondering if prematurely placing this in the community and PR bucket
>> gives mentoring and inclusion among the core developer enviroment enough
>> strategic importance. Knowing how gracious you are, I suspect that you
>> personally are viewing it as such. Yet, I'm not sure that by removing this
>> as a role that Guido has played is best for the language or the developer
>> community.
>>
>> If I look at the many important roles that Guido has played, I personally
>> believe that he has been someone who encouraged many women (and I'm sure
>> others as well) and most importantly provided a safe place to share ideas.
>> If we reflect on Mariatta's PyCon talk and Summit talk, it's clear that we
>> should not overlook this role as growth and improvements still need to
>> happen here.
>>
>> I believe that improving the overall communication and professionalism on
>> mailing lists and PEPs is important to continuously improve the culture and
>> discourse. While this may help improve inclusion (and is a step in the
>> right direction), I would encourage everyone to reflect on Mariatta's talks
>> and consider whether improvement will happen if members of
>> GUIDO/elders/triumvirate/kittens of entropy and anarchy/pick your
>> governance/etc. don't believe, embrace, and make this a priority  in
>> stewarding the future of the Python language.
>>
>> tldr; We don't need a head of diversity. What we need is leadership that
>> embraces inclusion and will steward the vision for improvements.
>>
>
> Yes, and I'm assuming no one would end up on any council who doesn't hold
> these views. My poorly made point is I don't know if we want to lump all of
> this together such that this council is expected to lead all of these
> points explicitly. IOW if I were to make a PSF comparison this is like the
> council being the board and they would be expected to support a diversity
> SIG/WG.
>

And after sending this I realized the council -> board analogy might
suggest more power than the council will probably have. Anyway, my key
point is I'm trying to avoid burnout for anyone ending up on this council
by making them directly responsible for too much while still expecting them
to be good representatives of the team (like I would hope we all strive to
be).


> -Brett
>
>
>> Thanks,
>> Carol
>>
>>
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Re: [python-committers] Identify roles of the BDFL

[Brett Cannon]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2018, 17:11 Carol Willing,  wrote:

> On Jul 13, 2018, at 11:39 AM, Brett Cannon  wrote:
>
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2018 at 03:44 Victor Stinner  wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> 2018-07-12 19:12 GMT+02:00 Mariatta Wijaya :
>>
>>
>> * Diversity. Last years, the BDFL was a strong player to enhance the
>> diversity of core developers and contributors by mentoring directly
>> Mariatta Wijaya, and suggesting regularly to mentor more people from
>> minorities whenever possible. He also likes to wear PyLadies t-shirt
>> and support DjangoGirls ;-)
>>
>
> I lump this into the community and PR bucket as I don't know if we need to
> be worrying about appointing a head of diversity right now as that doesn't
> tie into governance. If, once this is all over, we want to take our
> diversity efforts to another level then a diversity SIG could be formed,
> but I don't see this as a BDFL thing and more of a team thing that someone
> choose to spearhead.
>
>
> Brett,
>
> I'm wondering if prematurely placing this in the community and PR bucket
> gives mentoring and inclusion among the core developer enviroment enough
> strategic importance. Knowing how gracious you are, I suspect that you
> personally are viewing it as such. Yet, I'm not sure that by removing this
> as a role that Guido has played is best for the language or the developer
> community.
>
> If I look at the many important roles that Guido has played, I personally
> believe that he has been someone who encouraged many women (and I'm sure
> others as well) and most importantly provided a safe place to share ideas.
> If we reflect on Mariatta's PyCon talk and Summit talk, it's clear that we
> should not overlook this role as growth and improvements still need to
> happen here.
>
> I believe that improving the overall communication and professionalism on
> mailing lists and PEPs is important to continuously improve the culture and
> discourse. While this may help improve inclusion (and is a step in the
> right direction), I would encourage everyone to reflect on Mariatta's talks
> and consider whether improvement will happen if members of
> GUIDO/elders/triumvirate/kittens of entropy and anarchy/pick your
> governance/etc. don't believe, embrace, and make this a priority  in
> stewarding the future of the Python language.
>
> tldr; We don't need a head of diversity. What we need is leadership that
> embraces inclusion and will steward the vision for improvements.
>

Yes, and I'm assuming no one would end up on any council who doesn't hold
these views. My poorly made point is I don't know if we want to lump all of
this together such that this council is expected to lead all of these
points explicitly. IOW if I were to make a PSF comparison this is like the
council being the board and they would be expected to support a diversity
SIG/WG.

-Brett


> Thanks,
> Carol
>
>
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Re: [python-committers] Identify roles of the BDFL

[Carol Willing]

> 
> On Jul 13, 2018, at 5:25 PM, Barry Warsaw  wrote:
> 
> On Jul 13, 2018, at 17:11, Carol Willing  wrote:
> 
>> If I look at the many important roles that Guido has played, I personally 
>> believe that he has been someone who encouraged many women (and I'm sure 
>> others as well) and most importantly provided a safe place to share ideas. 
>> If we reflect on Mariatta's PyCon talk and Summit talk, it's clear that we 
>> should not overlook this role as growth and improvements still need to 
>> happen here.
> 
> Maybe we refactor this particular role of the BDFL?  It may be that given 
> Guido’s passion for this topic, he would still want to be active.  If so, he 
> would certainly still have the stature, respect, and voice to continue to 
> promote this within the community.  Of course, we don’t know whether that’ll 
> be the case or not.

Make sense, and I have no object to refactoring. I sincerely hope that is the 
case, but mostly I want Guido to do whatever rocks his world.

> It’s a good question though: should the Council primarily concern itself with 
> technical details of language evolution, or take on more of the other roles 
> that Guido traditional performed?  Or do you see more of an overlap there 
> (other than through the person embodying that role)?

Our messages crossed from a different post so I'm going to repost it here:

> [Barry] Procedurally, I think an informational PEP numbered in sequence is a 
> good place for the “design” of our governance.

[Carol] I've been debating all day how to respond to this informational PEP re: 
governance. While I think it's great to cull good practices from other 
communities, I'm not sure that Python really fits into any existing governance 
that other projects use. IMHO Python is one of the healthiest 
language/community in the open source world. There's a reason that the saying 
"I came for the language and stayed for the community" exists.

There's also a reason the Zen of Python has been so popular for so long. It 
works.

While this may be an unconventional idea, I would love to look at governance 
through the lens of these 2 universally held beliefs as we begin to "design" 
our goverance (Thank you Barry for phrasing so well).

---

tldr; If what evolves embraces the Zen of Python and "I came for the language 
and stayed for the community", I am confident that the language will benefit 
technically. Encouraging people to work together even through disagreement and 
to respect that more than one solution is possible (it doesn't have to be one 
is great and the other stinks).


> 
> -Barry
> 
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Re: [python-committers] Identify roles of the BDFL

[Barry Warsaw]

On Jul 13, 2018, at 17:11, Carol Willing  wrote:

> If I look at the many important roles that Guido has played, I personally 
> believe that he has been someone who encouraged many women (and I'm sure 
> others as well) and most importantly provided a safe place to share ideas. If 
> we reflect on Mariatta's PyCon talk and Summit talk, it's clear that we 
> should not overlook this role as growth and improvements still need to happen 
> here.

Maybe we refactor this particular role of the BDFL?  It may be that given 
Guido’s passion for this topic, he would still want to be active.  If so, he 
would certainly still have the stature, respect, and voice to continue to 
promote this within the community.  Of course, we don’t know whether that’ll be 
the case or not.

It’s a good question though: should the Council primarily concern itself with 
technical details of language evolution, or take on more of the other roles 
that Guido traditional performed?  Or do you see more of an overlap there 
(other than through the person embodying that role)?

-Barry



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Re: [python-committers] Identify roles of the BDFL

[Carol Willing]

> On Jul 13, 2018, at 11:39 AM, Brett Cannon  > wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, 13 Jul 2018 at 03:44 Victor Stinner  > wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 2018-07-12 19:12 GMT+02:00 Mariatta Wijaya  >:
> 
> 
> * Diversity. Last years, the BDFL was a strong player to enhance the
> diversity of core developers and contributors by mentoring directly
> Mariatta Wijaya, and suggesting regularly to mentor more people from
> minorities whenever possible. He also likes to wear PyLadies t-shirt
> and support DjangoGirls ;-)
> 
> I lump this into the community and PR bucket as I don't know if we need to be 
> worrying about appointing a head of diversity right now as that doesn't tie 
> into governance. If, once this is all over, we want to take our diversity 
> efforts to another level then a diversity SIG could be formed, but I don't 
> see this as a BDFL thing and more of a team thing that someone choose to 
> spearhead.
> 

Brett, 

I'm wondering if prematurely placing this in the community and PR bucket gives 
mentoring and inclusion among the core developer enviroment enough strategic 
importance. Knowing how gracious you are, I suspect that you personally are 
viewing it as such. Yet, I'm not sure that by removing this as a role that 
Guido has played is best for the language or the developer community.

If I look at the many important roles that Guido has played, I personally 
believe that he has been someone who encouraged many women (and I'm sure others 
as well) and most importantly provided a safe place to share ideas. If we 
reflect on Mariatta's PyCon talk and Summit talk, it's clear that we should not 
overlook this role as growth and improvements still need to happen here.

I believe that improving the overall communication and professionalism on 
mailing lists and PEPs is important to continuously improve the culture and 
discourse. While this may help improve inclusion (and is a step in the right 
direction), I would encourage everyone to reflect on Mariatta's talks and 
consider whether improvement will happen if members of 
GUIDO/elders/triumvirate/kittens of entropy and anarchy/pick your 
governance/etc. don't believe, embrace, and make this a priority  in stewarding 
the future of the Python language.

tldr; We don't need a head of diversity. What we need is leadership that 
embraces inclusion and will steward the vision for improvements.

Thanks,
Carol

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Re: [python-committers] Identify roles of the BDFL

[Barry Warsaw]

On Jul 13, 2018, at 03:40, Victor Stinner  wrote:

> Should we split the role "take the final decision on PEPs" into
> sub-roles for example? Do we need in advance to define BDFL-delegate
> for some kinds of PEPs? Or the BDFL should define per-PEP, which ones
> he doesn't want to handle and need a BDFL-delegate? In my experience,
> the BDFL delegation was done naturally, was not the source of
> conflict, and usually discussed directly with the BDFL.

I don’t think we need to be so formal about delegation.  As you say, it should 
generally happen naturally.

I actually think delegation will be more common, leaving mostly the 
language-level Standards Track PEPs for the BDFL (Benevolent Design Faction 
Lifers - okay, still playing with names :).

One tricky thing with delegation will be when a natural delegate is also the 
author of the PEP. For example, if Yury proposed some changes to async, he 
wouldn’t also be able to pronounce on it.  OTOH, Guido is of course still a 
developer and could be a delegate for such PEPs if he wants.  Just something to 
be aware of.

It’s possible that more decisions that have previously been informal will be 
best served by the PEP process.  For example, the pronouncement that 
dictionaries officially preserve insertion order would likely be handled as a 
succinct PEP.  One of the roles of the council would be to decide whether a 
change is PEP-worthy or not.  It’s possible that ideas that only show up on the 
tracker for example, need to be promoted into a PEP, and it would be up to the 
developer community to help identify those potential changes.

Cheers,
-Barry



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Re: [python-committers] Identify roles of the BDFL

[Antoine Pitrou]

Le 13/07/2018 à 18:36, Victor Stinner a écrit :
> 
> Let me elaborate this part. One quality of the BDFL (Guido) is to take
> unpopular decision when he knows that it is the right choice.
> 
> Some examples:
> 
> * PEP 572: assignment expressions.
> 
> * The PEP 446 "Make newly created file descriptors non-inheritable"
> was supposed to break the world... Well, it occurred and almost nobody
> noticed this Python 3.4 change... I like what Guido wrote on my PEP
> with humor: "We are aware of the code breakage this is likely to
> cause, and doing it anyway for the good of mankind." :-)
> 
> * Yury mentioned async/await keywords.
> 
> * Add your own example.
> 
> Well, maybe this "responsibility" goes against my idea of voting on
> PEPs :-) ("popularity contest")

Of the three you mention, only PEP 572 would have been controversial
enough to fail a vote, IMO.

Regards

Antoine.
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[python-committers] Identify roles of the BDFL

[Victor Stinner]

Hi,

2018-07-12 19:12 GMT+02:00 Mariatta Wijaya :
> What is the role of the successor(s)? Do we assume "whatever Guido did", or
> is this an opportunity to come up with a new process?
>
> One useful resource is Vicky Brasseur's talk: Passing the Baton, Succession
> planning for your project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jhkm2PA_Gf8
> The slides:
> https://ia800809.us.archive.org/2/items/pyconau2017-successionplanning/03-pyconau2017-successionplanning-with_notes.pdf
>
> Some ideas from that talk:
> 1. identify critical roles (e.g. PEP decision making)
> 2. refactor large roles
> 3. mentor the new successor, shadow the previous leader
> 4. document all the things

I liked this talk! (I attended it at FOSDEM)

To be able to replace the BDFL, IMHO first we need to define what are
the roles of the BDFL. I also think that it's an opportunity to split
the big central BDFL role into sub-roles: delegate some roles to
multiple people.

Let me try to list roles of the BDFL:

* Take a decision/PEP. For a Python change (usually a PEP), when they
are two good solutions and we fail to find a consensus, the BDFL
chooses his favorite solution. Usually, when the BDFL pronounces,
everybody has to follow his choice.

* PEP. The BDFL takes the final decision on a PEP. Usually, the BDFL
final decision only comes after weeks of discussions and when there is
already a kind of consensus (usually in favor of the PEP, otherwise
the PEP is abandonned earlier). For example, python-ideas list already
works well to reject ideas which should obviously be rejected for
whatever reason. Sometimes when the consensus is to reject the PEP,
the BDFL officially rejects it.

* Public Relations. The BDFL is our reference for the Public
Relations. We like to ask our BDFL what is his vision for the next 5
years, even if he usually say that he doesn't know and he is usually
not the one who propose new ideas :-)

* Community? In case of conflict between two developers, sometimes the
BDFL tries to solve the conflict. I'm not sure that it's an official
role of the BDFL :-)

* Community. (Here I will maybe speak for myself.) The BDFL is my
reference for the right level of humour and right level of tone (on
mailing lists and other medias). When the tone goes bad, sometimes the
BDFL speaks up to cool down the discussion.

* Language. The BDFL is our designer for the Python language. I would
like to generalize this definition to the general "taste" of Python:
the BDFL defines what is "pythonic" or not by blessing some coding
styles and blessing some new syntaxes. It's wider than just the pure
grammar of the language.

* Diversity. Last years, the BDFL was a strong player to enhance the
diversity of core developers and contributors by mentoring directly
Mariatta Wijaya, and suggesting regularly to mentor more people from
minorities whenever possible. He also likes to wear PyLadies t-shirt
and support DjangoGirls ;-)


Maybe it would also help if we list what the BDFL is not:

* The BDFL is no longer the technical reference to review
implementation changes. IMHO other people took this role somewhere
between Python 1.0 and Python 3.7. As it has been said in the other
thread, there are known experts in some areas of the Python which
requires specific skills. For example, Yury Selivanov is my reference
for asyncio. Well, that's a bad example, since Guido van Rossum ("as a
developer, not as the BDFL") is my second reference here :-)

* IMHO the BDFL is not the single one to decide to promote a
contributor as a core developer. It seems like our process using a
vote on python-committers works. I'm not sure that the process is
perfect, but at least, I don't see the BDFL here as the central key to
take a decision.


These list are likely incomplete, don't hesitate to complete them :-)


The question is now if a single people or a single small group of
people should get all these roles? Or if we can distribute these roles
to multiple people? Moreover, do all these tasks still need a BDFL?
For example, do we need a diversity BDFL?

IMHO the most critical roles of the BDFL is to design the language and
take decisions on PEPs.


To follow Vicky's talk, the second step is: "2. refactor large roles".

Should we split the role "take the final decision on PEPs" into
sub-roles for example? Do we need in advance to define BDFL-delegate
for some kinds of PEPs? Or the BDFL should define per-PEP, which ones
he doesn't want to handle and need a BDFL-delegate? In my experience,
the BDFL delegation was done naturally, was not the source of
conflict, and usually discussed directly with the BDFL.

--

By the way, I already started to work on "1. identify critical roles
(e.g. PEP decision making)" a few months ago, not directly for the
BDFL roles, but more generally on "maintenance tasks" and what are the
key responsibilities in Python:

http://pythondev.readthedocs.io/maintenance_tasks.html

Victor
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