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Python Gets New Governance Model (sdtimes.com)

The Python Software Foundation has settled on a new governance model for the programming language Python. The decision to come up with a new model was made after Python creator and chief Guido van Rossum stepped down as the "Benevolent Dictator For Life" (BDFL). SDTimes: The new governance model will rely on a five-person steering council to establish standard practices for introducing new features to the Python programming language. Based on tested methods, the proposal was designed to be "boring," comprehensive, flexible and lightweight, the steering council model document explained. "We're not experts in governance, and we don't think Python is a good place to experiment with new and untried governance models," software developers Nathaniel Smith and Donald Stufft explained in the Python documentation.

"So this proposal sticks to mature, well-known, previously tested processes as much as possible. The high-level approach of a mostly-hands-off council is arguably the most common across large successful F/OSS projects, and low-level details are derived directly from Django's governance." The steering council will serve as the "court of final appeal" for changes to the language and will have broad authority over the decision-making process, including the ability to accept or reject PEPs (Python Enhancement Proposals) (such as the one used to introduce this governance model), enforce and update the project's code of conduct, create subcommittees and manage project assets. But the intended goal of the council is to take a more hands-off and occasional approach to flexing its powers, Smith and Stufft explained.

8 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yup. Another one. by lgw · · Score: 4, Funny

    First order of business: the Python Code of Conduct!

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  2. Re:Yup. Another one. by Desler · · Score: 5, Informative

    They already have one and the world didn't end.

    https://www.python.org/psf/cod...

  3. Re:Yup. Another one. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If CoCs are really so bad, then why do critics always need to wildly exaggerate them and make up strawman arguments?

    If you can't find anything real to criticise, perhaps it is because in reality they aren't an actual problem.

  4. Re:Good thing they can't do this to C. by Phillip2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Or alternatively, this is the first step down the road to having a process which enables decisions to be made about what new features to be bought into python, following the departure of the original language developer from that role.

    It's also possible that SJW have managed to introduce their poison, by suggesting that a world where we are nice to each other is more pleasurable to live in than a world where we are not. It's a revolutionary idea and I understand why it has caused such a strong reaction.

  5. Re:Good thing they can't do this to C. by Seven+Spirals · · Score: 2

    You didn't see ADA and OSI TP4 take off? Dude, where have you been? We totally all use DECNet PhaseV, now. I'm joking, of course (you have to say this on /.). You should check out this old page old ADA discussion. It's right in the same vein and fleshes out the reasons why committees almost always design pretty crappy technology even after better alternatives dominate. Remember the retards in the late 1990s who wanted to make OSI network stacks replace IPv4? They were such passionate handwaving assholes who just couldn't understand why the world didn't want to be told how to do technology by some group of passionate handwaving assholes. The more things change, the more they just fucking don't.

  6. Re:Good thing they can't do this to C. by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A world in which the far left's thought police watch everything we say and issue punishments? That's "being nice to each other"? I cannot understand why anyone would be on the SJW side. Even if you're far left. They'll attack you, too. Just ask Jamie Kilstein, who was so far left that he didn't just participate in SJW mobs, he led SJW mobs. Until the day the mobs turned on him.

    SJWs are a community that shares both an ideology of complete dissatisfaction with existing society due to its perceived "oppressive" nature and a desire to destroy that society because it's not perfect and SJWs consider it irredeemably depraved. I really think we're not bad and to destroy us would be a great crime, but keep cheering the SJWs because they're going to make us all nice.

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  7. Re:Groovy ready to be Java inter-operable. by HiThere · · Score: 2

    Groovy is tied to Java, so it's not a plausible replacement. It's been decades, and nobody has seen fit to write a version that isn't tied to Java. This has advantages in certain use cases, but not in most of them.

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    I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  8. Re:Good thing they can't do this to C. by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

    I cannot understand why anyone would be on the SJW side.

    Well indeed. That's because the "SJW" side is something that exists in the head of you, Mashiki, lgw and a few other assortd individuals. Even you lot can't agree between yourselves precisely what an SJW is except to acknowledge that they're really really bad.

    Like really bad.

    The reason that you can't understand why anyone would want to be on the side of an extreme straw man that exists only in fevered imaginations should be obvious: no one does. Your fantasies are not reality.

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    SJW n. One who posts facts.