I also would like to start another thread regarding decision making in our projects. We had some discussions about decision making in our project.
As an ASF project we are supposed to make important decisions on the devlist. Full stop. "If it did not happen at the devlist, it did not happen" is something that you can hear often in the ASF - even if the only place you can actually see it written this way is https://www.apache.org/press/highlights.html#2017 The Apache Software Foundation has a very clear notion of important decision making: * official voting rules https://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.html * community development guidelines https://community.apache.org/committers/decisionMaking.html Both of those refer to decision making at the devlist. We had a few - unnecessarily heated - discussions on how decisions are made in the project. I personally think that our decision making should be done at the devlist - where anyone can participate. Things like versioning rules for API (hinted by Ash at the last dev call) or how our repo is structured (a new proposal raised today by TP) should - IMHO - be discussed here, at the devlist. Not in a slack thread, not in private discussion, not when two or more people talk to each other in a call. It's fine to discuss things outside - of course, but then any proposals for a change of things that we already discussed for weeks and either implicitly (by non-objection) or explicitly (by not responding to [LAZY CONSENSUS] or [VOTE] thread in the devlist) are just discussions. If someone wants a change, starting a thread in devlist is the right way of proposing a change. Especially for things that were discussed before - sometimes for weeks, and no concerns were raised. IMHO - it's very simple - want a change - start and lead a [DISCUSS]. [LAZY CONSENSUS]. or [VOTE] (depending on the level of disagreement and number of different opinions). Not very complex - it just requires to start and lead a discussion mailing list thread. Super inclusive and follows the archiving and all other requirements of the ASF (for example you do not have to agree TOC of Slack to participate) I would love to hear if others disagree with it and think that this process is overly complex or problematic. I think it's quite clear, reasonable and great to keep community decision making in check and follow all the rules and expectations of the ASF, but maybe there are some concerns with the process and we would like to improve it. I would love to hear what others think about it. J.
