Hi Folks, In a recent discussion of reviving FLIP-313, I realized that we do not have an established convention in handling dormant FLIPs (FLIPs without interaction for months, even years) or FLIPs addressing the same issues.
To give a more concrete context, let's take a look at the example case of FLIP-313 and FLIP-498. May 23, 2023 - the discussion of FLIP-313 <https://lists.apache.org/thread/7vk1799ryvrz4lsm5254q64ctm89mx2l> was started. Jun 13, 2023 - the vote thread <https://lists.apache.org/thread/7g5n2vshosom2dj9bp7x4n01okrnx4xx> was started. However, somehow there was no vote casted. And there have been no activities on that FLIP since then. Jan 2, 2025 - the discussion of FLIP-498 <https://lists.apache.org/thread/kgbpj96b4lw1c39gq5p0j0t8b1ssm368> was started. It tries to address the exact same problem of FLIP-313, with a difference that it proposes config-based options instead of hint-based options. Jan 31, 2025 - the vote of FLIP-498 <https://lists.apache.org/thread/hckpyl24oqdqvfcrhfkjx2j37dtbyfg7> was concluded with acceptance. In a retrospective, I feel that there are a few things worth discussing, and my thoughts are following. *1. What we should do if a vote is open for long (e.g. over a month) without conclusion (accepted or rejected)? * I think we can - treat that vote thread as discarded. - The FLIP itself will be back to the under discussion status. Periodically, we (the committers) can sweep the dormant FLIPs and see if they should be abandoned. Note that not all the dormant FLIPs should be abandoned. If the proposal still makes sense from technical perspective, or the targeted issue is still valid, we can keep the FLIP open until someone else picks it up. The decision is still based on the case by case judgement. For example, in this particular case, FLIP-313 seems still relevant. Hence, we may want to keep it open. If we decide to abandon a dormant FLIP, as a courtesy, we should reply in the discussion thread to ping the contributor. If there is no response after a week, we can abandon the FLIP. An abandoned FLIP should have its status properly updated, so that there is no confusion. *2. What should we do when a new FLIP overlaps with a dormant open FLIP?* If both FLIPs are targeting the same problem. Preferably, we should revive the earlier FLIP, and close the new one as duplicate. This helps keep a serialized history of the discussion and avoid the confusion caused by multiple FLIPs with the same targeted issue. In case we found there is a significant difference between the new FLIP and the old one, we can let the new FLIP subsume the old FLIP. If so, - again as a courtesy, we should ping the contributor in the discussion thread of the old FLIP. - include the subsumption as a part of the new FLIP vote, and update the status of the old FLIP accordingly. For example, in this particular case, if FLIP-313 is subsumed by FLIP-498, we need to update the FLIP-313 status to reflect that when FLIP-498 passes. The goal of the proposed convention is to make sure 1) we respect the work from all the Flink contributors, and 2) avoid confusions on the FLIP status as much as possible. Once we have the convention agreed, we can add them to the FLIP process page. Thoughts and feedback are welcome. Thanks, Jiangjie (Becket) Qin
