Councils, committees, multiple obtuse voting systems, governance documents, 'courts' of appeal... Why are they so keen to construct such a grim bureaucracy for themselves?
It has been discussed on HN multiple times: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=THE%20TYRANNY%20of%20STRUCTURE...
Even the feminism angle is relevant here, because more often than not women are made worse off in these laissez-faire arrangements.
One of the proposals was for a elected "technical lead" (or Gracious Umpire Influencing Decisions Officer (GUIDO)) with 4.5-year terms, and came sixth in the vote about options: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8010/#the-role-of-the-gu...
I believe an open-source project is best run as some form of an oligarchy, but with democratic processes for gaining ideas and feedback.
In my opinion, this kind of shift towards complicated government structures is the end of high efficiency in open-source. The thing that makes many open-source projects so great, other than being open, is that they don’t have a burdensome corporate structure breathing down their necks; so they’re able to turn and burn on projects; they don’t fall prey to sunk cost fallacy as often (thinking back to the efforts to integrate Django Channels that were sidelined, or back further to the efforts at GSOC by some developer, 2 years in a row, to add composite key support, which were also sidelined - futile like this turn into disastrous sunk cost slow train wrecks in corporations, but instead teach us what it is that we don’t want in open-source projects); and only the carrot is in play, for the most part, no stick.
Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Fit The Twelfth
Did Guido rage quit because of this?
For such an important project unfortunately I think a certain amount of bureaucracy and paperwork is not only unavoidable but actually necessary and important.
I think it's curious that commenters (this is not aimed at you specifically) don't dare to even indirectly praise bureaucracy without couching it with words like "unfortunately", because there's nothing unfortunate about having a well-described and transparent decision-making process. Python has had bureaucracy for decades, e.g. the entire PEP process, so it's too late for us to be wringing our hands about tainting the Python project with the bogeyman of government.
I'm far from a libertarian so I completely understand and accept why these rules and regulations are necessary but it's still annoying and somewhat inefficient from time to time. For the same reason I consider it unfortunate and annoying when I get a speeding ticket even though I understand why such things exist.
Rules are good when they apply to other people but they tend to suck when they apply to me, mainly because obviously I'm much more clever than my peers and specs and code reviews are for losers.
The reality is that languages are born with a single creator, and spend their adolescence growing under that creator's care, but achieve maturity once they can demonstrate that they can function without such a single point of failure as a BDFL.
But C++ is Stroustrup, Java is Gosling, C is K&R, JavaScript is Eich. Most successful languages kept their internal consistency by being designed by a single person. Historically, these single persons also had mustaches.
Yes, eventually all of those graduated to a design-by-committee approach, but that happened much later. But yes, in that sense, Python is just following the path set by others.
C++ wasn't designed by Stroustrup alone. It's based on C's design.
Sure sometimes you have cleared leaders (see also Perl/Larry Wall) but having a larger group has benefits to see more edge cases (with the risk of committee issues)
So, all around 20 to 30 years ago.
— You will be the land, and the land will be you. If you fail, the land will perish. As you thrive, the land will blossom.
— But why?
— Because you are king!
King Arthur and Merlin, Excalibur (1981)
This, concisely, is the problem with kings.
Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”
(1 Samuel 8)
The opposite of bureaucracy isn't efficiency. It's corruption.
I don't know python well, so this all might work very well for them. But if, for instance, there was a very core developer or two, then no amount of structure will take away from their sway. If a major point of contention arose between the "paper" structure and the core developers, there will be a problem.
I don't think many people relish the idea of imposing such bureaucracy upon themselves and their fellow developers. However, when you have a sizeable organisation, there needs to be transparency and accountability so that the developers as a whole can see that proposed directions are properly discussed and agreed upon, without ideas being unfairly dismissed or accepted without due criticism. Hierarchies are intrinsic to the ordering of our society and our functioning as a species. They will crop up inevitably, so a formalising of this is a better alternative to an unaccountable hidden hierarchy which would come into being in its absence.
As for voting, voting prevents obvious domination of the decision making process by individuals, allowing all participants to have an equal and democratic say in decisions. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”, as Churchill said. It's not perfect, but until we can do better, it's the least bad way of doing things.
This is why BDFLs are rare in projects. Like Tito and Yugoslavia, or the Kims in North Korea, it only works while the strong minded influence of the leader is tolerated by those who are subject to their whims. For a technical project, the leader must be consistently technically adept, and maintain the goodwill of the contributors, or be replaced or burnt out with exhaustion. Can you see an obvious replacement dictator for Guido, or Linus? Me neither. Bureaucracy allows an organisation to outlast an individual by providing a structure for the replacement of leadership over time.
I've served on Django's technical board -- its equivalent of the new Python "steering council" -- for several years. The technical board has the following responsibilities:
* Act as a final tiebreaker for any decision that the dev mailing list can't manage to make through normal discussion
* Review major proposals for changing Django or Django's processes (DEPs, our equivalent of Python's PEPs), with the ability to veto
* Review proposals to add new Django committers, with the ability to veto
The first category has never, as far as I can tell, come up, and for the other two the technical board has never vetoed a committer or a DEP. There also aren't many of them -- 24 in a bit over four years.
I'm trying to push through a significant change to how Django works, but it wouldn't do away with the technical board; instead it acknowledges that the in-practice way Django runs -- discussion on the dev mailing list, open to everyone, with a couple people whose job is to merge PRs -- is working well enough that we no longer need to give special privileges to a large group of committers.
Honestly, I think it comes down to the fact that democracy is definitely sexy. The idea that any individual could gain the power they want through based on public recognition, where the public has a say on who is in power, is very attractive (and is one of the reasons many governments are democratically elected -- because there would be an uprising otherwise). And obviously it's great for societies where the decisions can very much be a matter of life or death -- but for projects that are trying to get a very specific thing done you can end up in a death-by-bureaucracy system.
Also, democracy is one of the easiest ways of getting out of having to solve an issue -- just let the people decide. There were several completely different PEPs that outlined new governance models, and due to lack of consensus this model was adopted since it can be used to get any other model (and in the Preamble they state that this new governance model could be used to pick a different one).
EDIT: "The people" could be any subset of people -- not just the general public or users of software. Several democratic systems (Westminster-like and the American primary election system) work in the same manner -- where only a subset of people make decisions about the country or party.
In America, you can only vote in primaries (that is, choose presidential and other candidates) if you are a registered voter of that party -- which means that it's also restricted to a subset of the public.
So I'm not sure I agree it is a mismatch to most democracies. Obviously there is a difference, but it's still clearly democratic in spirit (and actually matches how some real democracies work in some aspects).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_primaries_in_the_United...
I'm not particularly interested in arguing about what democracy "is" (we'll be here all day, and then some), but I think it's clear that this model is what democracy "isn't". And I'm not saying that's a bad thing (certainly different styles of governance are suitable for different contexts).
Obviously users will be impacted, but in such a tangential way that I would argue that it'd be more like how other countries are impacted by the decisions of a democratic country's leadership (and you wouldn't argue that Canadians should have the right to vote in American presidential elections). Just like the Linux CoC, I don't understand why people who don't contribute to the project should be involved in how the project's development is run.
Informal organizatios are not transparent.
I don't think that's always a good thing. If the organization has some urgent goal, like winning a war or putting a man on the Moon, some dictatorship is needed to keep bureaucracy in check. But when there's no more urgent goal than well-being of the organization's members, that's when dictatorship fades and the subcommittees begin to sprout.
> Correction - that's how organizations work when their goal is making members happy. If the organization has an external goal, like winning a war or putting a man on the Moon, it needs to be more authoritarian.
(EDIT: cousin_it's comment changed again while I was writing this, somewhat closer to the original. Anyway, probably just keep in mind that any now-nonsensical response may be to an earlier version.)
> https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/03/19/two-stories/
But there's a big gap between "Option A has worked better than Option B [Spolsky, anecdote]" and even "Option A is always better than Option B", much less "Option A maximises the desired outcome."
Maybe it can be as simple as a benevolent-dictator election. Or it can be as complex as direct democracy (voting on PEPs) - but then who can vote becomes the issue, etc.
Basically control > individual initiative but control + individual initiative >>> absolute control (see Stalinism).
Otherwise, every time there's a decision to be made, you will have to have arguments^Wdiscussion^Warguments not just about the substantive content of the decision, but about the process of making the decision too.
This goes double for the stuff like "votes of no confidence". If it comes to that point, the group is already in deep enough trouble as it is. The last thing you need is to add a debate about the means to handle the trouble on top of the discussion of the actual trouble.
You spell these things out in advance so that when questions arise in the course of the group making choices, the fundamental question of "how are we going to go about finding the answer to this question" is already settled.
>Žižek now believes that efficient bureaucracy is the necessary corollary of any successful future state. While often alluding to the utopian impulse that imagines a political community beyond “what is”—including Derrida’s “democracy of the future”—such imagining should not exceed the strictures imposed on the world by technological complexity, sprawling populations and megalopolises. In fact one should be able to take utilities and health services for granted. Freedom of choice should not have to extend to one’s electricity vendor and Internet provider, or even what hospital one wants to convalesce in.[0]
and,
>I think he agrees with Laclau and Mouffe, that every radical solution is temporary, 'lives in borrowed time'. This means that an 'organizational structure' must not become sedimented, but remain open. This probably sounds a bit abstract, but it matters, as it assumes the position opposite of e.g. Stalinism.[1]
On some level I agree with him, as much as it's contrary to the self-organizing semi-anarchist hacker spirit.
[0] https://criticaltheoryresearchnetwork.com/2017/08/10/bureauc...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/zizek/comments/6mmtpg/what_kind_of_...
Who? This person? [1] I'm at a loss. Could you explain what this has to do with this topic?
From what I understand it seems to be in agreement with the principles of Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone [2].
"The book describes the socio-political tactic of creating temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control.[1] The essay uses various examples from history and philosophy, all of which suggest that the best way to create a non-hierarchical system of social relationships is to concentrate on the present and on releasing one's own mind from the controlling mechanisms that have been imposed on it.
In the formation of a TAZ, Bey argues, information becomes a key tool that sneaks into the cracks of formal procedures. A new territory of the moment is created that is on the boundary line of established regions. Any attempt at permanence that goes beyond the moment deteriorates to a structured system that inevitably stifles individual creativity. It is this chance at creativity that is real empowerment."
In particular his position is interesting in contrast to others in the anti-authoritarian Marxist tradition.
I hadn't heard of Hakim Bey or TAZ, so thanks for pointing that out to me.
You're free to fork your own python like language and get buy in as long as you do not infringe the trademarks. Or make experimental branches and proposals.
There is a difference and fine line between freedom of choice and being overwhelmed by options, especially irrelevant ones, even more so if all competitors are essentially fake and owned by the same company. Looking at Unilever and Nestle here for example.
Or does self organizing mean something different from what it says?
Chomsky on Zizek [1]: Posturing. There's no theory in any of this stuff. Try to find in all [Zizek's work] some principles from which you can deduce...empirically testable propositions...beyond the level of something you can explain in 5 minutes to a 12-year old.
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/why-did-i-sign-the-letter-...
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/a-brief-post-script-on-the...
You might say that he lacks rigor or prowess in his arguments, but those admit he's a philosopher. I can't see how you can deny he is a philosopher. Let's rephrase the essence of your argument: anyone who writes to entertain or repeatedly questions notions of common sense cannot possibly be a philosopher (despite large output and several research and teaching positions in and invitations to philosophy departments at universities around the world), if and only if a linguist says so and they have a lisp and some nervous tics.
I'd also suppose that none of the topics which Zizek addresses are philosophical ones: https://www.iep.utm.edu/zizek/
Take a saying of Zizek and route it through a robotic voice (to eliminate his accent and mannerisms). Do the same to the negation of same. Play the results to a random population. The genuine saying of Zizek will not statistically stand out as being any more valuable than its negation.
I quite like the Swiss model of democracy. Taleb argues that the focus on small matters and diffused democracy avoids centralization of power and provides a lot of their famous stability.
On the other hand, several Communists (in fact, the ones Zizek is arguing against) very much argue for exactly what you propose: focus on small matters and diffused democracy to avoid centralisation of power. The fact of "real Communism" having been or not having been "tried" is irrelevant to the questions concerning how such a society, if it is possible, ought to be organised. Thought-terminating cliches don't make for critical analysis.
[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcuse/#FanUtoRatGra
You need to see how things actually work out in practice. And in practice Swiss democracy works very well whereas most central bureaucracies are soul killers.
In case you do not know, Swiss have a central bureaucracy. Not everything, heck most things are not decided by direct vote. Important things are though and the citizens can propose a referendum after the fact as well given enough buy in.
But that is also true of bureaucracies. Honesty, attention to details, voluntary respect for rules make bureaucratic systems semi-liveable and not a hellish kleptocracy.
Every idea suffers from implementation problems. Not every idea is worth implementing though.
The problem with this kind of direct democracy is the same as with all diplomacy - astroturfing, focus groups, demagoguery and unintended consequences.
Focus groups make diffuse votes matter less despite being more prevalent. (Overwhelming majority in some cases.) Astroturfing is a kind of diffuse bribery. Unintended consequences is most often when people are presented with a package deal and do not dig deeply enough to figure out results. Finally demagoguery is usually by presenting a palatable but highly inferior option or by going for short term bandaid solutions.
The latter two are less relevant to a programming language project.