Re: Voting/Decision making guidelines

According to Chaim Frenkel:
> Given that most topics do not have unanimous approval. What will be
> the decision making policy (and we have to include the
> meta-discussion of how the decision making policy itself will be
> determined.)

I don't think anyone yet feels comfortable enough to answer that
question.

First, Larry is still involved in Perl 6.  He doesn't fit the role of
executive, by his own admission.  But he's a very good Supreme Court.
Therefore, I don't worry too much about any bad organizational
decisions we might make early on.  They can always be declared
unconstitutional and revised if they cause problems.

Also, our nascent project structure includes a post of Project Manager
(a.k.a. Lord High Everything Else).  He has general authority to make
miscellaneous decisions not covered by more specific posts.  So, in a
sense, we still have the same old benevolent dictatorship, but with an
extra level of indirection.

In another sense, we're just finally facing reality.  Larry's absence
from daily discussion has left us relatively unsupervised for a long
time now, but we were generally unwilling to face it, knowing the
chaos that could result from a careless transition.  Now we're finally
making a new system that doesn't require Larry to decide everything.
As a (paradoxical) result, I expect that core development will be more
orderly and productive than it has been in recent memory.

As for voting: I've seen a few people mention votes as part of some
process or other.  But without formal membership in an organization (a
la Debian, and let's *not* go there!)  I don't see how voting could
actually be a useful part of a political process.  It can only be used
for opinion polls.

The IETF has one thing right: "Rough consensus and working code."
-- 
Chip Salzenberg              - a.k.a. -              <[email protected]>
"I wanted to play hopscotch with the impenetrable mystery of existence,
    but he stepped in a wormhole and had to go in early."  // MST3K