[llvm-foundation] Voting

[Chris Lattner via llvm-foundation]

On Jun 30, 2016, at 1:51 AM, David Chisnall via llvm-foundation <llvm-foundation at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
> On 29 Jun 2016, at 19:01, Hal Finkel via llvm-foundation <llvm-foundation at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> This proposal of course assumes that the LLVM community is to be run
>>> as a direct democracy. I don't want to distract from your detailed
>>> proposal, but it seems the desired governance model needs to be
>>> defined before delving in to the details of how to implement it. Or
>>> has this discussion taken place somewhere? I'm specifically not
>>> expressing a view one way or the other. I had assumed the current
>>> set-up was some combination of BDFL and decisions being taken by
>>> Foundation board members, but I don't recall this being explicitly
>>> defined - though it would be good if it was.
>> 
>> I'd like to second this. I don't think that we should focus on a direct-democracy model. Such systems work well only for small groups. Having accountable representatives and leaders is better. A smaller group of accountable decision makers can invest more time in understanding the issues and the alternatives in order to make an informed decision. Accountability can come from elections, from the risk of community fracturing, etc.
> 
> I’m not sure if it would help, but the FreeBSD project has spent a few decades evolving its governance structures and may provide some useful example.

For someone interested in how to settle highly contentious topics which are often subjective in nature, might also want to check out the swift-evolution process.  Nothing is as contentious, polarizing, and subject to personal opinion as making major source breaking changes to a programming language that has millions of active users :-)

If you’re interested in the process, it is explained here:
https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution/blob/master/process.md

The archive of proposals that we’ve processed (since December) is here:
https://github.com/apple/swift-evolution

This is a process inspired by several other open source projects as well.  I think it would be very reasonable to adapt a similar model to help arbitrate contentious issues like the move to github.

-Chris