perlgov: the rules of perl governance

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perlgov: the rules of perl governance

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From:

Ricardo Signes

Date:

November 24, 2020 16:26

Subject:

perlgov: the rules of perl governance

Message ID:

3dbd9f46-cd42-4c9e-90f2-686d2ef61d84@www.fastmail.com

Loyal readers will recall that for a while now, a background process has been putting together a new set of rules of governance for the project.  Previous <https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2020/09/msg258330.html> updates <https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2020/08/msg258177.html> were posted to let you know what was going on.

The process has nearly concluded.  Last week, a new document, *perlgov.pod*, was approved by the governance group.  It hasn't been merged to blead yet, but you can read it here:  <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/18357>https://github.com/Perl/perl5/pull/18357

Reading it, you might notice some similarity to Python's governance document, PEP 13 <https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0013/>.  This is, obviously, intentional.  We began discussions talking about whether PEP 13 was the right structure, there was debate around this, but ultimately we did end up with something strongly influenced by their work.  I'd like to thank the Python community for making this document public domain so that we could lift from it as freely as we liked.  We did make changes, of course, the finding of which I leave as an exercise for the reader.

So, now Perl has two well-defined bodies involved in its governance: a *core team* of a few dozen and a *steering council* of three people.  The core team sets the rules of Perl governance, votes on membership of the two groups, and delegates substantial decision making power to the steering council.   The steering council has broad authority to make decisions about the development of the Perl language, the interpreter, and all other components, systems and processes that result in new releases of the language interpreter.

Right now, the core team has 25 members, although this may change over time.
 1. Andy Dougherty
 2. Chad Granum
 3. Chris 'BinGOs' Williams
 4. Craig Berry
 5. Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker
 6. Dave Mitchell
 7. David Golden
 8. H. Merijn Brand
 9. Hugo van der Sanden
 10. James E Keenan
 11. Karen Etheridge
 12. Karl Williamson
 13. Leon Timmermans
 14. Matthew Horsfall
 15. Max Maischein
 16. Nicholas Clark
 17. Nicolas R.
 18. Paul "LeoNerd" Evans
 19. Philippe "BooK" Bruhat
 20. Ricardo Signes
 21. Sawyer X
 22. Steve Hay
 23. Stuart Mackintosh
 24. Todd Rinaldo
 25. Tony Cook
There are also three "inactive" members, meaning that they don't vote:  Abhijit Menon-Sen, Jan Dubois, and Jesse Vincent.

The core team has a publicly-archived mailing list <https://perl.topicbox.com/groups/perl-core> where they are, right now, engaged in the first election of a steering council, which should finish in a few weeks.  The results, of course, will be posted here.

This has been a pretty long process!  I'd like to thank everyone who participated, or at least put up with it, and I look forward to benefits of the output, along with yet more perl for years to come.

-- 
rjbs

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