[GRASS-PSC] PSC management

[Hamish]

Hi all,

just a short note to ensure my ongoing interest in this conversation and
continued interest in serving on the PSC as I haven't said much yet. I'd
prepared a longer email earlier, but some quick points to make for now:


Markus, were you thinking of RFC4 as a patch or a replacement for RFC1?


Anyways it is good to breath new life in every now and then, but we must 
also be deliberate and follow the RFCs already passed.


Also I think it's incredibly valuable to keep still interested but no
longer actively contributing devs around as they provide a strong sense
of perspective sometimes not able to be seen by those actively "amongst
the trees".  It helps stop a lot of reinventing the wheel as well. :-)
So I hope they stick around, the guidance and experience of elders is
near impossible to replace.


As for non-communicative (in years) formerly active contributers, what else
can we do but wish them the best and nominate some new blood to replace
them? Any move to do that though has to come through a formal proposal and
vote by the PSC though.


As others have mentioned, many of us travel into the field for many weeks
at a time, far from internet access, and so short-term automatic timeouts
are problematic. We should revisit the proposed RFC3 to tighten up voting
procedures if there is concern of important decisions languishing.
A week is perhaps too short a period, and a month too long to wait, so
I'm happy with Michael's proposal of two weeks before possible voting
closes.


For the role of the PSC, I see it as a bit of a mark of success that it
has not been called up very much! It means that our dev team is self-
regulating well and taking on the leadership role -- & this is a Very Good
Thing. I have deep reservations about instituting a system where an elite
cabal is seen to (even if it is just a mis-perception) be running the
show, and new devs have little chance to contribute. And so I have been
very happy to see GRASS lead by the developers not by PSC dictates, as
we explicitly specified in RFC1:

"For controversial or complicated changes consensus must be obtained on
the developers' mailing list as far as reasonably practicable. It is
recognised that the ultimate arbitration on technical issues should always
lie with consensus on the developers' mailing list. Specifically, it is
not the role of the PSC to impose technical solutions. Its role is in
general limited to enforcing the quality control mechanisms outlined above."

(i.e. maintaining and enforcing submitting guidelines and licensing rules,
and granting write access)


Open for minor tweaks, sure, but I don't think that RFC1 is excessively
broken and that major edits to it are needed to revitalize the PSC.


more thoughts later,


best,
Hamish