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Comment by LyndsySimon | Hacker News Reader

Maybe we'll try something like a triumvirate? As best I can tell there are basically three areas where Python is dominant: web, data science, and academia. A single leader for each of those spheres could form a council where BDFL-level decisions could be made by fiat.

Each community could then form whatever organization they felt necessary to choose who to send to the triumvirate.

As as check on the power of the triumvirate, we could have something like a "Tribune of the Plebs" - a representative elected by open election from the entire community that holds veto authority over changes approved by the triumvirate.

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you're missing a body that can decide in case of implementation disputes over the other two. we could even compare it to a court. since python is so huge, we would have several levels for triaging and appeals. and the top one would reign supreme.

This would be the that body - it would be the final arbiter of what gets approved. The Tribune of the Plebs would not be able to approve anything at all, but would be able to unilaterally refuse to allow changes to be made.

The UN Security Council is somewhat similar in that respect, though comprised of more members. New matters are approved by majority vote, but the five permanent members can veto anything that gets approved.

My proposal is somewhat tongue in cheek, hence the names from the Roman Republic - but I do think the idea is sound.

An alternate, simpler implementation would be to simply require that all changes be unanimous. I like the idea of a Tribune of the Plebs though because it gives a second means of a voice should a sizable minority of members of the sub-communities strongly disagree with the direction of their representatives.

TIL Tribune of the Plebs was a real thing. I was just parsing plebs as internet lingo for commonfolk :)

and in case it wasnt clear i was referencing the US tripartite governance model

Django went through this years ago; Jacob and Adrian, who were the "BDFLs" of the project at the start, stepped down.

The current governance model is mostly around consensus on the dev list. There's a "technical board" elected every release cycle from among the committers, to act as a tie-breaker when needed, and with veto power over DEPs (Django's equivalent of PEPs) and adding new committers. I don't know of a case where that veto power has ever been exercised, FWIW.

This sounds familiar:)

Hey - I'm from the US. We have a long tradition of stealing organizational ideas from the Romans.

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