Subject: Re: Guix Common Document process (v7) (was: Request-For-Comment, RFC)

From: Andreas Enge <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 16:34:30 +0100

Hello all,

thank you for moving this forward! May I suggest to keep guix-devel
posted when sending comments to the bug?

I like Arun's suggestion of having a separate mailing list for
discussing these important changes (GCD? Greatest common divisors!)
in the future instead of guix-devel.

Janneke, I think another motivation for such a process is to make sure
that some decision is actually reached in the end, instead of letting
discussions taper out. I feel that this tends to happen in Guix and Guix
Foundation.

Concerning consensus, I am mildly worried about deadlocks (including 
when trying to modify this RFC/GCD). What happens if some person insists
on disapproving? (I am reminded of the European Union where one member
state can effectively hold the others hostage over certain issues.)
The RFC/GCD says: "A team member sending this reply should have made
constructive comments during the discussion period." What if they have
not? How about adding a quorum of "disapprove" votes to have effect?
(Actually in Europe *two* member states are needed for a veto in the
Council.)

Notice also that the suggestion bootstraps the team members into a
decision taking body - so far we have added people more or less randomly
to teams. For instance, team members need not have commit rights and
thus be vetted by three fellow committers. So should we replace "team
members" by "committers"? Or keep the proposal as is and immediately
work on a new GCD to somehow safeguard the addition of people to a team?

Andreas