I think the politics of power is unavoidable no matter how well you silo your technical work from your people work.
Ten years ago, Debian saw three well respected members of the Technical Committee resign — including two former project leaders, one of whom designed the .deb packaging system — during what I see as a similarly heated vote/counter-vote power struggle. This Python saga feels similar.
BDFL model seems to have worked pretty well for so many decades. Guido should have just transferred power to someone he trusted. Now look at him, he can't even comment freely.
This is a tough one. Guido was excellent at his role, and his decision to hand it over was a mature one. It was everybody's hope it would help to guarantee long-term future for Python, independent from corporate greed.
Now these new folks seems to be failing at the only job they had. Maybe they need more time to mature, or maybe the Python Community should take a more decisive stance towards this kind of abuse of power.
I think the lesson is, if you should ever find yourself in the role of a BD and plan to give up control in favour of a committee or suchlike, always retain the option to throw them out and re-assume control, in case of need.
Yeah because after that you just have 5-10 dictators which inevitable build up cliques with their own personal grievances rather than any ideas to benefit the good of the community.
I believe if things get too heated, all the parties involved should be forced to meet in person for a weekend to talk things out. I'm sure it would solve like 90% of these stupid conflicts, because people rarely get _that_ riled up when in the same room.
Written communication, especially asynchronus ones like email or forums, are just unsuitable to capture all nuances of human behaviour. Someone is tired or hungry and makes a bad joke; next thing you know there's a witchhunt…
(I also don't think they should be allowed to cite things said 5 years ago as a reason to ban someone today. How could that still be relevant?)
Ten years ago, Debian saw three well respected members of the Technical Committee resign — including two former project leaders, one of whom designed the .deb packaging system — during what I see as a similarly heated vote/counter-vote power struggle. This Python saga feels similar.