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Steering Council Update

Date: 2019-04-26

Steering Council updates will be posted irregularly and as needed. We strive to post at least once every month. We provide these updates to foster open and transparent communication about Steering Council activity.

Message from the Steering Council

Sorry we've been silent for a while! We've all been swamped with work, but we've been meeting regularly. Below are some of the outcomes of our conversations. Many of you will be happy to hear that we've cleared the backlog of PEPs by assigning BDFL-Delegates to almost all outstanding PEPs. We're also appearing at PyCon US.

Mandate

This section organizes Steering Council (SC) activity and projects using the mandates listed in PEP 13.

Language

Maintain the quality and stability of the Python language and CPython interpreter

  • We've begun to explore the options for improving the interpreter in the future, but apart from the PEP work detailed below we've not come to any conclusions yet. In the coming months we hope to come up with guidelines and a process for evolving the interpreter, to be developed in close participation with the core developers and representatives of various user bases.

Contributors

Make contributing as accessible, inclusive, and sustainable as possible

  • Communications channels: We have an array of communication options, depending on the context.

  • Issue tracker: We've discussed PEP 581, "Using GitHub Issues for CPython" by Mariatta Wijaya. We're in favor of this move, and feel that the transition should be professionally planned and executed. In collaboration with the PSF we're exploring ideas on how to do that (using the successful roll-out of the new Warehouse infrastructure for PyPI as a model).

PEPs

Establish appropriate decision-making processes for PEPs

  • To request a PEP review, please file an issue on the SC issue tracker.

  • We've appointed BDFL-Delegates (BDs) to a number of PEPs, after ensuring that the proposed BD and the PEP author(s) agree on the appointment:

    • PEP 558 "Defined semantics for locals()", Nick Coghlan. Appointed Nathaniel J. Smith as BD.

    • PEP 497, "A standard mechanism for backward compatibility", Ed Schofield. Appointed Brett Cannon as BD on behalf of the SC.

    • PEP 387 "Backwards Compatibility Policy", Benjamin Peterson. Appointed Brett Cannon as BD on behalf of the SC.

    • PEP 554, "Multiple Interpreters in the Stdlib", Eric Snow. Appointed Antoine Pitrou as BD. (BD and author have indicated that this PEP will be postponed until Python 3.9.)

    • PEP 586, PEP 589, PEP 591 (various typing PEPs by members of the mypy team and others, topics Literal, TypedDict, and Final). Appointed Guido van Rossum as BD. (PEP 544, Protocols, also belongs in this list; Guido made himself BD last year.)

    • PEP 578, "Python Runtime Audit Hooks", Steve Dower. Appointed Christian Heimes as BD.

    • PEPs 576, 579, 580, 590 (competing PEPs on C function call optimizations by Mark Shannon and Jeroen Demeyer; note that PEP 576 is withdrawn in favor of PEP 590). Appointed Petr Viktorin as BD.

    • PEP 533, "Deterministic cleanup for iterators", Nathaniel J. Smith. Appointed Yury Selivanov as BD.

    • PEP 570, "Python Positional-Only Parameters", by Larry Hastings, Pablo Galindo and others. Appointed Guido van Rossum as BD. (And he approved it!)

    • PEP 574, "Pickle protocol 5 with out-of-band data", Antoine Pitrou. Appointed Nick Coghlan as BD.

    • PEP 573, "Module State Access from C Extension Methods", Petr Viktorin and others. Postponed to Python 3.9. Appointed Stefan Behnel as BD.

  • And we've updated the status of some other PEPs:

    • PEP 557 "Data Classes", Eric V Smith. Marked Final.

    • PEP 467 "Minor API improvements for binary sequences", Nick Coghlan, Ethan Furman. Deferred.

Interaction with PSF

Formalize and maintain the relationship between the core team and the PSF

  • The PSF Code of Conduct Workgroup is working on a revision of the CoC. Brett and Carol serve on the Workgroup.

  • We've agreed to a panel discussion at PyCon US in Cleveland, Sunday morning May 5th between 9:20am and 10:00am.

Governance

Seek consensus among contributors and the core team before acting in a formal capacity, Act as a "court of final appeal" for decisions where all other methods have failed.

Reference

This reference section summarizes the Steering Council's mandate and powers.

Mandate (PEP 13)

The steering council shall work to:

  • Maintain the quality and stability of the Python language and CPython interpreter,
  • Make contributing as accessible, inclusive, and sustainable as possible,
  • Formalize and maintain the relationship between the core team and the PSF,
  • Establish appropriate decision-making processes for PEPs,
  • Seek consensus among contributors and the core team before acting in a formal capacity,
  • Act as a "court of final appeal" for decisions where all other methods have failed.

Powers (PEP 13)

The council has broad authority to make decisions about the project. For example, they can:

  • Accept or reject PEPs
  • Enforce or update the project's code of conduct
  • Work with the PSF to manage any project assets
  • Delegate parts of their authority to other subcommittees or processes