On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 11:22 AM, Sittampalam,
Ganesh
Don Stewart wrote:
Here's a ticket for Simon Marlow's proposal:
http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/ticket/86
Let's discuss, then have the steering committee recommend yay/nay.
In http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2009-July/012139.html, Duncan said:
It is not the intention that the committee members get much more say in policy decisions than other active contributors to discussion on the libraries mailing list. We hope therefore that the membership of the committee does not need to be terribly formal. The only difficulty comes when consensus cannot be reached on an issue where making some decision is widely agreed to be better than making no decision. There is no specified protocol for this situation at this stage.
So I'm a bit confused about what the purpose of the steering committee's recommendation would be. Would it amount to a decision about inclusion, or an expression of their opinion in the hope of guiding the community towards a consensus, or something else? The first choice contradicts what Duncan said was the role of the committee, while the second doesn't seem any more worthwhile than individual members expressing their own opinions separately.
In my opinion the committee should just provide the framework in which the discussion takes place (i.e. a procedure for adding packages). It should also make sure that decisions get made and documented so they can be referred to in the future in case the same issues are raised again. I'm working on such a procedure and will proposed it to the community soon. Cheers, Johan