Understanding RFC attitudes

php.internals

Dan Ackroyd

6 years ago
Hello Internals, The trade-offs that are good for a project like core PHP are quite different from the trade-offs from other projects. People are sometimes quite surprised by the attitude other people have on how best to maintain and improve PHP. I'm hoping that documenting my understanding of the attitudes that have been taken during RFC discussions, might avoid some of the surprise factor in discussions and so make the conversations be less confrontational. https://github.com/Danack/RfcCodex/blob/master/rfc_attitudes.md To be clear, this is only meant to help people understand other people's view-points. It is not a fixed set of attitudes that I think either are or should be followed. It's also not aimed at making everyone agree on all topics, but just to help set people's expectations on how any particular RFC might be received. cheers Dan Ack

Chase Peeler

6 years ago
On Fri, Apr 3, 2020 at 12:38 PM Dan Ackroyd <Danack@basereality.com> wrote:
> Hello Internals, > > The trade-offs that are good for a project like core PHP are quite > different from the trade-offs from other projects. > > People are sometimes quite surprised by the attitude other people have > on how best to maintain and improve PHP. > > I'm hoping that documenting my understanding of the attitudes that > have been taken during RFC discussions, might avoid some of the > surprise factor in discussions and so make the conversations be less > confrontational. > > https://github.com/Danack/RfcCodex/blob/master/rfc_attitudes.md > > To be clear, this is only meant to help people understand other > people's view-points. It is not a fixed set of attitudes that I think > either are or should be followed. > > It's also not aimed at making everyone agree on all topics, but just > to help set people's expectations on how any particular RFC might be > received. > > cheers > Dan > Ack > > -- > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > >
I think this is a good idea. It appears to be a fair overview of various topics. Personally, instead of organizing it into the two main areas that you did, I think it would be better to maybe just list the various types of arguments used for/against RFCs, and what the pro/con positions are. As it is currently written, anything in the "less likely to pass" section might be taken as something that should be avoided - even in cases where such things do make sense. If, instead, we lay it out as "If you propose this, these are the arguments you're going to get as objections, and here are some of the justifications that have been used so far" someone might better be able to determine if their RFC for such a topic is justifiable, and if so, preempt some of the objections.
-- Chase Peeler chasepeeler@gmail.com

Jakob Givoni

6 years ago
Great doc Dan, hope it can be linked from https://wiki.php.net/rfc/howto ! Cheers, Jakob On Fri, Apr 3, 2020 at 6:46 PM Chase Peeler <chasepeeler@gmail.com> wrote:

Dan Ackroyd

6 years ago
On Fri, 3 Apr 2020 at 17:46, Chase Peeler <chasepeeler@gmail.com> wrote:
> If, instead, we lay it out as ...
Thanks for useful feedback, I've added some words: "The aim of this guide is to make it easier to understand the arguments people are going to make either in favour or against the RFC. Hopefully this will make it easier to write RFCs that address people's concerns and so lead to more productive conversations. " And changed titles to: ## Things people will consider as reasons to vote against an RFC ## Things people will consider as reasons to vote for an RFC Also of course, pull requests will be considered. cheers Dan Ack