Volunteers for a Haskell Platform steering committee

[Duncan Coutts]

All,

We recently discussed on the libraries list the issue of major vs minor
releases, their frequency and what should be included in each.
http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/wiki/Policy

There are a number of other policy decisions about the Haskell Platform
that we will need to make in the coming weeks and months. The platform
is supposed to be owned by and serve the interests of the community. As
such it is important that significant decisions have some kind of
community backing. The intention is that important issues are brought to
the libraries mailing list, debated there and decisions reached.

To ensure that the relevant issues are indeed discussed and decisions
get made, we are proposing a steering committee. It would be the job of
the steering committee to see that the important issues are properly
discussed and decisions are made and recorded.

It would be up to the committee to decide what issues to present, how to
start discussions and if necessary how to guide them. Here are some
examples of issues that the steering committee will likely want to bring
to the attention of this mailing list:
      * general package quality requirements
      * portability (OS and compiler/language)
      * balance of quality vs quantity in libraries
      * license requirements
      * procedures for deciding which packages to add (or drop)

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.

There would obviously have to be good communication between the steering
committee and the platform release team. The needs of the release team
will inform the issues that get discussed and obviously the libraries
list cannot mandate that the release team do the impractical.

We are now seeking volunteers for this steering committee. A good number
is probably around five.

Comments, criticisms and volunteers please!

Duncan


PS. I'm going to be away 'til Sunday.