I have found an request for comment or proposal workflow very helpful for strategically discussing the roadmap across organizations. Many groups model based on the internet RFC model and voting...
I have seen two approaches that do not require infrastructure investment:
- Use the wiki (which provides a nice record of what was approved that can be linked to)
- Smaller projects often just use an email thread and managed votes there.
There are some business considerations to keep in mind:
- The availability of a published RFC process has helped in outreach to organizations that carefully manage their infrastructure using a "change control process".
- A practical benefit is inviting external parties to communicate before they sink a bunch of time into a pull request, and can be used to identify areas for collaboration.
- With good communication contractors can use the proposal and community review as a contract milestone reducing risk around consulting activities.
- Proposal also helps capture incomplete ideas where budget has not been obtained for docs / testing / etc...
It is always sad when "customer" has paid for functionality that is rejected by a project community.
I would fully support the eclipse infrastructure allowing for proposals to be voted on, it is something we asked for on locationtech but were told that was up to each project at the time.
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