Exceptional Circumstances for Steering Committee

[Dr-Irv]

In the new governance model, there is the following statement "The Steering Committee will itself decide when a circumstance is exceptional". In discussion during the voting period, there was concern that this would give the Steering Committee too much power.

In our latest governance discussions, we have a proposal for clarifying this, which we suggest would be a "rule of thumb" that the Steering Committee would use. A circumstance would be considered exceptional if one or more of the following occur:

• Disagreement between Teams about a particular issue that requires resolution by the Steering Committee
• An issue arises for which no Team has clear responsibility

We propose that the first job for the newly elected Steering Committee will be to propose changes to the new governance model that will codify this as part of the governance documents.

Comments welcome from @pandas-dev/pandas-core

[simonjayhawkins]

A circumstance would be considered exceptional if one or more of the following occur:

• Disagreement between Teams about a particular issue that requires resolution by the Steering Committee
• An issue arises for which no Team has clear responsibility

Perhaps include a scenario involving urgency? For instance, Will intends to apply for a grant facing a submission deadline, receives minimal feedback, and requires explicit authorization to act on the project's behalf. Alternatively, a 2.2.3 release might be necessary for Python support, necessitating swift funding approval for the release manager or an infrastructure team member to prepare the backport branch in time, even as discussions continue.