Steering Council Wishlist for 6.X

I know DSF board nominations are open right now and there have been a few posts about initiatives others would like to see. I generally agree with what has been said in those posts and have nothing to add.

However the Steering council elections for the next release cycle are going to be happening soon, therefore I would like to focus on what I think is required from the next Steering Council.

First up is a roadmap, while DEP 12 states that the Council shouldn't create this by themselves, I would like them to provide focus to the community on what the next big features Django should be working on to bring into core. There has been plenty of dicussion this year about potential big features and items for a roadmap. I wouldn't expect this roadmap to have hard dates attached to it, but I expect it to set the direction of travel and for the community to be involved in the approval for it.

Second is clarifying the process for third-party packages being promoted to a 'first-party' package or even into core. DEP 2 already exists about Experimental API's within core. A good first step in this regard would be consider which third-party packages need promotion within the docs to be the default choice for something core doesn't currenyly provide. This requires some discussion to pick the holes (which I have started) and then to research the packages available and pick the final one for now. Finally it would be establishing a review process to check that the package still meets the needs in future.

Third I think there needs to be some consideration of what in core is no longer required, what aspects of the framework are feature complete, which aspects could be deprecated and which are still require active development. I say this with the awareness of the deprecation policy, but also that if we are to move forward and potentially add new features, how do we lighten the maintenance burden.

Finally, there is a consideration of technical mentoring. Djangonaut Space is an excellent on ramp to contributing, but obviously is just that. The question to me is what could the Steering Council do to replace themselves by nuturing and mentoring community members to grow the pool of possible candidates.

Underlying all of these ideas is one of transparency and open communication, with the next council reporting back to the community with active work they have done in the capacity of technical leadership.