I'm going to float some thoughts about how the group makes decisions below. I'm not suggesting a specific course of action, but I would like people to think about how these ideas can be used to improve Boost development. Recent discussions about default address-model, and past discussions about issues like cmake and CI build improvements (like whether or not to purchase more build slaves from travis or appveyor), and topics about legal use of code snippets leads me to the following conclusion: 1. We are geographically, culturally, and vertically distributed and have highly varying viewpoints. 2. We are all very good at expressing our viewpoint about various topics. 3. We collectively need to improve our skill at coming to a group decision and moving forward. Folks generally have individual control over their respective maintained repositories in the current structure. There are many topics that generally affect all of the repositories, such as the ones I mentioned previously, that affect all of us. At my most recent startup company we implemented an effective "Debate until Decision" mechanism by which: 1. The issue is discussed. (We do this well) 2. A decision is made and implemented (We do not seem to do this well): Not everyone will be happy with the outcome. Folks should not attempt to undermine the outcome after decision. The issue can be raised again if new information is brought to light. How is a decision made? Typically in a meeting where people vote face-to-face. For a group like this, voting would be done online with a time limit. Who can vote? That's a good question. In this environment it may fall to the group of folks who are maintainers of an affected repository. I don't necessarily have a good answer for that, as I am relatively new to the group. Some folks have been here for 10+ years and may feel differently that seniority should have a say. I don't know. What are the benefits of this? Simply: *Things get done.* Look at the cmake discussion, or the CI build job discussion, or the current address-model discussion. These need to be finished, agreed to, and implemented (or not), and everyone moves forward. The Apache Software Foundation maintains a fairly well documented structure for each project, with a project management committee consisting of a chair and members who have equal voting rights, however said group's primary function is to identify and grow the team of developers who have commit privileges. The committers as a whole vote on issues that are project-wide, like "should we split into multiple repositories", or "should we move to another source code control environment"? This mechanism could also be applied to how folks are brought into maintainer status for a repository, or how a library enters the CMT. If you look at the bug backlog in trac for some one the libraries, it's pretty clear that they are not properly maintained. The issue may be discussed, but then dropped and forgotten, and no action is taken to remedy it. When repositories have pull requests open for years, or a backlog of 100 defects going back 10 years, there's a very unhealthy problem for that project that needs to be addressed. It may be a similar structure that will work well here. Folks may disagree. This will be debated, certainly, as folks probably have varying opinions about how much structure is needed or desired. I simply hope this leads to an effective discussion about how this group identifies deficiencies, solves them, and moves forward. Any group large or small can benefit from examination and improvement of processes, including ours. Thanks, Jim