What we have now

I ran across this RFC “analysis” by Zeev Suraski that was a response to a proposal about PHP adopting a Code of Conduct. Particularly the section headlined “The RFC process is [all that] what we have.”

In it, he says:

A person that joined internals@ only after the RFC process was enacted in 2011 may be excused to believe that the RFC process is all we have, and that it governs every possible aspect of the PHP language. However, that isn't true - and there's ample evidence for that available.

First, there are fundamental principals which date all the way back to the late 1990's, that are apparent to anybody who reads the archives. One of these core tenets was covered above - open unrestricted discussion.

Another, which is just as real, is decision by consensus for critical decisions.

As a principal author of the Voting RFC and as the person who came up with the 2/3 bar - I can say with absolute confidence that it was meant to regulate feature proposals - and not transforming policy changes - which this proposal certainly falls under. You don't only have to take my word for it - there - 'clues' are available all over the various RFC documents, beginning with the Voting RFC itself:

[ ... ]

It's true that since the Voting RFC process was enacted, it was used for limited-scope / tactical policy decisions. However - neither of these imply that it suddenly became as our sole form of governance that can be applied to everything - especially as it attempts to make the giant leap to cover topics like project participation policies, mailing list censorship and full-fledged banning of members. It's also worth pointing out that even in the handful of cases where it was used for minor policy changes - all of these policy changes effectively cleared the bar of decision by consensus, and not just barely clearing a 2/3 bar - which would have implied an extremely controversial decision.

That was five years ago, and it looks like the PHP project has only veered further away from Zeev’s ideal of a consensus-based approach for anything but feature proposals.