Django’s technical governance challenges, and opportunities
As of October 29th, two of four members of the Django Software Foundation Steering Council have resigned from their role, with their intentions being to trigger an election of the Steering Council earlier than otherwise scheduled, per our established governance processes.
To our departing members, Simon and Adam, thank you for your contributions to Django and its governance ❤️. The framework and our community owes a lot to your dedication, and we’re confident our community will join us in celebrating your past contributions – and look forward to learning about your future endeavors in the Django ecosystem. And thanks to the remaining members, James and Andrew, for their service over the years.
Our governance challenges
Governance in open source is hard, and community-driven open source even more so. We’re proud that Django’s original two Benevolent Dictators For Life (BDFLs) both retired from the role and turned things over to community governance ten years ago now. The BDFL model can provide excellent technical governance, but also has its flaws. So the mantle of technical governance then went on to the Core Developers and the Technical Board (renamed to Steering Council) was introduced.
However, time has revealed flaws in the Steering Council’s governance model and operations. The Steering Council was able to provide decision-making – tiebreaking when the developer community couldn’t lead to consensus – but didn’t provide more forward-looking leadership or vision. Disagreements over how – or if – the Steering Council should approach this part of leadership led us to the current situation, with no functioning technical governance as of a few weeks ago. Even before those recent events, those flaws were also a common source of frustration for our contributors, and a source of concern for Django users who (rightly or not) might have expectations of Django’s direction – such as the publication of a “roadmap” for Django development.
The Django Software Foundation Board of Directors is and was aware of those issues, and recently made attempts to have the Steering Council rectify them, in coordination with other established community members. The DSF Board has tried to be hands-off when it comes to technical leadership, but in retrospect we should have been getting involved sooner, or more decisively. The lack of technical leadership is an existential threat to Django – a slow moving one, but a threat nonetheless. It’s our responsibility to address this threat.
Where we’re heading
We now need new Steering Council members. But we also need governance reform. There’s a lot about the Steering Council that is good and might only need minimal changes. However, the overall question of the Steering Council’s remit, and how it approaches technical leadership for the Django community, needs to be resolved.
We’re going to hold early elections of the Steering Council, as soon as we’ve completed the ongoing 2025 DSF Board elections. Those elections will follow existing processes, and we will want a Steering Council who strives to meet the group’s intended goals:
- To safeguard big decisions that affect Django projects at a fundamental level.
- To help shepherd the project’s future direction.
We expect the new Steering Council will take on those known challenges, resolve those questions of technical leadership, and update Django’s technical governance. They will have the full support of the Board of Directors to address this threat to Django’s future. And the Board will also be more decisive in intervening, should similar issues keep arising.
How you can help
We need contributors willing to take on those challenges and help our community come out ahead. It’s a big role, impactful but demanding. And there are strict, often annoying eligibility rules for the Steering Council.
To help you help us, we’ve set up a form: Django 6.x Steering Council elections - Expression of interest.
If you’re interested in stepping up to shepherd Django’s technical direction, fill in our expression of interest form. We’ll let you know whether or not you meet those eligibility rules, take the guesswork out of the way. You get to focus on your motivation for taking on this kind of high-purpose, high-reward governance role.
And once the elections start and we get to candidate registrations, we’ll be able to reuse details submitted here (if you want to) so the process is smoother for everyone.
Django 6.x Steering Council elections - Expression of interest
How everyone can help
Those elections will be crucial for the future of Django, and will be decided thanks to the vote of our Django Software Foundation Individual Members. If you know people who contribute to the DSF’s mission but aren’t Individual Members already -- use our form to nominate them as Individual Members, so they’re eligible to vote. If you’re that person, do nominate yourself. We consider all contributions towards our mission: advancing and promoting Django, protecting the framework’s long-term viability, and advancing the state of the art in web development.
Any questions? Comment on our forum thread, Discussion thread for “Django’s technical governance challenges, and opportunities” blog post, or reach out via email to foundation@djangoproject.com.
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