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Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2025 17:26:11 -0500
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Clarify discussion and voting period rules
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From: larry@garfieldtech.com ("Larry Garfield")

On Fri, Oct 17, 2025, at 3:40 AM, Tim D=C3=BCsterhus wrote:

>>> The voting period MAY be canceled within the first 2 days in case of=20
>>> severe issues with the RFC.
>>=20
>> I don't think this restriction is necessary. Tim mentioned to me
>> off-list it was motivated by this message:
>> https://externals.io/message/128594#128724. If the vote is passing and
>> a bigger issue is discovered, allowing the authors to retract the vote
>> seems like the better approach than relying on voters to change their
>> vote, especially if there's not enough time for a follow-up RFC. If
>> the vote is failing, keeping it going only wastes time when a solution
>> could already be discussed. The linked message says:
>>=20
>>> Had this policy existed, taking what feedback I had already gotten, =
I=20
>>> could have simply declared =E2=80=9Can issue=E2=80=9D and updated it=
 with their=20
>>> feedback; restarting the vote.
>>=20
>> But I don't think this is true. Any fix for an issue would be
>> classified as a major change, thus requiring a minimum cooldown period
>> of 2 weeks. This seems equivalent to creating a new RFC and putting
>> that to a vote after 2 weeks, which FWIU remains possible.
>
> Does anyone except Ilija have an opinion on this?

AIUI, the purpose of not allowing cancellation of the vote at any time i=
s to avoid "it's about to fail so I'll pull it, to avoid the 6 month coo=
ldown before I can resubmit" situations.  I'm not sure how big of a conc=
ern that is.

Personally I'd be fine allowing a cancellation up to the 1 week mark; th=
at gives a bit more time to hear if "I'd vote yes except for this one sm=
all issue" is a significant enough constituency that it's worth short-ci=
rcuiting the process without delaying another release cycle.

--Larry Garfield