Idea: ZF & Bootstrap merger

Not that I’m aware of.

In my opinion, the two organisations are very different in terms of leadership culture and strategy. One example is how our boards are constituted. The majority of ZF’s board is appointed based on input from the community. That is not the case with Bootstrap’s board.

Another example is how key decisions are made and what the organisation’s priorities are.

Those two examples are emblematic of key differences between the two organisations that permeate the entire culture. I think it would be interesting (in the “May you live in interesting times” sense of the word) to try to merge those two cultures.

That would certainly make sense for the core engineering function. Just having the same engineering priorities would be a huge step forward.

And I mean huge.

Yes.

It would be centralizing unless executive authority over things like priorities were devolved in some way. We (ZF) took a small step in that direction with the priorities poll back in August 2021, which has influenced our priorities ever since.

In theory that’s correct but there’s a risk that whoever leads a merged Bootstrap/ZF organisation could effectively prevent an organisation like QEDIT from deploying a feature that they don’t like, even if the community is strongly supportive of it.

For example, they could prohibit the B/ZF engineers from supporting the work directly (e.g. reviewing PRs) and drag their heels on resolving deployment blockers (e.g. deprecating zcashd) by prioritizing other work.

However, if there was a commitment to soliciting (and respecting) the community’s input when setting priorities, that wouldn’t necessarily be an issue but, like I said, it would require a change in culture.

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