I think it’s a bad thing if and only if it decouples authority from responsibility.
I completely agree with this sentiment @amjoseph. I’ve written about this before where having too much of one and not the other always leads to problems. Every time. Without fail. It can rip organizations apart if not addressed. What are the values that you see being expressed in the NixOS project? - #8 by tomberek
In fact, this is why i think this topic came up. The specific incident in question was about the auto-merge-bot and a discussion started. And while that seems to be resolved well, there was a group of people that didnt quite have a clear voice, but should have one. I’ve been thing of this as the “Nixpkgs Daily Operations” team - in contrast with the longer time horizon of the Nixpkgs Architecture Team. And while that set of people should have a voice, that authority also comes with responsibilities. I dont think it is too much to ask that spme formalization take place by the people who want to have a voice when such situations come up. The exact format can vary, but that is the associated responsibility.
To summarize: a team provides a way to give authority coupled with responsibility. Working groups provide organization to get a specific task done, but usually have less responsibilty/authority as a result, which suites that model well.
The next question is how to ensure teams don’t become silos or gatekeepers. This is a real risk. I think that risk should be mitigated by having the teams be responsible for things. Meeting notes; a regular status report; asking for, spending, and reporting a budget; establishing written goals; clarifying processes - these sorts of things keep the team easily accountable.
Next, you need a check/balance mechanism or two. One is the RFC process which can put pressure from a non-team source. The other is the Board. @zimbatm , the board should ensure the teams are healthy, productive, unblocked, and hold team leads accountable. And another is the the other teams; hence the value in some regular team lead sync session.
The final question is if the risks of more teams and more formalized structures outweigh the risks. In the case of the overall Nix project, i think it generally does. I propose that many of our weakest points are due to unclear authority/responsibility and poor accountability.