Minutes of the PCSC meeting on May, 12th, 2025, 14:00 CEST
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Present: Philippe Bourdin     (PB)
         Axel Brandenburg     (AB)
         Piyali Chatterjee    (PC)
         Nils Haugen          (NH)
         Matthias Rheinhardt  (MR)

Abbreviations: AHC = ad-hoc committee
               AP = accusing part (W. Lyra, D. Carrera)

0) Discussion of order of items in Axel's agenda proposal

1) Agenda approved

2) Secretary of the meeting: MR
   Recording of the meeting decided by request of MR

3) Minutes of previous meeting / ToR:

   new items in ToR: A. Roper Pol is owner 
                     duty of owners: to assess and check that list of Committers and Owners is up-to-date
                     no deletion of project by any owner allowed
   all these changes were approved (the red colors have now been removed)

4) Allegation of Wolfgang that the current PCSC has no mandate (elections were overdue for too long)

   MR: agrees, but parties of the current conflict (see 5)) have the freedom to accept or reject an AHC,
       if installed by the current PCSC -> AHC could act legally
       if not accepted: election of new PCSC and afterwards establishing the AHC
       no direct response from Wolfgang to MR's respective message
   PB: during overdue time, PCSC can still act (according to general practice) until elections completed
   NH: disagrees as PCSC's duty was to hold elections -> no mandate
       investigation is sensitive topic -> to be postponed
   PB: agrees

5) Status of allegations by D. Carrera and W. Lyra

   Discussion about the chances to investigate the allegations by an AHC:
   - agreed that PCSC is entitled to take initiative according to ToR
   - AHC needs cooperation of both parties, AP is declaredly unwilling, though
   - different opinions on whether AP should be asked about agreeing with/wanting investigation -> no conclusion

   AB: without investigation, AP's allegations would appear approved among recipients -> 
       a clarifying closure is needed
       likely violation of Code Of Conduct by AP -> reaction of PCSC needed
       AP's claim of repeated issues indicating degrading code culture likely wrong, only one issue (2018-2022) -> tb clarified

   PC: denial of formal engagement by AP not acceptable as PC community (including students etc.) must keep coherence;
       for sustainability, formal structure is needed, documentation of recent events is needed as work material for next PCSC
       investigation is not primarily against anybody, but for the advancement of code and community
       lmassdiff_fix=T: leads to disagreement with observations -> implementation maybe wrong
       needs more systematic consideration

   PB: documentation should include a statement of the involved parties: do they want the next PCSC to investigate the issue?
       as an argument in further conflicts
   
   MR: documentation should reconstruct breaches of the code which led to conflict
       should be sent to AP for correction/approval, perhaps by new PCSC

   Opening a talking channel to AP is discussed (resumed and decided in 6)).

   W. Dobler's interference with current conflict is discussed: his proposals only loosely connected

 6) Mail soliciting contributions for next newsletter

    Agreed that e-mail to pencil-code-discuss, prepared by AB, soliciting contributions to upcoming newsletter 
    regarding the code philosophy should be sent out.

    Handling of recent conflicts about code philosophy is reiterated: direct contact can be productive
    Agreed that NH will contact W. Lyra and propose zoom talk on the matter.
    Further steps of PCSC to be decide afterwards.

 7) The next elections

    MR: preliminary list of candidates available,
        will set up ADoodle when list of candidates is finalized 
    NH: number of candidates should be clearly bigger than five for credibility

    AB/MR/PB convene later to finish the list of possible voters, which PB prepares
    Clara Dehman should be observer of election, to be asked by MR for confirmation.

 8) Critical assessment of the operations of the PCSC (Sect. 3 of ToR)
   
    Ph.: by tradition given at PCUM
    Respective duties of PCSC were reviewed, following tradition, account on its activity will be given at PCUM, 
    will include self-criticism of delayed election
 
 9) Other items

    - committers do not get commit messages
      PB: GitHub delivers to Google Groups, not sent out from there
          proposes to subscribe all committers to GitHub, thus avoiding Google Groups
      AB: will provide list of Google Group subscribers to PB

  Meeting concluded May, 12th, 2025, 15:25 CEST