Non-goals of this RFC

The following are non-goals of this RFC. These may be met in future RFCs but are explicitly not part of this RFC.

Non-goal #1: Laying out the complete policies and procedures of the Council. While the RFC lays out and bounds the structure of the Council, the Council's full policies and procedures will be created by the Council itself. It is also expected that the Council will change and adapt to meet the needs of the Rust Project as it evolves.

Non-goal #2: Addressing all governance and potential governance concerns. One of the Council's responsibilities will be to identify and reflect on the issues present in governance, but we see the formation of the Council as part of a continuous process of improving Rust's leadership and how it meets the needs of the Project.

Non-goal #3: Forming additional teams. The focus of this RFC is to form the Council and does not include the creation of additional teams, subteams, or groups of any kind.

We recognize the importance of having additional teams, but see this as outside of the scope of this RFC. Instead, it will be the responsibility of the Council to investigate and understand such needs and then create additional teams to ultimately handle these issues.

This has one exception, other than the Council itself: the "launching pad" top-level team, which provides a temporary grouping of teams not yet attached to any existing top-level team either directly or indirectly.

Non-goal #4: Altering the charters or purviews of existing teams. While this RFC does discuss membership in the Council, it does not extend beyond this to update the charter or purview of any existing team. Existing teams continue to follow their existing charters and purviews.

This has two exceptions:

  • the core team: As part of this RFC, all of the capabilities and responsibilities of the core team move to the Council and are then clarified, modified, and constrained by the rest of this RFC.
  • the moderation team: As this RFC covers topics like conflict resolution and Council oversight, it does define additional capabilities for the moderation team, as well as additional checks and balances providing bidirectional oversight between the moderation team and the Council.

Non-goal #5: Establishing completely immutable properties of the Council. Any aspect established in this RFC can be modified in the future, via the public policy decision-making process, with oversight provided by that process. This RFC lays out policies for making such changes, and the processes of changing such policies must follow the existing policies.