The “No New Rationale” rule

I like the “No New Rationale” rule, which I learned about in this blog post by Aaron Turon, who writes about the Rust RFC process:

No New Rationale rule: decisions must be made only on the basis of rationale already debated in public (to a steady state).”

“At some point, a member of the subteam will propose a “motion for final comment period” (FCP), along with a disposition for the RFC (merge, close, or postpone). This step is taken when enough of the tradeoffs have been discussed that the subteam is in a position to make a decision. That does not require consensus amongst all participants in the RFC thread (which is usually impossible). However, the argument supporting the disposition on the RFC needs to have already been clearly articulated, and there should not be a strong consensus against that position outside of the subteam.”