This is one of a series of posts about the 2025 World Science Fiction Society Business Meeting. They are all tagged bm2025.
I should have written about the Software Committee and its recommendations earlier in this sequence of posts about the 2025 WSFS Business Meeting agenda. But better late than never.
The Committee was set up in the wake of the 2023 Hugos fiasco, because some of those most closely involved with it blamed their own software for some of the problems with that year’s Hugos. Commentators who enjoy back-seat software design felt compelled to propose new systems of monitoring which would supposedly prevent the same problems from arising again.
Having myself looked into the events of 2023 at some depth, it’s crystal clear to me that the problem was the people operating the software, rather than the software itself. Also, any reform proposals need to take into account the fact that Hugo software is designed to fit the convention registration software (which is the priority for each convention, and usually rewritten afresh), rather than vice versa.
The Software Committee’s report is admirably brief (page 69). It ignores some of the sillier ideas that were being thrown around last year, and makes two recommendations for constitutional change.
F9 (page 39) mandates that all bespoke software used for the Hugos should be mandated to be open source. I am a bit twitchy about this, mainly because I don’t like the WSFS Constitution including references to external bodies. But I trust the proposers and will probably support it.
F10 (pages 39-40) requires the agreement of bidding committees to the use of site selection software. Frankly, the problems that I have witnessed around site selection have been much more to do with bidding committees throwing their weight around, and it seems to me that this would probably make that situation worse. So I remain to be convinced.
There are some more proposals to do with site selection, which I will get to soon.
2025 WSFS Business meeting posts:
Mark Protection Committee Report
Investigation Committee on the 2023 Hugo Awards report
Software Committee
Hugo Administration Process Committee report
Business Meeting Study Group
C1, C2, C3, C4
C5
D1, D2, D3
D4
D5, D6
D7, D8
D9, D10, D11, D12
E1, E2
E3, E4, E5
E6
E7
E8
E9
F1, F2
F3, F4, F5, F6
F7, F8
F9, F10
F11
F12
F13
F14, F15
F16, F17, F18, F19
F20
F21
F22