Rough Consensus

Rough consensus is a term that describes a decision-making method. It indicates that the decision-makers consider the “sense of the group”. The sense of the group is not the majority of the group. It is rather the dominant view from the perspective of the decision-maker.

Rough consensus can be very useful in open-source projects with a huge and open contributor base. This would make formal elections impossible since it would require identification or a coin-based voting approach giving individuals with many coins more influence.