Hi Joe,

Thanks for your insight.

Yes, I agree our job as part of this community is fostering projects where they are in the process and diversifying the landscape.

But it is as equally important to have well defined guidelines for projects to understand how to get to the next level, why they weren't accepted or even why they were as they come up for annual review. Not only does it help guide the projects, it also provides a standard by which we perform due diligence that is consistent, year over year. We have certainly had some growing pains the last few years and no doubt will continue to grow our process moving forward. It's imperative to clearly define what bar these projects are being held against and as a member of the TOC we can directly point to these criteria. My fear, as I am sure others hold, is that the initial bar was low and is increasingly becoming higher for each project and the perception of the community will be that we are kingmakers despite it all.

I am hoping the SIGs provide the technical expertise and communication back to the TOC to formulate these guidelines.  This will allow us to be 'opinionated as a community' rather than just the TOC's collective opinion.

Erin

On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 8:53 AM Joe Beda <jbeda@...> wrote:

Hey Erin,

 

I think a lot of us bristle at the term “thought leadership”.  One of the principles of the TOC is that we are not kingmakers – see https://github.com/cncf/toc/blob/master/PRINCIPLES.md#no-kingmakers--one-size-does-not-fit-all.

 

Best practices can often be the result of trying to boil complex topics down to a one size fits all. 

 

But, honestly, I’m not sure I agree that we shouldn’t be more opinionated. That is something that I think this current TOC is considering.  How and when and what that look likes is still TBD.

 

As for the SIGs – the role of the SIGs is to assist the TOC in terms of its duties.  That primarily concerns evaluating projects for inclusion and graduation.  As part of that, forming some clear technical understanding (and documentation) on where the boundaries are and what is “cloud native” in that domain may make sense.  But producing something that is aimed at end users is, honestly, outside the scope of both the TOC and the CNCF in general.  My gut is that if there is a project that wants to do something like this they should form a project and submit it to the TOC.

 

(There is a fine line between marketing/product marketing and technical documentation.  The CNCF does have a charter to do marketing but I’m guessing what you are looking for crosses that line)

 

Other TOC members may have different views on this.

 

Joe

 

From: <cncf-toc@...> on behalf of Erin Boyd <eboyd@...>
Date: Friday, March 22, 2019 at 7:36 AM
To: CNCF TOC <cncf-toc@...>
Subject: [cncf-toc] thought leadership

 

Hi All,

I had a call with some executives looking to understand the CNCF's role better in the industry in terms of what I could gather as 'thought leadership.'

They are looking to the CNCF to provide to them direction and best practices for things like security in the cloud native landscape.

To me, this feels like something the newly formed SIGs would be providing and not necessarily something we have today, would you all agree?

They are strongly focused on telcos and security, both of which I haven't been focused on so would like your input if I am speaking out of turn.

Thanks in advance,

Erin