Liz


On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 10:07 AM Liz Rice <liz@...> wrote:

Hello TOC folks,

We have some slightly conflicting / ambiguous documentation which I’d like to get tidied up (partly inspired by this issue).

Excellent!

It seems odd that Sandbox requires two sponsors but other levels only require one.

Personally I’m inclined towards two at all levels, on the basis of two heads being better than one, and that hopefully two TOC sponsors will chivvy each other along rather than one being a potential bottleneck for the project. Wdyt? We could discuss in the meeting this week if folks think that’s appropriate.

Let me try to clarify our previous processes, to date.

The roles of sponsor have been very different for Incubation & Sandbox.
1) Incubation: the sponsor acts as a champion for the end-end process
and may get very deeply involved in technical DD and user interviews.
2) Sandbox: the sponsor is part of a quorum of N (=2 today). That is
all. There are no down-votes or deep DD docs.

The processes are also very different:
1) Incubation. Needs filling out lots of docs. Needs user
interviews. DD should be a high bar. TOC vote is by majority (6/9)
2) Sandbox. There is no formal technical DD. The process is
deliberately minimal.

Please note that all this may be separate from, and parallel to, legal
and other non-technical DD that the LF/CNCF may require.

Because the roles & processes are so different, I don't see any need
for the number of sponsors to be the same. If we increase Sandbox
quorum from 2 to 3, I would personally not see value in having 3
champions for the incubation technical DD process.

We should clarify / document the role of a TOC Sponsor within the Proposal process

Mentoring the project *through the Proposal process* (this isn’t an ongoing commitment post acceptance)
Calling for a TOC vote when they feel the project and proposal are ready
So to be clear, being the TOC Sponsor doesn’t necessarily mean that you think it’s ready yet - you have just agreed to advise the project on what they need to get ready. Does that match everyone’s understanding?

We set out a process, which is buried (alas) in the email archives
which are now locked up inside a barely-usable tool.

Roughly it was this:
1. project present a pitch for TOC to consider it worthy of applying
for Incubation
2. if one TOC member volunteers to act as "sponsor" then the
Incubation process begins
3. a questionnaire is completed (it has LOTS of qns eg history of the project)
4. using docs and github, a formal DD takes place (this got documented
in a lot of detail later on)
5. chris gets LF to do their own DD
6. when the DD teams are happy, everyone presents results to TOC for
review, discussion, vote.
7. the TOC sponsor is involved at all stages especially vouching for 6
being done right

As part of this we should add a link to the Proposal process from the Sandbox Process to clarify that the same template and process is required.

This a major change from how we did it before. The processes are
completely different.

BTW - happy to support changes, just want to clarify prior art.

In that proposal process we ask about who the initial committers are and how long they have been working on the project. I suggest we also add into that something broader about the history of the project - was it originally a fork or greenfields? Did it originate from a company, a community effort, or an individual contributor? Not that there are any wrong answers, but this could help us get a sense of “smell” about the project and what further questions we might want to ask.

This stuff does get asked in the questionnaire.

alexis

Thanks,
Liz