Owens, Ken <ken.owens@...>
😊. For the end users, this is simple – IMHO your all making this much harder than it needs to be
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Ken Owens
Vice President
Software Development Engineering
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From: cncf-toc@... <cncf-toc@...>
On Behalf Of alexis richardson
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2020 7:25 AM
To: Matt Farina <matt@...>
Cc: Reitbauer, Alois <alois.reitbauer@...>; Quinton Hoole <quinton@...>; Angel Ramirez <angel@...>; Erin Boyd <eboyd@...>; Terence Lee <hone02@...>; Lee Calcote <leecalcote@...>; CNCF TOC <cncf-toc@...>
Subject: Re: [cncf-toc] Proposal - the future of Sandbox
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Yes - this.
We do have a definition, but Sandbox is still a source of many misunderstandings. Only the Landscape causes even more confusion.
On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 1:16 PM Matt Farina <matt@...> wrote:
I'd like to dig a little deeper on one thing you brought up. Specifically:
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Define what sandbox is really for. This thread has a lot of points on this one.
On Wed, May 27, 2020, at 7:00 AM, Reitbauer, Alois wrote:
I also want to chime in with my experience on both sides as a SIG chair and somebody involved in a project submission.
Before that I want to point out that I really appreciate the effort that Liz and the TOC put into moving the CNCF forward. I remember how open they were to suggestions like SIG Chairs and how quickly they were
put into practice.
From a SIG perspective I understand the effort for sandbox projects. It might be a bit much, but as a foundation we are here to help. This also means we sometimes provide feedback beyond the pure scope of sandbox.
Projects do get pushy as they are impatiently waiting for results.
From a project side I haven’t found the process smooth at all. The project I am involved in has been in the process for over a year now and always had to deal with changing processes. Present to the TOC, now
present to the SIG, provide a SIG review, search for TOC sponsors and now wait for the next round of the process. This is honestly very frustrating and does not feel welcoming at all. Now everything is back to halt again.
While I agree that this should not impact how an open source project grows and gets pushed to the next level, it is not helping either. This is especially true if the project has been proposed for quite some
time and people think – just because there is no progress – there is no interest from the CNCF.
Now to what I think would be great:
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Grandfather current project through the process.
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Define what sandbox is really for. This thread has a lot of points on this one.
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Better guide which projects come in. I started the discussion about “topics of interest” for the CNCF before. Only projects that fall in these categories can submit. This can change and involve.
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Define a simple and clear set of requirements and goals. Quite some requirements in the incubation due diligence doc are very vague and up for interpretation.
Thank you
// Alois
What Alexis said.
What problem(s) are we trying to solve here?
On Tue, May 26, 2020, 14:20 alexis richardson <alexis@...> wrote:
-1
The TOC should NOT step away from shepherding projects at any stage. The SIGs are an essential HELP but not a substitute for the TOC.
The 'sandbox' is not "a playground for ideas". I'm sorry Erin but that is the opposite of its purpose which is to allow collaboration between companies through the legal mechanism of a foundation, *when they
do not yet meet the criteria for incubation*.
On Tue, May 26, 2020 at 10:16 PM Angel Ramirez <angel@...> wrote:
I have to agree with Erin, we should treat sandbox as experimental stage in which TOC should’n be spending time on it and let the SIG’s and the community take care of that. I believe the TOC should focus instead
on creating the guidelines of the incubation and graduation.
There is a lot of projects with potential but because the process involve so many rules and please don’t take it wrong but when one of the requirements is 3 TOC is kind like lobbying.
On May 26, 2020, at 5:01 PM, Erin Boyd <eboyd@...> wrote:
I have a radical suggestion...Remove the sandbox entirely. Meaning no votes, no TOC optics.
Instead, we shepherd new and emergent projects through the SIGs where they are grown with others in the community that would have interest in that area and are discussed with SME within those SIGs. This helps
avoid conflict of interest in the TOC and imply anything in terms of 'marketing' or 'endorsement' by the TOC.
What this does is provide a level ground for projects of any size, age, origin to find additional contributors or vet ideas to a wider audience. The SIG would then have the responsibility when it's appropriate
to help the project through the incubation process. The idea is the SIGs are focused on technology types and are able to better inform on the viability of projects long term and directly understand the long term interest in the various areas. In the past,
I am not sure the TOC always spanned each technology stack/SIG as a requirement to fill the seats.
The sandbox box [inception] was entirely meant to be a playground for ideas. Through its evolution we have continually tried to raise the bar on 'acceptance' (i.e. requiring 3 TOC members, etc..) when this
was not the intention of this level whatsoever. Now, by limiting its scope to the few TOC members we are defeating the purpose of getting new projects key insights they need from the larger community and really engage in open collaboration. Let's allow the
community to drive the tech based on the need and allow projects to stand on their own.
On Wed, May 20, 2020 at 11:11 AM Matt Farina <matt@...> wrote:
I don't think you can remove the marketing potential.
I do think there are things that can be done, though...
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Make it clear what the different phases of projects are. The
CNCF projects page does a good job of this. But, I rarely see this elsewhere ... if I even have. The context and information is too often lost. Make this context more widely known and talked about.
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Update the
sandbox listing page to share what experiment or early-stage problem they are attempting to solve with the use of language like experiment and early-stage.
If projects want to be labeled as more than experimental or early-stage it will push them to go for incubation.
Projects marketing that they are CNCF sandbox (experiment/early stage) projects has benefits. For example:
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They are vendor neutral which breaks down a common barrier
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Some people like doing early stage work as opposed to working on more mature and slower moving things. Experiments have more room for change. Marketing them can help funnel people who like working on those things to projects open to those kinds of changes.
Instead of trying to avoid marketing we might consider pivoting it so that it's more useful in each context.
On Tue, May 19, 2020, at 1:21 PM, Terence Lee wrote:
> If a goal is to remove the unspoken marketing incentives for a project to join the Sandbox, what value does the Sandbox provide that a Working Group with a small initiative seeking a neutral home could not
provide? Why would projects bother with Sandbox? Inherently, part of the desired effect of the project joining the Sandbox is for benefit of marketing/perception; is because the affiliation is considered to be mutually beneficial to the project
and to the CNCF, right?
I wanted to comment here in this mailing list thread in addition to my comment in the proposal. I'm part of a current sandbox project Cloud Native Buildpacks and we have found the marketing incentives hugely
valuable in growing our project. The maintainer track slots have enabled us to market our project, gather feedback, and mostly meet people we wouldn't otherwise have the chance of meeting. I'd be sad to see that opportunity not be available to other Sandbox
projects in the CNCF. I believe the KubeCon EU 2020 of a single slot may be a good compromise.
I’m concerned that we may overcorrecting in this proposal, resulting in little value ascribed to the Sandbox project tier, detracting from the work projects have put in to reach Sandbox. If a goal is to alleviate
the time-burden of consideration of Sandbox projects on the TOC, what are SIGs for if not to alleviate strain on the TOC’s time? Do we consider that lowering the requirements bars and thereby allowing any number of new projects into the Sandbox will alleviate
the TOC’s time? Assuming Sandbox retains value post these changes, won’t there be more projects, moving more quickly (by virtue of being in the Sandbox), and therefore, ultimately competing for TOC time under Incubation review?
If a goal is to remove the unspoken marketing incentives for a project to join the Sandbox, what value does the Sandbox provide that a Working Group with a small initiative seeking a neutral home could not
provide? Why would projects bother with Sandbox? Inherently, part of the desired effect of the project joining the Sandbox is for benefit of marketing/perception; is because the affiliation is considered to be mutually beneficial to the project
and to the CNCF, right?
What if we continued on the initial path of unleveling Sandbox entrance requirements, and to facilitate an uncomplicated process for very early stage projects to be developed within, another rung is added to
the ladder of project tiers, called Experiments or similar?
On May 11, 2020, at 1:24 PM, alexis richardson <alexis@...> wrote:
Ok so if that's the goal then age of project isn't relevant IMO
On Mon, 11 May 2020, 19:20 Matt Farina, <matt@...> wrote:
What are we trying to achieve with this initiative?
Sandbox is for early stage and experimental projects. In crossing the chasm it's the innovators (pre-early adopters). Or, that's what the docs currently say about sandbox.
Right now it's difficult to get projects into sandbox for a few reasons...
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They require TOC sponsorship. People need to hunt down TOC members to get time with them to sponsor. There is no clear channel linking projects with TOC members so it's an exercise for the proposed sandbox maintainers. TOC members are busy so it's difficult
to get their time.
-
SIGs perform an analysis of sandbox projects. They often add additional criteria on top of the TOC criteria for sandbox projects before they can be recommended by a SIG to the TOC. Sometimes fulfilling the extra criteria can be more than 100 hours of extra
work.
These have raised the barrier on projects becoming sandbox level and made a significant amount more work for people involved.
The goal appears to be to simplify a process that's become time consuming and complicated.
On Mon, May 11, 2020, at 1:55 PM, Alexis Richardson wrote:
What are we trying to achieve with this initiative? How to weed out dead sandbox projects? Let's weed them out.
On Mon, 11 May 2020, 18:54 Matt Farina, <matt@...> wrote:
I'd like to unpack this part of the thread...
A much stricter requirement for multi-org governance as entry even to sandbox would help avoid project dumping by a single company.
Multi-org governance is a graduation requirement. Sandbox is for experiments and early stage projects. Adding multi-org governance would squash the goal of experiments and early stage.
if it has been around for a good few years already, and still has little adoption, it's probably either a bad idea, or doesn't work
This is a huge question. To start, what is "little adoption?" Incubation requires 3 running it in production. That's a metric.
"little adoption" gets complicated when a project is more of a niche, too. Cloud native has a bunch of niches. If only the widely used projects should go in that's totally fine. Just worth communicating. But,
this is sandbox. Do we want sandbox to have usage requirements higher than incubation?
I wonder, if we say
sandbox is for innovators (to quote the docs) that means a number of experiments and early stage projects are going to exit there. Can we say the experiment needs to be viable as a criteria and the TOC is the judge of that?
I'm skeptical on the "bad idea" part because that's very subjective. Who knows the technology, markets, and users well enough to really do this? It's a hard thing to do.
An experiment that's been running for years, has had blog posts, has had videos, and all that stuff but has failed to move the needle may not be a viable experiment any longer. It's hard to hear but it happens.
This is different from the good idea or bad idea because it's not looking at the quality of the work but rather if the experiment has the capability to live on.
Bad ideas can catch wind and have life. Good ideas can die.
Plus, the CNCF staff has been doing work on metrics to look at project health. This may be something they can analyze as part of their work on the submitted projects.
On Mon, May 11, 2020, at 12:53 PM, Bob Wise (AWS) via
lists.cncf.io wrote:
Don’t we want the CNCF to be a home for good projects, not just big projects?
A much stricter requirement for multi-org governance as entry even to sandbox would help avoid project dumping by a single company.
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Nit pick: “if it has been around for a good few years already, and still has little adoption, it's probably either a bad idea, or doesn't work”
There are many reasons that a project may be in this situation. It isn’t just because the project is bad/doesn’t work. Perhaps we should say that it isn’t a good fit for the CNCF as the CNCF isn’t just a way to get attention/marketing/adoption for a project
that is otherwise stalled.
Joe
Thanks for these thoughts, Quinton
1. Add some measures to avoid becoming a dumping ground for failed company projects. Even if a project checks all the boxes, if it has been around for a good few years already, and still has little adoption, it's probably either a bad idea, or doesn't work.
100% agree. As I don't think this is limited to Sandbox, I wonder if this would be better added in, say, the
Principles doc, wytd?
2. Add a 'public review' period of about a month. I think it's beneficial for the community to have visibility of what's heading towards sandbox, ask questions etc.
Yes, the idea is that this should be public. We need some way of holding a public comment period in a lightweight fashion. Perhaps whenever a form is submitted, it also generates an email to the TOC mailing list so that folks are aware and can reply with
thoughts about it.
3. The original thinking around TOC 'sponsors' (and there's probably a better word for them) was to have some show of support from the TOC for a candidate sandbox project (equivalent to 'yes, that seems like a good idea'). If no TOC members want a project
in the CNCF, for valid reasons, then it presumably shouldn't be there, irrespective of what boxes it checks. I think you'll need some way to achieve this. Perhaps announce at the TOC meeting the list of projects that have checked all the boxes (with a brief
description of each) and are eligible for sandbox, and give the TOC public veto rights at that point?
We're suggesting a simple majority vote from the TOC. This raises the bar in the sense that a majority, not just three TOC members, need to support a project, but hopefully the aggregate extra work for individual TOC members will be more than outweighed
by having less lobbying to deal with, and it will be much clearer for the whole community.
On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 4:38 PM Quinton Hoole <quinton@...> wrote:
Yes, this is very close to the intentions I always had in mind, but which I don't think were ever written down clearly, or particularly well executed on. Great job ckarifying.!
1. Add some measures to avoid becoming a dumping ground for failed company projects. Even if a project checks all the boxes, if it has been around for a good few years already, and still has little adoption, it's probably either a bad idea, or doesn't work.
2. Add a 'public review' period of about a month. I think it's beneficial for the community to have visibility of what's heading towards sandbox, ask questions etc.
3. The original thinking around TOC 'sponsors' (and there's probably a better word for them) was to have some show of support from the TOC for a candidate sandbox project (equivalent to 'yes, that seems like a good idea'). If no TOC members want a project
in the CNCF, for valid reasons, then it presumably shouldn't be there, irrespective of what boxes it checks. I think you'll need some way to achieve this. Perhaps announce at the TOC meeting the list of projects that have checked all the boxes (with a brief
description of each) and are eligible for sandbox, and give the TOC public veto rights at that point?
I can move these comments to the doc if needed. I'm not at my computer right now.
On Tue, May 5, 2020, 09:06 Liz Rice <liz@...> wrote:
--
Senior Principal Software Engineer, OCTO
Red
Hat
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