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  2. Proposal for a new "Steering Committee Charter"

Re: Proposal for a new "Steering Committee Charter"

alexis richardson
 

Thanks Quinton, you raise good points. 

The SC is indeed meant to add value to the project and not introduce bureaucracy or 'interference'.  Most projects are pretty good at running themselves.  We should aim for guidelines that protect that principle.

I agree, strongly, that economic incentives are super important for driving purposeful and sustainable development.  The SC model attempts to introduce enough ecosystem balance to solve the open core described in the doc, while keeping enough incentives in place.  The mechanism is to look to others than the core maintainers to help with the balance.  

It's only one model, and I think other models are good too.  This model in particular should help keep ISVs interested and bring users closer to projects. 






On Thu, 9 Jul 2020, 06:30 Quinton Hoole, <quinton@...> wrote:
Nice idea, and very well written doc.

 I can't help thinking that it might promote excess and undesirable bureaucracy though, unless quite carefully scoped.

Anecdotally, the most common failure modes of oss projects appear to center around a shortage of suitably skilled contributors to competently plan, design, build and document commonly required functionality.  That is in turn typically caused by lack of willingness by companies to hire, pay and otherwise support said suitably skilled contributors (specifically engineers/coders and project co-ordinator/managers).

Assuming that the above assertions are true, presumably we want to incentivize companies and individuals to fill the above gaps (i.e. fund competent engineers and project managers) , rather than form committees to decide what should hypothetically be done by the aforementioned missing people?

Alternatively stated, should the companies who find and pay the people needed to build what's required, not get to strongly influence what's built? 

If such competent contributions are being unreasonably blocked, I agree that a good escalation path is needed. Ultimately I think this should end up at well-constitued SIGS and the TOC, but a more focussed Steering Committee per project might we'll make sense, in some cases. But perhaps its purpose should be squarely focussed on ensuring that real and legitimate contributions are not unreasonably blocked. That's all.

Q

On Thu, Jul 2, 2020, 14:50 alexis richardson <alexis@...> wrote:
Hi all

Please see below a link to a public document that describes a proposed
charter for projects wishing to establish a Steering Committee.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Hiz1dGYRS7GcjedpRVnSlDjIj0AVjeTa0-Td7aW-Lk/edit?usp=sharing

The model proposed in the doc is intended to provide 'best practice'
for projects and governance through graduation and beyond. It is not
intended to be mandatory.  It is consistent with our existing CNCF TOC
Principles.

The model addresses some of the questions raised in this github thread
- https://github.com/cncf/toc/issues/459

I welcome commentary in the doc or on this list.

alexis
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