(+ SIG ContribStrat) I could see the overarching theme as "distilling what it could mean to be a 'good maintainer'". SIG Contributor Strategy is exactly the kind of venue to have this discussion and

Agree that SC should (if suggested) remain a known good option, and Not Compulsory. Agree that some projects are "small" - but i would have said Helm is small! My belief is that SCs can help growth.

And for large projects like Helm, an SC has these benefits. Just like Kubernetes. But in smaller projects, where you're looking at a couple dozen regular contributors period, there's not a lot o

I think you are creating a strawman argument. We are not substituting one form of governance for another. The issue is how SCs can add value eg direction, participation, and user confidence that

Then pick a better example of a steering committee. I don't know of a single example of a steering committee successfully evolving otherwise broken leadership within a project. Maybe you do? I've

Josh, please disentangle your feelings about istio from the constructive discussion i can see you want to have.

Others have already gone over the issue of having positions and contributions accrue to companies and not individuals. Second, there's the fact that the 3 biggest corporate contributors get 100% of

I see - well good on them for getting a steering committee in that case! -- Kris Nova Chief Open Source Advocate 85 2nd Street San Francisco, CA 94105 nova@...

It isn't but it has aspects we can learn from (good and bad) as do other projects (eg apache kafka to name one). This thread is specifically about steering committees, and what they can help with

Excuse my ignorance here - but I thought Istio wasn't a CNCF project? Is there an official statement anywhere on where Istio landed? I am confused why I am seeing Istio threads like this if it's not a

Josh, feel free to highlight the negative aspects of Istio's history and governance on another thread. I may well join you. But please let's also give them credit for moving forward with

The Istio SC is a serious political problem, and the project has ongoing governance issues. Why would we want to emulate this with CNCF projects? An SC can be useful to a project that is large

+1 binding -alena.

I am glad to see the discussion started. I've done a lot of governance work on various projects and am happy to help in any way I can.

Good points Matt. Helm is well run and provides a useful model of one successful pattern. I don't think there is one true governance rule for who is on the SC. IMHO it is critical to include non

The Helm project has a similar model in its governance. There is a separation between Org Maintainers and Project Maintainers. The Org Maintainers are responsible for the project but not the technical

I think it's good for both vendors and end users.

Good comments Joe. I also don't adore every aspect of the Istio model. eg I agree that "credit for contributions accrue to companies, not individuals" isn't optimal. But I still like what they are

It is great to see a model that limits the influence of a single vendor. The explicit split between coding and non-coding contributions is.. interesting. One big difference worth calling out is

Seems like a very good approach to me. Q