Date   

CNCF Storage Landscape Whitepaper version 2

Alex Chircop
 

Hi all,

The Storage SIG have been working on an updated landscape document (version 2), which includes a new database section and updates to the orchestration and management sections.  The doc is now in a final draft status and I'd like to open it up for final review and comments from the wider audience.


Thanks for your help!

Kind Regards,
Alex



Network Service Mesh 2020 Annual Review

Ed Warnicke <hagbard@...>
 

The Network Service Mesh 2020 Annual Review PR has been posted:


Ed


Re: Proposal - the future of Sandbox

Matt Farina
 

I don't think you can remove the marketing potential.

I do think there are things that can be done, though...

  • 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.
  • 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:
  1. They are vendor neutral which breaks down a common barrier
  2. 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.

Just a thought.

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.

On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 7:21 AM Lee Calcote <leecalcote@...> wrote:
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?

- Lee

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...
  1. 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.
  2. 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.

- Matt Farina

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.

- Matt Farina

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.

 

From: <cncf-toc@...> on behalf of Joe Beda <jbeda@...>
Date: Monday, May 11, 2020 at 8:36 AM
To: Liz Rice <liz@...>, Quinton Hoole <quinton@...>
Cc: cncf-toc <cncf-toc@...>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] [cncf-toc] Proposal - the future of Sandbox

 

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you can confirm the sender and know the content is safe.

 

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

 

From: cncf-toc@... <cncf-toc@...>
Date: Monday, May 11, 2020 at 3:56 AM
To: Quinton Hoole <quinton@...>
Cc: cncf-toc <cncf-toc@...>
Subject: Re: [cncf-toc] Proposal - the future of Sandbox

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.!

 

Four suggestions: 

 

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? 

 

Hope this helps...

 

I can move these comments to the doc if needed. I'm not at my computer right now. 

 

Q

 

On Tue, May 5, 2020, 09:06 Liz Rice <liz@...> wrote:










OperatorFramework (SDK and OLM) Public Comment Period

Katie Gamanji
 

Hello,

Operator Framework SDK and OLM sub-projects have applied for join as incubation projects (https://github.com/cncf/toc/pull/303).

I am the TOC sponsor for Operator Framework, and after completing the DD, I am opening the public comment period. 

Due diligence doc can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YJz3_UdJlM1IZmIthUtdvVXwid0V7dOHyQ4kuX--4TE/

The public comment period is now open for 2 weeks. and all SIGs, end users, TOC members, and community members are welcome to comment by replying to this thread.


Katie Gamanji


Re: Proposal - the future of Sandbox

Terence Lee
 

>  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.


On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 7:21 AM Lee Calcote <leecalcote@...> wrote:
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?

- Lee

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...
  1. 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.
  2. 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.

- Matt Farina

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.

- Matt Farina

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.

 

From: <cncf-toc@...> on behalf of Joe Beda <jbeda@...>
Date: Monday, May 11, 2020 at 8:36 AM
To: Liz Rice <liz@...>, Quinton Hoole <quinton@...>
Cc: cncf-toc <cncf-toc@...>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] [cncf-toc] Proposal - the future of Sandbox

 

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you can confirm the sender and know the content is safe.

 

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

 

From: cncf-toc@... <cncf-toc@...>
Date: Monday, May 11, 2020 at 3:56 AM
To: Quinton Hoole <quinton@...>
Cc: cncf-toc <cncf-toc@...>
Subject: Re: [cncf-toc] Proposal - the future of Sandbox

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.!

 

Four suggestions: 

 

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? 

 

Hope this helps...

 

I can move these comments to the doc if needed. I'm not at my computer right now. 

 

Q

 

On Tue, May 5, 2020, 09:06 Liz Rice <liz@...> wrote:








Re: Proposal - the future of Sandbox

Lee Calcote
 

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?

- Lee

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...
  1. 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.
  2. 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.

- Matt Farina

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.

- Matt Farina

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.

 

From: <cncf-toc@...> on behalf of Joe Beda <jbeda@...>
Date: Monday, May 11, 2020 at 8:36 AM
To: Liz Rice <liz@...>, Quinton Hoole <quinton@...>
Cc: cncf-toc <cncf-toc@...>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] [cncf-toc] Proposal - the future of Sandbox

 

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you can confirm the sender and know the content is safe.

 

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

 

From: cncf-toc@... <cncf-toc@...>
Date: Monday, May 11, 2020 at 3:56 AM
To: Quinton Hoole <quinton@...>
Cc: cncf-toc <cncf-toc@...>
Subject: Re: [cncf-toc] Proposal - the future of Sandbox

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.!

 

Four suggestions: 

 

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? 

 

Hope this helps...

 

I can move these comments to the doc if needed. I'm not at my computer right now. 

 

Q

 

On Tue, May 5, 2020, 09:06 Liz Rice <liz@...> wrote:








Apologies

Liz Rice
 

Sorry for the late notice, but after a late-breaking conflict has come up and I'm going to have to miss today's meeting 

Liz


Re: Proposal - the future of Sandbox

Lee Calcote
 

A focus on healthy governance is an important consideration as we look across the project levels. Seeding small portions of governance requirements upfront positions the project for future success. In this regard, having aspects of each category of project requirements (e.g. adoption, governance, and so on) included in each project tier (growing progressively stronger with each tier) make good sense.

I see business models as relevant, but orthogonal to project requirements. If a project meets criteria of being useful (in part what I consider TOC sponsorship to convey), adopted; having healthy governance, being securely architected, and so on. Why would we need to consider whether current or future organizations (that are contributing or have never contributed) will use the project as an open core component of an offering, or something to run as SaaS or wrap pro-serv around?

- Lee

On May 13, 2020, at 1:24 AM, Reitbauer, Alois <alois.reitbauer@...> wrote:

As far as I understand the requirement the goal is to avoid pure OpenCore projects to be CNCF projects. Additionally, having multiple organizations as maintainers will ensure project continuity of the organization initially driving the project would lose interest.
 
Maybe having the requirement to have substantial PRs coming from multiple organisations would also partly serve this purpose. Most open source projects require substantial contributions to become a maintainer anyways. 
 
// Alois
 
From: <cncf-toc@...> on behalf of "Matt Klein via lists.cncf.io" <mattklein123=gmail.com@...>
Reply to: "mattklein123@..." <mattklein123@...>
Date: Tuesday, 12. May 2020 at 19:13
To: Bob Wise <bob@...>
Cc: Matt Farina <matt@...>, CNCF TOC <cncf-toc@...>
Subject: Re: [cncf-toc] Proposal - the future of Sandbox
 
FWIW I am uncomfortable making multi-org governance/maintainership a requirement of incubation, since this requirement has been contentious even at graduation level, and I know that several of our existing incubation projects do not satisfy this requirement. 
 
I would rather see us nail this at graduation and allow incubation to be a time that multi-org governance/maintainership can be nurtured.
 
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 10:48 PM Bob Wise <bob@...> wrote:
"Sandbox is for experiments and early stage projects"
 
Isn't that part of what we are debating here?
 
I wouldn't agree that multi-org projects are incapable of innovation and experiments. It might even be the case that multi-org governance improves innovation. 
 
On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 10:54 AM 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.
 
- Matt Farina
 
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.

 

From: <cncf-toc@...> on behalf of Joe Beda <jbeda@...>
Date: Monday, May 11, 2020 at 8:36 AM
To: Liz Rice <liz@...>, Quinton Hoole <quinton@...>
Cc: cncf-toc <cncf-toc@...>
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] [cncf-toc] Proposal - the future of Sandbox

 

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you can confirm the sender and know the content is safe.

 

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

 

From: cncf-toc@... <cncf-toc@...>
Date: Monday, May 11, 2020 at 3:56 AM
To: Quinton Hoole <quinton@...>
Cc: cncf-toc <cncf-toc@...>
Subject: Re: [cncf-toc] Proposal - the future of Sandbox

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.!

 

Four suggestions: 

 

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? 

 

Hope this helps...

 

I can move these comments to the doc if needed. I'm not at my computer right now. 

 

Q

 

On Tue, May 5, 2020, 09:06 Liz Rice <liz@...> wrote:

 

 

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Agenda for 5/19 Meeting

Amye Scavarda Perrin
 

Hi all, 
We'll be meeting tomorrow, this is a TOC + SIG Chair meeting.
Sandbox Proposal Review
* Existing branding
* Process for current sandbox proposals
* Public comment period
Projects needing input
 * Annual Reviews
Slides

Thank you!
-- amye 

--
Amye Scavarda Perrin | Program Manager | amye@...


Re: SPIFFE/SPIRE in public comment period for Incubation

Brandon Lum
 

We did a sig-security security assessment of SPIFFE/SPIRE, and the project has done a very good job with the security evaluation and risk analysis of its components. More details of the assessment: https://github.com/cncf/sig-security/tree/master/assessments/projects/spiffe-spire


On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 1:43 PM Amye Scavarda Perrin <ascavarda@...> wrote:
SPIFFE/SPIRE has requested to move to Incubation. 

Justin Cormack of the TOC has asked for the public comment period to open, https://github.com/cncf/toc/pull/382#issuecomment-627490136  

All SIGs, end users, TOC members, and community members are welcome to comment at this time on the mailing list.  


--
Amye Scavarda Perrin | Program Manager | amye@...


Re: Incubation public comment period

Quinton Hoole <quinton@...>
 

+1. People have other jobs and vacations too. I don't see the need to rush this.


On Fri, May 15, 2020, 13:13 Kris Nova <kris.nova@...> wrote:
Strong agree with alexis - I’m booked solid these days and unless something is on fire it usually gets bumped down the list.

I usually book at a minimum one week out from initial engagement and I believe that’s fairly common in the industry. So setting aside time for myself for something like this would require 7+ days to even get it on my calendar to review.


Kris Nova
Chief Open Source Advocate


> On 15 May 2020, at 09:38, alexis richardson <alexis@...> wrote:
>




Re: Incubation public comment period

Vinod
 

Hi Chris,


Not all DD reviews and discussions are open and public. The communications are happening in the private channels, this has been confirmed by the TOC in the meetings.


I believe this proposal is related to my comments on the Contour submission, about the decision to go to the TOC vote without public comment ( https://github.com/cncf/toc/pull/330#issuecomment-626820824 ), the particular submission was a bit out of normal from the beginning itself.


I think reducing the time for public comment will result in less transparency. The transparency is one of the main issues in the TOC survey ( https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gTTf6USC0wDOCbwd5goS7e4qjGO8nqiPQO4fl_D3OuQ/edit#slide=id.g71ebafc016_0_237 )


There are many other submissions which are waiting longer than the Contour, it would be appreciated if the proposal would improve the experience for all, not just a few.


Thanks,


Vinod


On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 9:13 PM Kris Nova <kris.nova@...> wrote:
Strong agree with alexis - I’m booked solid these days and unless something is on fire it usually gets bumped down the list.

I usually book at a minimum one week out from initial engagement and I believe that’s fairly common in the industry. So setting aside time for myself for something like this would require 7+ days to even get it on my calendar to review.


Kris Nova
Chief Open Source Advocate


> On 15 May 2020, at 09:38, alexis richardson <alexis@...> wrote:
>




Re: Incubation public comment period

Kris Nova <kris.nova@...>
 

Strong agree with alexis - I’m booked solid these days and unless something is on fire it usually gets bumped down the list.

I usually book at a minimum one week out from initial engagement and I believe that’s fairly common in the industry. So setting aside time for myself for something like this would require 7+ days to even get it on my calendar to review.


Kris Nova
Chief Open Source Advocate

On 15 May 2020, at 09:38, alexis richardson <alexis@...> wrote:


Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: [cncf-toc] Form for Sandbox

Brendan Burns
 

Feel free to go ahead and edit. I created a clone of it before I sent it out to the internet for comment, just in case someone wanted to troll. Edit away!

--brendan



From: Doug Davis <dug@...>
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2020 11:26 AM
To: Brendan Burns <bburns@...>
Cc: cncf-toc@... <cncf-toc@...>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [cncf-toc] Form for Sandbox
 

How do you want feedback? email here or edit the form? scary that it appears i can edit :-)


thanks
-Doug
_______________________________________________________
STSM | IBM Hybrid Cloud | OM Knative
(919) 254-6905 | IBM 444-6905 | dug@...
The more I'm around some people, the more I like my dog

"Brendan Burns via lists.cncf.io" ---05/15/2020 11:58:52 AM---Many apologies for the delay in getting this together. Here is the first draft of the sandbox form:

From: "Brendan Burns via lists.cncf.io" <bburns=microsoft.com@...>
To: "cncf-toc@..." <cncf-toc@...>
Date: 05/15/2020 11:58 AM
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [cncf-toc] Form for Sandbox
Sent by: cncf-toc@...





Many apologies for the delay in getting this together. Here is the first draft of the sandbox form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1bJhG1MuM981uQXcnBMv4Mj9yfV5_q5Kwk3qhBCLa_5A/edit?usp=sharing

--brendan





2020 Brigade Annual Review

Vaughn Dice <Vaughn.Dice@...>
 

Greetings all,

The Brigade 2020 Annual Review PR has been posted at https://github.com/cncf/toc/pull/449 per Sandbox project processes.

Thank you in advance for your time and energy!

Cheers,

Vaughn Dice
Brigade maintainer


Re: Form for Sandbox

Doug Davis <dug@...>
 

How do you want feedback? email here or edit the form? scary that it appears i can edit :-)


thanks
-Doug
_______________________________________________________
STSM | IBM Hybrid Cloud | OM Knative
(919) 254-6905 | IBM 444-6905 | dug@...
The more I'm around some people, the more I like my dog

"Brendan Burns via lists.cncf.io" ---05/15/2020 11:58:52 AM---Many apologies for the delay in getting this together. Here is the first draft of the sandbox form:

From: "Brendan Burns via lists.cncf.io" <bburns=microsoft.com@...>
To: "cncf-toc@..." <cncf-toc@...>
Date: 05/15/2020 11:58 AM
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [cncf-toc] Form for Sandbox
Sent by: cncf-toc@...





Many apologies for the delay in getting this together. Here is the first draft of the sandbox form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1bJhG1MuM981uQXcnBMv4Mj9yfV5_q5Kwk3qhBCLa_5A/edit?usp=sharing

--brendan





Re: Incubation public comment period

alexis richardson
 

Busy people just don't pay attention to Github notifications until it
really matters?


On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 5:32 PM Chris Aniszczyk
<caniszczyk@...> wrote:

Maybe the weeks feel extra long these days but it seems just an extra unnecessary amount of time.

All the work and review happens in the open so it's not like people will be surprised.

On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 11:27 AM alexis richardson <alexis@...> wrote:

I see no reason to move to one week if the meetings are two weeks
apart. This is like an auction "asking once, asking twice..."


On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 5:20 PM Matt Farina <matt@...> wrote:

This sparked a few thoughts I figured I would share...

1. If someone goes on vacation for a week they could miss a public comment period in its entirety. As someone who went through the 2 week period for my project I'd like it to go faster. But, as someone who takes vacations for a week I like that a comment period would not be so short that I'd miss it.

2. Has anyone ever commented in the second week?

3. In my experience, which may not mirror everyone, the DD's are primarily done by the projects. The SIGs they are presented to are small groups in the broader system. There are others who might have very relevant feedback.

4. Has anyone ever put in the time to provide comment feedback of any kind of useful or detailed nature? If no one is gonna use it does it matter?

I'm obviously not of one mind on this. But, I figured someone should comment in a comment period on comment periods.

- Matt Farina

On Fri, May 15, 2020, at 11:26 AM, Liz Rice wrote:

Chris is suggesting reducing the comment period after a vote is called from two weeks to one week.



I can see the attraction, because in practice if people are going to comment it seems they’re likely to react pretty fast rather than leave it to the end of the comment period. And this won't be the first anyone hears about it because the DD will have been happening for some weeks prior to this. But it seems worth highlighting for public comment (how meta!)




--
Chris Aniszczyk (@cra) | +1-512-961-6719


Re: Incubation public comment period

Chris Aniszczyk
 

Maybe the weeks feel extra long these days but it seems just an extra unnecessary amount of time.

All the work and review happens in the open so it's not like people will be surprised.

On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 11:27 AM alexis richardson <alexis@...> wrote:
I see no reason to move to one week if the meetings are two weeks
apart.  This is like an auction "asking once, asking twice..."


On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 5:20 PM Matt Farina <matt@...> wrote:
>
> This sparked a few thoughts I figured I would share...
>
> 1. If someone goes on vacation for a week they could miss a public comment period in its entirety. As someone who went through the 2 week period for my project I'd like it to go faster. But, as someone who takes vacations for a week I like that a comment period would not be so short that I'd miss it.
>
> 2. Has anyone ever commented in the second week?
>
> 3. In my experience, which may not mirror everyone, the DD's are primarily done by the projects. The SIGs they are presented to are small groups in the broader system. There are others who might have very relevant feedback.
>
> 4. Has anyone ever put in the time to provide comment feedback of any kind of useful or detailed nature? If no one is gonna use it does it matter?
>
> I'm obviously not of one mind on this. But, I figured someone should comment in a comment period on comment periods.
>
> - Matt Farina
>
> On Fri, May 15, 2020, at 11:26 AM, Liz Rice wrote:
>
> Chris is suggesting reducing the comment period after a vote is called from two weeks to one week.
>
>
>
> I can see the attraction, because in practice if people are going to comment it seems they’re likely to react pretty fast rather than leave it to the end of the comment period. And this won't be the first anyone hears about it because the DD will have been happening for some weeks prior to this. But it seems worth highlighting for public comment (how meta!)
>
>
>





--
Chris Aniszczyk (@cra) | +1-512-961-6719


Re: Incubation public comment period

alexis richardson
 

I see no reason to move to one week if the meetings are two weeks
apart. This is like an auction "asking once, asking twice..."

On Fri, May 15, 2020 at 5:20 PM Matt Farina <matt@...> wrote:

This sparked a few thoughts I figured I would share...

1. If someone goes on vacation for a week they could miss a public comment period in its entirety. As someone who went through the 2 week period for my project I'd like it to go faster. But, as someone who takes vacations for a week I like that a comment period would not be so short that I'd miss it.

2. Has anyone ever commented in the second week?

3. In my experience, which may not mirror everyone, the DD's are primarily done by the projects. The SIGs they are presented to are small groups in the broader system. There are others who might have very relevant feedback.

4. Has anyone ever put in the time to provide comment feedback of any kind of useful or detailed nature? If no one is gonna use it does it matter?

I'm obviously not of one mind on this. But, I figured someone should comment in a comment period on comment periods.

- Matt Farina

On Fri, May 15, 2020, at 11:26 AM, Liz Rice wrote:

Chris is suggesting reducing the comment period after a vote is called from two weeks to one week.



I can see the attraction, because in practice if people are going to comment it seems they’re likely to react pretty fast rather than leave it to the end of the comment period. And this won't be the first anyone hears about it because the DD will have been happening for some weeks prior to this. But it seems worth highlighting for public comment (how meta!)



Re: Form for Sandbox

Matt Farina
 

Brendan,

As someone who has a sandbox project to submit, this looks good to me.

The form does need some cleanup (like a thing listed as optional is marked as required). Otherwise, this looks doable.

- Matt Farina

On Fri, May 15, 2020, at 11:58 AM, Brendan Burns via lists.cncf.io wrote:
Many apologies for the delay in getting this together. Here is the first draft of the sandbox form:


--brendan