Steering Committee 2024-05-15

Committees Steering Committee
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Attendees: @isabel, @minion, @jakehamilton

Agenda/Minutes

Security flags

  • [isabel] Dependabot flags were due to tests/code that is not actually used… I think we should be fine
  • [skyler] Let’s go through them later… remember to dismiss them for the right reason if you find one to be invalid/not important

Project management

  • [isabel] Vikunja wasn’t properly able to make things public… is an upstream issue
  • [isabel] We’ll see how that goes … or if we get plane

Roadmap: elections: should we move them?

  • [skyler] Updates and clarifications to our roadmap - #7 by Jeff
  • [jakehamilton] continuity is my largest concern… I want things to be properly stable before we have them. We could have things earlier if that wasn’t affected
  • [isabel] it might be nice to get some going earlier, just shorter-term ones. I think we should re-elect on release anyway. Not doing so is a recipe for leader-burnout
  • [skyler] I see positions as more of a “coordination” thing
  • [isabel] I think people would re-elect the same members, probably
  • [jakehamilton] Do we have enough people to hold elections? Lots of groups are tiny
  • [jakehamilton] SIGs are intended to be wholly elected, rather than request-to-join. Official positions would be established via elections. Those positions would be more limited, maintain more ownership, etc.
    • [skyler] In that case, we need to be more clear about what elections are
    • [jakehamilton] The ad-hoc structure right now is separation into groups, working on domains. The elections would mean transitioning things into what K8S has
    • [skyler] I think we should have “leadership elections” earlier, and then “membership elections” later … and I think we should put that on the roadmap!
      • [skyler] I mentioned in the post that stage 2/3 would be sensible for that… I think that’s a good idea
  • [isabel] who should be able to vote?
    • [skyler] I don’t know for “membership elections”, for “leadership elections” I think you should maybe make SIG leadership ones internal
    • [jakehamilton] K8S allows anyone with enough contributions to vote … some number ~50. The idea being people who are actively participating in the project can decide governance, which I think makes sense. K8S people can hold multiple positions at a time, too
    • [isabel] I think we should ban people from leading multiple sigs at once. I think it’s too intensive
      • [jakehamilton] I don’t see an issue with people participating in both if they can bring valuable contributions to both… it might not be too much if the scope is smaller
      • [isabel] ok… maybe then confirm on a case-by-case?
      • [jakehamilton] I think this can self-regulate. There are other SIG members, etc., and all the positions are elected. I’d rather err on the side of letting people do things. They can step down/be voted out later
  • [jakehamilton] As a summary: The elections at the end of the roadmap should be kept, but clarified to a more “this is SIGs gaining more structure and becoming elected”. Right now, people want “elections” in a more “let’s give someone the role of leader/direction-setter right now” … let’s plan to do that earlier. Let’s clarify this on our roadmap
    • Phase 2: leadership selection (but when you write it on the website you need to highlight that this could mean election or something more ad-hoc) for groups
    • Phase 3: transitioning to fully-formed SIGs/Committees, and the restrictions/ownership that comes with that… elect again before the charter forms
    • Phase 4: elect steering committee
      • We need to justify this to people, “who steers the steering committee”?
      • [jakehamilton] Want to avoid discontinuity
      • [skyler] Want to avoid leading in a new committee to do sudden different governance stuff, better to leave a template from what we have done
      • [skyler] We should look at the community feedback here too, they’ve left good feedback and we should reference them in our announcement
      • [jakehamilton] I don’t think I will stay on the steering committee past phase 4, I’m certain there will be many people better than me. I’m in the position I am now because I wanted to be the change I see, I hope we can make this last longer than any individual contributor

Opencollective

  • [jakehamilton] Let’s do it!
  • [isabel] Alternatives. Librapay? Kofi?
    • [jakehamilton] I think opencollective has transparency benefits
  • [isabel] Gitea refunded a gambling company donation

How expensive is this?/What’s the scale of binary caches, builds, etc.

  • [jakehamilton] re binary caching: it’s important but urgency is debatable
    • [isabel] I think we won’t necessarily hit things that we’re building from scratch for a while
    • [skyler] if we change stdenv, that’s a lot of rebuilds, I think that some stuff at the top of the tree is not too much of a problem but otherwise it could be
  • [jakehamilton] Let’s talk about appetite not estimates. How much should we put towards it?
    • [isabel] I think we should cache major packages
      • [skyler] … but those will need dependencies
    • [jakehamilton] maybe we should purge caches, maybe we should only cache the last 30 days?
      • [skyler] ok, the last 30 days of all supported releases sounds good
    • [jakehamilton] we could say “just core” to start with
      • [jakehamilton] can expand that as our appetite increases

Forgejo

  • [skyler] codeberg/our own infra?
    • [jakehamilton] I have not heard back from codeberg in a little bit…
    • [skyler] So, that’s our own thing then
    • [jakehamilton] Let’s add another server to our infra repo
  • [skyler] authentication: should we do SSO?

Open Steering Committee meetings

  • [isabel] Aren’t we making our minutes public?
    • [skyler] We haven’t yet … I thought we had too
  • [jakehamilton] Meetings which contain sensitive information shouldn’t be public. All other meetings do not contain sensitive information and I think it would be a good idea for us to publish minutes. The minutes we have are fine, last week was fine and I had believed they were public
  • [skyler] we should post last week’s and this week’s to the forum
    • [isabel] I’ll make the post

Logo decision

  • [jakehamilton] We want some form of branding associated with that. I thought it would be neat to design & do a logo vote. There are some problems associated with that
  • [isabel] Branding feels like a “once you start it, it’s hard to iterate”…
    • [isabel] This isn’t necessarily the case
  • [jakehamilton] At the end of the day, a decision needs to be made
    • Who makes it?
      • Community vote?
      • Marketing?
      • Steering?
  • [jakehamilton] re the poll right now: is it the logo for all time
    • [skyler] I don’t think it has to be forever … but I wouldn’t be expecting you to run another next week
    • [jakehamilton] what if we take the results, run with the winner, add something to the roadmap where the marketing committee can figure out final branding details. That could mean logo changes, font changes, color scheme standardizations, etc.
      • [skyler] I’m happy with that

Plane

  • [jakehamilton] I haven’t heard back, I’ll bump them when it’s been a week
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Please no :grimacing: I would be very sad if there wasn’t a chance to re vote on it in 6 months. If I knew it was the vote for all time I would’ve stayed up all night to get a clean logo made.

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I believe we agreed that the logo we have now, will not be the permanent one.

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It is not, I was trying to clarify that doing so is a bad idea and not something we want or intend.

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Thanks for publishing the minutes!

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