[yt-dev] let's talk about Governance

[Britton Smith]

Greeting yt developers,

First, I want to congratulate everyone here on the successful release
of yt-3.0.  This was a massive effort on the part of so many and a
true testament to the strength of this team.

At the time of writing this, there are 78 members of the yt-dev
mailing list.  As someone who does most of their work in very small
collaborations, this amazes me and make me very proud.  In case you're
wondering, the yt-users list has 268 members.

As a project, yt has a significant amount of infrastructure: code
review with pull requests, issue tracking, automated testing, emails
lists, an IRC channel, enhancement proposals, workshops.  All of this
is evidence of our legitimacy as a Real Thing.  However, one big
missing piece is a system of governance.  I don't know exactly what
this means, but I have some ideas, which I will share below.  What I
want to do right now is to start a discussion that will, hopefully,
include as many people as possible on this list.

For me, governance means (roughly) the following:

- a set of procedures in writing for how various things are to be
  done, such as acceptance of pull requests, releases, designating
  developers as core contributors, etc.

- a governing body to make decisions and help guide the project.

This accomplishes a number of things, which as a project I think we
need, such as:

- overall stability of the project.

- providing a system for conflict resolution.

- maintaining the spirit of yt as a team effort.

- providing a way for active contributors to get credit for their
  contribution in the form of official recognition.


So, these are my initial thoughts, but I really think this deserves a
thorough discussion with as many people participating as possible.
Please, think about what governance means to you, whether we need it,
what it should be, and what we might get out of it, and share your
thoughts over the next few days.  I look forward to this discussion.

Britton
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.spacepope.org/pipermail/yt-dev-spacepope.org/attachments/20140812/08f7f085/attachment.htm>