[yt-dev] let's talk about Governance

Nathan Goldbaum nathan12343 at gmail.com
Tue Aug 12 15:25:07 PDT 2014


On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 2:11 PM, Britton Smith <brittonsmith at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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.
>

+1 on formalizing our practices for all of this.  This should be a YTEP.


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

Can you expand a bit more what you have in mind for what this governing
body could be?

In the past we've made decisions in the open and democratically, usually by
a preponderance of people giving a +1 on something.

I can certainly see why having something like this would be useful for
conflict resolution but I don't really like the idea of having leadership
or a BDFL.  Perhaps this should instead by an ombudsman whose task is to
guide conflict resolution discussions?

>From a purely legal perspective, NumFocus provides an "official" framework
we can operate under.  According to the NumFocus website, we're an
"associated project", although it's not clear to me what the distinction
between the "associated", "core", and "other" projects is with respect to
NumFocus.


>
> 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
>
>
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>
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