[Numpy-discussion] composition of the steering council (was Re: Governance model request)

[Sebastian Berg]

On Mi, 2015-09-23 at 17:08 -0600, Charles R Harris wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 3:21 PM, Travis Oliphant <travis at continuum.io>
> wrote:
>         
>                 
>                 Regarding the seed council, I just tried to pick an
>                 objective
>                 criterion and an arbitrary date that seemed generally
>                 in keeping with
>                 idea of "should be active in the last
>                 1-to-2-years-ish". Fiddling with
>                 the exact date in particular makes very little
>                 difference -- between
>                 pushing it back to 2 years ago today or forward to 1
>                 year ago today,
>                 the only thing that changes is whether Pauli makes the
>                 list or not.
>                 (And Pauli is obviously a great council candidate,
>                 though I don't know
>                 whether he even wants to be on it.)
>                 
>                 > Personally, I have no idea how big the council
>                 should be. Too big, and
>                 > there is no point, consensus is harder to reach the
>                 larger the group,
>                 > and the main (only?) role of the council is to
>                 resolve issues where
>                 > consensus has not been reached in the larger
>                 community. But what is
>                 > too big?
>                 
>                 
>                 > As for make-up of the council, I think we need to
>                 expand beyond people
>                 > who have recently contributed core code.
>                 >
>                 > Yes, the council does need to have expertise to make
>                 technical
>                 > decisions, but if you think about the likely
>                 contentious issues like
>                 > ABI breakage, a core-code focused view is
>                 incomplete. So there should
>                 > be representation by:
>                 >
>                 > Someone(s) with a long history of working with the
>                 code -- that
>                 > institutional memory of why decisions were made the
>                 way they were
>                 > could be key.
>                 
>                 Sure -- though I can't really imagine any way of
>                 framing a rule like
>                 this that *wouldn't* be satisfied by Chuck + Ralf +
>                 Pauli, so my guess
>                 is that such a rule would not actually have any effect
>                 on the council
>                 membership in practice.
>         
>         
>         As the original author of NumPy, I would like to be on the
>         seed council as long as it is larger than 7 people.    That is
>         my proposal.    I don't need to be a permanent member, but I
>         do believe I have enough history that I can understand issues
>         even if I haven't been working on code directly.       
>         
>         
>         I think I do bring history and information that provides all
>         of the history that could be helpful on occasion.     In
>         addition, if a matter is important enough to even be brought
>         to the attention of this council, I would like to be involved
>         in the discussion about it.     
>         
>         
>         
>         It's a simple change to the text --- basically an explanation
>         that Travis requested to be on the seed council.  
> 

> I too would like you to be a member. We could either write it into the
> text in recognition of your status as the Numpy creator, or it could
> be the first order of business. I would only ask that you give
> yourself some time to become familiar with how things work and the
> people involved in the current community. It has been some years since
> you have been active in code development.
> 

I think I can agree with that. On a serious note, I now realize that I
am probably the one with the most objection, so for everyone, do not
bother with trying to convince me, you probably cannot fully, nor do you
have to, I will let it stand as is after this and let others take over
from here (after this, probably whatever Chuck says is good). [1]

More to the point of the actual members:

So to say, I feel the council members have to try to be *directly*
active and see being active as a necessary *commitment* (i.e. also try
to travel to meetings). This will always be a difficult judgment of
course, but there is no help to it. The current definitions imply this.
And two years seems fine. It is not that short, at least unless someone
stops contributing very abruptly which I do not think is that usual. I
will weight in to keep the current times but do not feel very strongly.

About using the commit log to seed, I think there are some old term
contributers (David Cournapeau maybe?), who never stopped doing quite a
bit but may not have merge commits. However, I think we can start of
with what we had, then I would hope Chuck and maybe Ralf can fill in the
blanks.

About the size, I think if we get too many -- if that is possible -- we
should just change the governance at that time to be not veto based
anymore. This is something to keep in mind, but probably does not need
to be formalized.

- Sebastian


[1] Sorry to "footnote" this, but I think I am probably rudely repeating
myself and frankly do **not want this to be discussed**. It is just to
try to be fully clear where I come from:
Until SciPy 2015, I could list many people on this list who have shown
more direct involvement in numpy then Travis since I joined and have no
affiliation to numpy. If Travis had been new to the community at the
time, I would be surprised if I would even recognize his name.
I know this is only half the picture and Travis already mentioned
another side, but this is what I mostly saw even if it may be a harsh
and rude assessment.


> 
> Chuck 
> 
>         
>         
>         
>         
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