Add Governance Document

[mrocklin]

This takes and modifies the Jupyter document. I recommend reviewing commit-by-commit.

Closes #2 #5

[pentschev]

Everything seems good in general, no further comments from me. :)

[mrocklin]

If there are no further comments then I suggest that we merge this in 48 hours. All current owners have been informed of this PR and the intent to merge.

[martindurant]

+1

[mrocklin]

Thanks for the careful review @jakirkham !

The main concern that came up a few time when reading this document was votes (particularly on contentious issues) currently lack a clear mechanism for making decisions. Namely where does this vote occur? How do we protect members of the minority/unpopular view from backlash? What thresholds are needed to make these decisions?

Entirely agreed. What are your thoughts on what we should do here?

Currently this happens informally over e-mail, with a lazy-consensus method. To be the simplest approach would be to change this to a mailing list and spell out the lazy consensus method somewhere in this document. Thoughts?

[jakirkham]

Of course. Hope it was helpful.

That seems like a good start. For many things lazy consensus can be good and quick. Spelling that out somewhere and referencing it is useful.

In some cases where these issues get more focused subcommittees can be useful for just delegating the work to a smaller group (increasingly conda-forge does this and Jupyter does a bit too hence that text). IDK how important this is for us.

For some things that are more contentious, we may want to opt for a different metric for passing (unanimous, some large majority, etc.). It's also in these cases where it is useful to anonymize ballots.

[mrocklin]

I would like to finish this process up soon. @jakirkham can I ask you to take another look above and see if there are still issues above? If so, could I ask you to take an active role in trying to address them?

[mrocklin]

Do we want a one to one relationship between GitHub owners in the steering Council?

Not necessarily. I could imagine people that we want governing the project that we don't want to have day-to-day github authority. I don't have strong thoughts here and welcome edits.

Note that the since introducing this says that just some of the areas should be not, not all.

I'm not sure I understand this

[TomAugspurger]

Sorry, “since” should be sentence. I think that the requirement that just some of the items need be met should satisfy John’s concerns.

[mrocklin]

As stated earlier, I would like to finish this up soon. I appreciate people coming in and suggesting modifications. That engagement is great. However, if people are going to make suggestions, please make them now and then lets vote and be done. I would prefer to not go through this process of making tiny adjustments for another month. Also, while I put the original draft up here, I would really like it if people were to make edits directly, showing that this is a group effort.

[TomAugspurger]

LGTM, no additional concerns.

On May 7, 2019, at 08:43, Matthew Rocklin notifications@github.com wrote:

As stated earlier, I would like to finish this up soon. I appreciate people coming in and suggesting modifications. That engagement is great. However, if people are going to make suggestions, please make them now and then lets vote and be done. I would prefer to not go through this process of making tiny adjustments for another month. Also, while I put the original draft up here, I would really like it if people were to make edits directly, showing that this is a group effort.

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[TomAugspurger]

@jakirkham do you have time to summarize any outstanding concerns you have? Looking through, I think most have been addressed, but I may have missed some. If all is well, I suggest we merge in ~48 hours.

[jakirkham]

@TomAugspurger, sorry I have a lot on my plate at work. If you are comfortable giving me until the end of the week, I can try to re-review and clearly summarize my concerns.

[jakirkham]

Alright I've pushed some changes to try and answer some of the open questions above. Am not too attached to these specific answers if there are other thoughts. Would be happy to iterate as needed. So please take a look and share your thoughts.

[mrocklin]

Thanks for the comments @TomAugspurger . In many cases this text was just taken from the Jupyter govenrnance document, so there is no rationale on our side.

I encourage you to make changse directly that you think are unlikely to be contentious.

[TomAugspurger]

I thought that the subcommittee-specific things were newly added by @jakirkham, but I may be wrong. I don't see anything in the Jupyter docs about it.

For now, I would prefer not requiring that a subcommittee be required to have a SC member, primarily because I don't know what subcommittees will be used for in practice. But I don't want to directly override @jakirkham's opinion if I don't understand the situation well enough :)

[jakirkham]

Thanks Tom. Yes, the subcommittee things are new. Let's leave that discussion in the one (arbitrarily chosen) thread above though to keep discussion easier to follow (if that's alright). Also thanks for the various typo fixes.

[TomAugspurger]

It feels like this and https://github.com/dask/governance/pull/12 are close to reaching consensus. @jakirkham are you comfortable with calling a vote here as well?

[jakirkham]

...or Tuesday as I blanked and forgot Monday is a US Holiday. 😄

[TomAugspurger]

Tuesday sounds good.

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+1

[jrbourbeau]

+1

[mrocklin]

+1

[jcrist]

+1

[quasiben]

+1

[mmccarty]

+1

[jakirkham]

Pinging all of the current owners one last time, @jakirkham @jcrist @jrbourbeau @martindurant @mrocklin @ogrisel @pitrou @shoyer @TomAugspurger. Planning on merging in 24-hours.

[pitrou]

This looks reasonable to me overall.

[jakirkham]

Have pushed a few minor changes. @pitrou and @aterrel, if you are able to respond to the threads above, that would be very helpful.

[jakirkham]

@mrocklin and @aterrel, is this ok to merge?

[TomAugspurger]

Thanks @jakirkham. +1 to that change, and +1 in general.

[mrocklin]

All comments have been resolved. I plan to merge this tomorrow if there are no strong dissenting comments.

[aterrel]

+1 I don't have a strong dissenting opinion. I can submit separate PRs on the language I would suggest.

[jakirkham]

Thanks all! 😄 Please feel free to raise any additional things as issues and/or PRs. 😉