Inactive maintainers and activity levels of maintainers

[OrlinVasilev]

Hi all, my PR here: https://github.com/goharbor/community/pull/244 brought some super healthy discussions about the activeness of maintainers and their willingness to continue contributing. We decided to put on-hold that PR so we can discuss it here. My points are, which were presented in the community meetings:

• Improve security stance by reducing the inactive maintainers not required to have access to the project
• our maintainers list is SUPER outdated
• we have maintainers that haven't interacted with the project, haven't responded to mail, or slack message or even joined community meetings for years
• that full and outdated list of maintainers prevents the community of adding new maintainers as we have examples of very very active people which are not maintainers
• we must ensure we don't add only maintainers from a orgs(companies) that are having Harbor interested(offering or product)
• define an activity levels for contributors and maintainers which we can measure so we can make easier decisions in the future
• that's how Kubernetes is taking decisions based on these statistics - https://harbor.devstats.cncf.io/d/66/developer-activity-counts-by-companies?orgId=1&var-period_name=Last%20year&var-metric=contributions&var-repogroup_name=All&var-country_name=All&var-companies=All - Merge this one - https://github.com/goharbor/community/pull/156
• setup a dedicated call to discuss this issue!

[reasonerjt]

@OrlinVasilev thanks for raising this issue. I agree that the maintainers list is outdated and we should fix it. However, IMHO the introduction of the concept "subproject maintainer" is another topic and I suggest we discuss it separately.

[steven-zou]

Updating the list of maintainers according to community governance rules is perfectly acceptable. However, during this process, it is important to ensure thorough communication and respect for the genuine intentions of the current maintainers. If maintainers are willing to continue participating in the community and commit to future contributions, the community should keep their maintainership. After all, existing maintainers have made significant contributions to the Harbor community and project, with many serving as community representatives of Harbor partners, acting as a bridge between Harbor and major downstream enterprises.

Of course, if after thorough communication, maintainers themselves are unable to continue contributing and agree to step down, awarding them the title of honorary maintainer to recognize their contributions makes sense.

Often, inactivity may not stem from a lack of desire to contribute, but rather from a lack of effective collaboration mechanisms and clear avenues for involvement. We can optimize in these areas to allow maintainers to utilize their talents fully. @goharbor/all-maintainers

[steven-zou]

Regarding the modification of community governance principles to expand the list of community roles, I believe this matter should be approached with caution.

Despite years of effort leading to the gradual maturation of the Harbor community, it is obviously not as robust and sophisticated as the Kubernetes community to support a complicated governance system. We should continue to follow a simple process to reduce maintenance difficulty and cost. This way, the existing maintainers and contributors can focus more on improving the Harbor project, bringing more valuable features and enhancements to the community, and finding a place in the current wave of AI advancements.

[wy65701436]

Thanks, @OrlinVasilev, for pointing out this problem.

As defined by the Kubernetes community, "A core principle in maintaining a healthy community is encouraging active participation." In my opinion, we should encourage individuals to self-remove or switch to emeritus status through PRs if they cannot guarantee their participation in the community for any reason.

Like: https://github.com/goharbor/community/commit/5f0fa08c9d0ea3c851269fbb208120ed0cdd915d https://github.com/goharbor/community/commit/76bed56d56d7d8ba535502c2df0ec725c018cb3e

[OrlinVasilev]

@reasonerjt - removed the point for subproject maintainers

[OrlinVasilev]

@steven-zou - of course we should seek approval and communication with the maintainers. That's was is happening on the background and in the issue or PR!

[kofj]

Updating the list of maintainers according to community governance rules is perfectly acceptable. However, during this process, it is important to ensure thorough communication and respect for the genuine intentions of the current maintainers. If maintainers are willing to continue participating in the community and commit to future contributions, the community should keep their maintainership. After all, existing maintainers have made significant contributions to the Harbor community and project, with many serving as community representatives of Harbor partners, acting as a bridge between Harbor and major downstream enterprises.

Of course, if after thorough communication, maintainers themselves are unable to continue contributing and agree to step down, awarding them the title of honorary maintainer to recognize their contributions makes sense.

Often, inactivity may not stem from a lack of desire to contribute, but rather from a lack of effective collaboration mechanisms and clear avenues for involvement. We can optimize in these areas to allow maintainers to utilize their talents fully. @goharbor/all-maintainers

I support Steven's view, maintainers can make contribute in different ways.