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Re: [eclipse.org-architecture-council] July 10 2025 EAC Meeting Agenda
I totally agree with Mickael here in both points ... with a bit more reserved on the first one:
Honestly if we need a 30 (!!) minute training to introduce new committers to "important aspects of open collaboration in general, and in the context of Eclipse Foundation governance" it is far to complex to attract anyone. Marketing would say the value should be explainable in 30 - 60 seconds (Elevator Pitch)!
And I can second the annoyance aspect for "required training" as well, just the announcement of such thing makes me being annoyed and tired without even knowing what it is ;-)
So if we can get some attracting learning available for the once who are interested and we can hand them off if there are questions (e.g. how do I properly squash and rebase my commit) it sounds great. But requiring this will only repels people that usually have enough on the table and there are often many much more fun projects than contributing to Eclipse ... that's the sad truth. 

Regarding the second:
Unless a role is connected with a pay-cheque I doubt new role names will make things more attractive or better and I strongly believe people are already doing their best. We have projects that effectively doing all their workload with 1 active committer so giving that persons more "names" does not improve the situation much.
Am 10.07.25 um 10:03 schrieb Mickael Istria via eclipse.org-architecture-council:
On Wed, Jul 9, 2025 at 9:35 PM Wayne Beaton via eclipse.org- architecture-council <eclipse.org-architecture-council@xxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:eclipse.org-architecture-council@xxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote: 

    Greetings Eclipse Architecture Council


Hi Wayne, all,

    First, I would like to discuss the potential for adding a formal
    committer training requirement. We already have some committer
    training videos <https://www.eclipse.org/projects/training/>, but
    I'd like to explore options for using a learning platform to deliver
    a 20-30 minute training session that touches on the important
    aspects of open collaboration in general, and in the context of
    Eclipse Foundation governance. The idea being that we use this as an
    opportunity to ensure that the candidates know what they're signing
    up for, and what we need from them. Depending on how our discussion
    goes, I'll open an issue for further discussion.
I think it's a good idea. A learning platform can IMO achieve better results than a video or a text page; so going for such format is IMO a good thing.
I would be careful about making it required too fast. Many of us work in companies with search learning platform and already have to deal with yearly trainings for several topics, and although it makes sense from company POV and no-one challenges the usefulness officially, most people dislike going through those learnings over and over again. They are often perceived as annoying and/or boring. We should avoid creating those kinds of negative emotions too early to new committers, at least not as long as they haven't experienced more positive ones with the community. But I think it can be a several steps: first having the committer training material using a learning platform, then encourage existing committers to try it (eg by creating a dedicated badge, or a flag on the committer page...), then maybe make it mandatory for project leads, and if there is no resistance, make it mandatory for committers in the 3~6 months after they got elected... 

    The other topic that I'd like to discuss is the potential
    introduction of a formal notion of coach into our process. I'm
    thinking along the lines of an Agile Coach for the project team, but
    with responsibilities aligned with ensuring that the project team is
    engaged in good open source development practices. We might argue
    that this is something that project leads should be doing, but I'm
    thinking that -- while it might be held by the same individual -- it
    is a distinct role. This may be something that we consider adding to
    the EDP. Again, based on our discussion tomorrow, I'll open an issue.
I'm not sold on this idea. In general, I'm not sold on the idea of multiplying roles. I'm afraid a dedicated role would centralize the OSS governance responsibility on fewer people (the ones with the "OSS Coach" role, which would probably happen to be the same people again: project leads, AC members, PMC members...). The OSS governance is something I believe we all, collectively as OSS community members, have interest to be shared, spread and dis-personalized as much as possible; so we get redundancy, diversity, flexibility... and all the thing that make a project community sustainable. Creating a dedicated role would probably grow the bucket of responsibility for a few people and then reduce the average skillset for other committers. 

Cheers,
Mickael

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