Everyone,
Good evening! I wanted to follow up on Sharon's and
Torkild's emails that discussed revisions to our charter and
the idea of rebooting the Science Working Group (SWG). What
follows below is a loose summary of the meeting we had with
the Eclipse Foundation (EF) staff and some thoughts for your
consideration.
On January 21st Sharon Corbett emailed the SWG list about
proposed amendments to our charter in light of the EF move to
European governance. I started a discussion thread on the SWG
Steering Committee (SC) Mailing List, which is a separate list
only for the SC, to ask how this should be handled (reasons
below) and Sharon was kind enough to organize a meeting. That
meeting was earlier today and it was attended by Sharon
Corbett, Paul Buck, Torkild Resheim, Mike Milinkovich, and me.
As some of you may recall, I resigned as Chair of the SC when
I moved to Stellar Science in September since it is not a
member company and, thus, I participated in the meeting as a
representative of the group and not a member of the SC.
The meeting opened with an introduction from Paul
describing our goal of figuring out what to do with the
Working Group and, in particular, how to move forward with
amendments to the charter in light of the present state of the
group. I provided a summary of the concerns that I highlighted
in my original email, which are the following:
1. Participation in the Science Working Group would appear
to be at an all-time low. Although we do check in every so
often by email discussions on the list, we do not have a large
amount of activity compared to our hey-day when Mike once
described us as the most active WG in the EF.
2. We were not able to successfully hold an election for
the SC in March 2020. For a year or so Torkild and I were the
only members participating in the SC with both of us having
been re-elected as Secretary and Chair, respectively, in 2019.
Other members moved on. During the 2019-2020 term and into the
Unelected Term of 2020-2021, we were unable to find new
Steering Committee members and unable to hold an election
because we were the only two remaining members.
3. I resigned as Chair when I moved to Stellar Science in
September 2020, leaving Torkild as the last person standing on
the SC. That seems quite problematic for Torkild and the
group, and the request to update the charter for the move to
the EU revealed as much.
Note that these observations do not apply to the Science
Top Level project. While there have been no new projects in a
while, there are active commits and releases on multiple
projects. Greg Watson holds monthly PMC meetings for those
projects who can attend and the PMC continues to govern the
projects. The Science PMC is governed completely separately
from the Science IWG, although the membership is a lot of the
same characters.
In light of the three points above and in consideration of
the move to EU governance which requires updates to our
charter, we are left with three options:
1) Immediately hold elections to repopulate the Steering
Committee and ratify the changes to the charter.
2) Allow Torkild to ratify the changes to the charter as
proposed and "reboot" the group with new membership policies
to expand membership both for the SWG and the SC and thereby
revitalize the community.
3) Decline to ratify the changes and recommend that the
group be disbanded. That is, hang up our spurs and let the
group ride out into the sunset.
The decision by those present was that #2 was by far the
most desirable option. No one wants #3 and if we went that
route would we ever be able to get back together again? #1 is
a possibility but as Torkild and I already spent more than a
year trying to rebuild the SC it is unlikely to be successful.
So, we make it to the final question: What does it mean to
"reboot" the group? Ultimately this question comes down to
membership and who can join the working group and how they can
do it. The primary reason that Torkild and I were unable to
recruit new SC members is that our charter is rather
restrictive on who can be a member of the SC. This also
applies to the membership of the group as a whole. You can
read the details in the charter here:
https://www.eclipse.org/org/workinggroups/science_charter.php.
Mike said it best at the meeting today: "The working group
does not need 4 tiers of membership."
We plan to rewrite the charter to 1) satisfy the needs of
the new European business entity and 2) rework the membership
rules to a) clarify who can join the working group and how
they can do it, and b) establish a new Steering Committee that
is self-replicating and meritocratic in its membership,
including both member companies and longstanding committers.
This plan will ensure the continued longevity of the group and
give us the opportunity to revitalize the community by
broadening and empowering our membership.
I welcome your candid feedback and constructive criticism.
And with that, on behalf of our membership, I will kindly ask
Torkild in his role as our entire steering committee: Mr.
Secretary, will you create a Google Doc for the group to
update our charter?
Jay
--
Jay Jay Billings
Twitter Handle: @jayjaybillings
