[sakai2-tcc] Proposal: Merging Small Enhancements into Maintenance Branches

[Noah Botimer]

For what it's worth...

I'm still in support of this proposal and would like to see us decide whether the discussion is going forward or not.

As far as my opinion of the substance, I think moving the TCC into a "these people should know about it" role is right. I'm not interested in painting a picture of (or participating in) an overly bureaucratic process that would discourage the suggestions of enhancement. The objective criteria are pretty clear and appropriate, and I think the communications items outline good practice for community awareness.

I also think that we are only likely to see requests from engaged community members. We should recognize that every item that goes in under known constraints documents the platform better and relieves load on institutions that would have to expend effort tracking and applying patches. These conscientious merges would improve our product and reduce overall waste in the ecosystem.

Thanks,
-Noah


P.S. I changed "influence" to "impact" in the bullet point about internationalization (in blue).

On Jan 20, 2011, at 4:16 PM, Beth Kirschner wrote:

> I've tried to translate the TCC discussion into an objective set of guidelines, but seem to have generally failed to find the right wording :-(
> If anyone would like to update the proposal to reflect your understanding of what was said, feel free.
> 
> I've just made a few more changes (highlighted in green), that hopefully better address the process that was discussed. I wasn't trying to write up the minutes of the discussion, just the outcome. I changed the word "vote" to "oversight", but not being quite sure what that means, I also added this sentence: "This means that the merge candidate was discussed, and no objections were raised (though no formal vote is required)." 
> 
> It's my hope that the guidelines in place would set the bar fairly high for anyone to even consider requesting a merge. The benefits, I hope, would be providing low-risk enhancements that could significantly improve the user experience for large groups of users in the near term.
> 
> - Beth
> 
> On Jan 20, 2011, at 1:24 PM, May, Megan Marie wrote:
> 
>> Hi, 
>>    This addition is a result of some discussion we had on the conference call last week.  Here's my take on that -    There seems to be a lot of hesitation about moving forward with this proposal.   Some of the reasons included
>> - Resource concerns
>> - Expectations of project leads being unclear
>> - User impact of changes
>> - Communication 
>> - Major shift in community practices 
>> 
>> Given these concerns, it was suggested that this process be tried out (ie we'd be voting on *trying* this process out for X number of months) and as a part of that the TC would provide oversight on the enhancements going in.  (FWIW, I explicitly requested this).     Once this has proven successful and expectations of tool leads are better know, we'd move to leaving the decision up to the leads.  
>> 
>> As Seth mentioned, the proposal definitely doesn't reflect my understanding of that discussion, 
>> Megan 
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: sakai2-tcc-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [mailto:sakai2-tcc-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of Seth Theriault
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 9:05 PM
>> To: sakai2-tcc at collab.sakaiproject.org
>> Subject: Re: [sakai2-tcc] Proposal: Merging Small Enhancements into Maintenance Branches
>> 
>> Beth Kirschner wrote:
>> 
>>> Following today's TCC phone call, we decided to update the following 
>>> proposal by requiring a vote of any and all enhancements prior to 
>>> merging them into a maintenance branch:
>>> https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/TCC/Maintenance+Branch+Mer
>>> ge+Policy+%28tentative%29
>> 
>> I don't particularly care for an explicit TCC vote on each enhancement because I think it unnecessarily adds to the overhead. If the proposer and the tool lead(s) are in agreement about the enhancement, I see no need for TCC intervention. In case of disagreement, I feel that the TCC could function as some sort of appeals venue. None of this precludes proposers from bring their enhancement to the attention of the TCC for advice or review.
>> 
>> In addition, on the call and elsewhere, there has been discussion of an explicit trial period for this proposal. I see no mention of that anywhere in this proposal. Something like this needs a review by the TCC after a while, e.g. 6 months.
>> 
>> Seth
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