[sakai2-tcc] Infrastructure discussion for future meeting?

[Noah Botimer]

This may sound harsh and negative. I'm sorry about that, but I'm sketching my personal perspective on where and how the CLE should move forward. I promise that these posts follow very lengthy consideration and drive toward concrete, immediate action to improve the CLE's quality and vitality in a conscientious, community- and developer-friendly manner.


This is somewhat reminiscent of the bizarro-world business of trying to put CLE and OAE through the same process [1] at the same time and figure out what it meant to incubate two projects that were already running within the community. Spoiler: it didn't work, so we had better go about it differently.

I still stand by it that the technical worksheet [2] we worked up in the Product Council (2.7 exercise) was valuable. And, for that matter, Steve participated happily and held that it helped him improve the quality of Profile 2 and the confidence in the community in it. So this kind of standard evaluation can be useful.

But that doesn't mean that I find a complete inventory of the CLE and the threat to maintainers of "missed some checklist detail, can't pass go, must go directly to jail [contrib]" tractable or all that useful right now. I don't want to say that such a vicious thing is planned -- indeed, who will sign on to do said inventory? -- but an impending probationary rulebook is the impression given by the suggestion of waiting for someone else to come up with validation criteria, however light and helpful in intent.

I'm happy for folks to hash out some considerations for what it means to "get in" to the good graces and support of the new foundation (and stay there), but I do have to ask: to what end for the CLE (and its many modules)? Are we looking to pat ourselves on the back for passing our own criteria? Do we think that yet another list of bugs and gaps is going to focus and catalyze resources? Are we looking to shake a stick at a few tools so we can feel validated when unfixed issues result in eviction? Imagine the hard-look-at-self faeries grant us an exhaustive score card, complete with a thousand JIRA tickets -- what would we know or do then that we don't know or cannot do now?

My cynical side has to believe that, without major changes in how we do business (coordinate and accept contributions), we will end up with the same list of areas that are flawed and need attention, while they go unattended. Everybody has their own big deal issues and works where it hurts at the moment. The "agreed upon" lists of tool gaps has hardly helped us the many times we've made them. Real progress starts with someone fixing stuff in the commons and making their work known.

I suppose the incubation process / evaluation stuff is for the board and working groups to go through. It will be important to establish if the foundation is to be able to grow and support a broader and more vibrant community. I harbor no resentment to it being figured out, and even think it could be helpful in small doses.

But as far the CLE is concerned, I find the actual, present, technical and coordination demands within our project of much more interest. I don't think we have to wait for anything.

Thanks,
-Noah

[1] - https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MGT/2009+Sakai+Development+Process
[2] - https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MGT/Technical+Elements+and+Interoperability+Worksheet

On Mar 7, 2013, at 2:37 PM, May, Megan Marie wrote:

> Sakai is a successful established product and the community has had a different model for managing new "stuff".  Incubation is a JASIG process and my understanding is that incubation is part of the process to become sponsored.      
> 
> One might argue that Sakai is already sponsored and that to put it through incubation is to say it is something lessor.  
> Megan
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sakai2-tcc-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org [mailto:sakai2-tcc-bounces at collab.sakaiproject.org] On Behalf Of Steve Swinsburg
> Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2013 7:56 AM
> To: Seth Theriault
> Cc: sakai2-tcc at collab.sakaiproject.org Committee; Berg, Alan
> Subject: Re: [sakai2-tcc] Infrastructure discussion for future meeting?
> 
> I gave a summary of what has happened in the two meetings (one was today, one a fortnight ago) and various emails within the group. It's only just getting off the ground so please be patient while more is worked out. 
> 
> There is no need to speculate about what an incubation process might entail. Read the Jasig Incubation pages and the CLE tool scorecard, add some room for projects with less of a code focus and you would be pretty close I imagine.
> 
> Also, speculation != defensiveness. Whenever I mention a review of existing tools as part of an incubation process, that's when people get defensive. IMO its imperative that that be done.
> 
> cheers,
> Steve
> 
> 
> On 07/03/2013, at 11:42 PM, Seth Theriault <slt at columbia.edu> wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 7:04 AM, Steve Swinsburg 
>> <steve.swinsburg at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> There will be no surprises. People seem to be rather defensive about 
>>> incubation for existing projects and I'm not sure why, it can only make things better.
>> 
>> People are "defensive" because the new Apereo incubation process has 
>> been talked about in the abstract for months, and no actual 
>> announcements, plans, or progress reports have been made by the 
>> working group, the Board, or anyone else.
>> 
>> Everything about the process and what it COULD encompass is therefore 
>> speculation, but that's all we have to go on.
>> 
>> Seth
> 
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