Clarification of TDC and TDC Maintainers

[Brandon Philips]

Hello Everyone-

During our first TOB call I proposed that we create a new TDC around the standard shipping container format. In conversations after this call it seems the language around the TDC and TDC maintainers is so confusing that everyone has a different idea of what it means. The most common confusion is around if "TDC" and "TDC maintainers" are separate things in the governance document:

Examples:

2. defining the process or requirements to take on a role in the TDC (e.g. how to become a contributor, or how to become a maintainer);
3. the process by which participants in the TDC may give up or be revoked of their roles (e.g. how to remove maintainers); the rules for decision making in the TDC; and

e. The maintainers of the TDC shall be those listed in the MAINTAINERS file in the project repository, available at (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/opencontainers/specs/master/MAINTAINERS).

d. While the initial TDC shall have one TDC, as the OCI evolves, the TOB may decide to establish a TDC per OCI Project, requiring contributors to earn maintainer status independently within each OCI Project in which they wish to participate.

i. the TDC by a simple majority vote of the maintainers when there is an issue that needs the resolution to assist the TDC to move forward,

From these examples it seems TDC maintainers are the only people who are directly involved in governance. My interpretation: we should remove the mentions of TDC "contributors" as it sort of adds confusion when discussing governance actions.

Am I missing something?

Brandon

[ovzx...@gmail.com]

четверг, 25 февраля 2016 г., 8:42:27 UTC+3 пользователь Brandon Philips написал:

From these examples it seems TDC maintainers are the only people who are directly involved in governance. My interpretation: we should remove the mentions of TDC "contributors" as it sort of adds confusion when discussing governance actions

Yes, it's indeed confusing.

Won't things get easier if we specify what the contributor's and maintainer's rights and duties are? (Do I myself miss something obvious? :) )

[Michael Dolan]

Brandon, TDC is simply a term to refer to the entire technical community. E.g. “Linux kernel community” from a Linux analogy. TDC just simply differentiates from other non-technical OCI groups working on OCI (e.g. the Trademark Board).

New OCI Projects are still just part of the overall OCI technical community (TDC). OCI Projects have their maintainers. All maintainers involved in the OCI technical community are TDC maintainers. There was a group of maintainers approved at the formation that were the starting group in the MAINTAINERS file.

Does this context help? With this context, do you have the same questions?

— Mike

---
Mike Dolan
VP of Strategic Programs
The Linux Foundation
---

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Technical Oversight Board" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tob+uns...@opencontainers.org.

[W. Trevor King]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 12:35:19PM -0500, Michael Dolan wrote:
> New OCI Projects are still just part of the overall OCI technical
> community (TDC). OCI Projects have their maintainers. All
> maintainers involved in the OCI technical community are TDC
> maintainers. There was a group of maintainers approved at the
> formation that were the starting group in the MAINTAINERS file.

This is not how I read it. §6.d of the charter has [1]:

While the initial TDC shall have one TDC, as the OCI evolves, the
TOB may decide to establish a TDC per OCI Project, requiring
contributors to earn maintainer status independently within each OCI
Project in which they wish to participate.

The phrasing there is a bit awkward [2], but it makes it sound like
the intended structure is:

TOB (§6)
|-- TDC 1 (§5)
| |-- members (§5.e)
| | |-- Person 1
| | |-- Person 2
| | …
| |-- rules (§5.b.viii)
| `-- projects (§2, §6.d)
| |-- Project 1
| |-- Project 2
| …
|-- TDC 2 (§5)
| |-- members (§5.e)
| | |-- Person 1
| | |-- Person 3
| | …
| |-- rules (§5.b.viii)
| `-- projects (§2, §6.d)
| |-- Project 3
| |-- Project 4
| …
…

with the current status of:

TOB
`-- TDC 1 (only one at the moment, §6.d)
|-- members (§5.e)
| `-- people listed in [3]
|-- rules (§5.b.viii)
| `-- unclear, but likely along the lines of [4]
`-- projects (only two at the moment, §2.a)
|-- OCI Specification (opencontainers/specs)
`-- runC (opencontainers/runc)

The difference between our readings would be that I see only folks in
[3] as voting for the TDC-elected TOB slots (§6.e), while your “union
of OCI-Project Maintainers” reading would also include folks listed in
[5], and possibly also folks listed in [6]. Comparing the current
content of those files, that means that runC maintainers [5]:

* Rohit Jnagal <jna...@google.com> (@rjnagal)
* Victor Marmol <vma...@google.com> (@vmarmol)
* Andrey Vagin <ava...@virtuozzo.com> (@avagin)

and possibly also libcontainer/user maintainer:

* Aleksa Sarai <cyp...@cyphar.com> (@cyphar)

would vote for those TOB slots. Do we know if they did when electing
the current TOB?

And I see the per-Project Maintainers as being established by the TDC
in charge of the project, but otherwise independent of the TDC
Membership (as the runC Maintainers [5,6] are independent of the TDC
Membership [3]).

Besides clarifying the charter wording around TDCs (which I agree is
currently confusing [2], and which I also agree should only have
normative language for TOB electors [7,8] and not for other categories
like repository maintainers or contributors), I think the charter
should link to a file in opencontainers/tob that lists the current
TOB-approved TDCs, links to their membership lists (§5.e) and rules
(§5.b.viii) and contact documentation, and lists and links to the OCI
Projects for which they are responsible. That way folks have a clear
place to check to see the current status, since only the initial
values are baked into the charter itself (and I think that's a good
thing). And having links in the charter (possibly via an
opencontainers/tob file) from each term to lists of names would make
it really easy to tell how broadly that term was scoped.

Cheers,
Trevor

p.s. This seemed like too much for IRC [9]. I'm not clear on whether
non-TOB members should be posting to this list, but if not, just point
me at the channel that I should be using instead [10].

[1]: https://www.opencontainers.org/governance
[2]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/d/msg/dev/26EyeqOibC4/ylCvaMm0CQAJ
Subject: Re: OCI News (official charter)
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2015 11:45:04 -0800
Message-ID: <2015120819...@odin.tremily.us>
[3]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/opencontainers/specs/master/MAINTAINERS
[4]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/blob/master/MAINTAINERS_GUIDE.md
[5]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/blob/master/MAINTAINERS
[6]: https://github.com/opencontainers/runc/blob/master/libcontainer/user/MAINTAINERS
[7]: https://github.com/opencontainers/web/pull/6
[8]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-02-25.log.html#t2016-02-25T05:48:09
[9]: http://ircbot.wl.linuxfoundation.org/eavesdrop/%23opencontainers/%23opencontainers.2016-02-25.log.html#t2016-02-25T05:48:44
[10]: https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/d/msg/dev/6C3Qn1V0Ivw/HgFSU2AQBgAJ
Subject: Re: Agenda for 2/24 (channel for submitting suggestions to the TOB)
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2016 07:23:44 -0800
Message-ID: <2016022415...@odin.tremily.us>

--
This email may be signed or encrypted with GnuPG (http://www.gnupg.org).
For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

[liang...@gmail.com]

Hi TOB members,

From this description, a new OCI project could have a TDC (maintainer list in this context).

I wonder if the testing & tool project could have such a TDC (https://github.com/opencontainers/ocitools).

The testing/certification is currently a concerned topic in trademark board.

Have a TDC may help to accelerate the testing/certification progress.

Best wishes,

Liang Chenye

d. While the initial TDC shall have one TDC, as the OCI evolves, the TOB may decide to establish a TDC per OCI Project, requiring contributors to earn maintainer status independently within each OCI Project in which they wish to participate.

[W. Trevor King]

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 05:52:57PM -0800, liang...@gmail.com wrote:
> I wonder if the testing & tool project could have such a TDC
> (https://github.com/opencontainers/ocitools).

And also be promoted to an official OCI Project, since it's not one of
the two initial projects listed in §2.a [1]. This would be easier to
track with a link to a current list of TDCs and projects like I
proposed here [2].

[1]: https://www.opencontainers.org/governance
[2]; https://groups.google.com/a/opencontainers.org/d/msg/tob/1pgiEffnu0M/RFu1lyKwBwAJ
Subject: Re: [oci-tob] Clarification of TDC and TDC Maintainers
Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2016 14:48:35 -0800
Message-ID: <2016022522...@odin.tremily.us>