[MPWG] questions on MP Charter - committer members

[Emily Jiang]

Hi Paul,

In MP Charter, based on the conversation on the draft, we need to add the Committer Members section. We can simply copy the statement from the Jakarta EE charter pasted below, which is not an issue.

1. Declaration of Committer Members

Committer Members
Committer Members are individuals who through a process of meritocracy defined by the Eclipse Development Process are able to contribute and commit code to the Eclipse Foundation projects included in the scope of this Working Group. Committers may be members by virtue of working for a member organization, or may choose to complete the membership process independently if they are not. For further explanation and details, see the Eclipse Committer Membership page.

I have a few questions:

Q1. Can we move the MP Charter to the next stage with the addition of the above section without documenting how to implement this? In other words, adding this section will keep WG moving so that we can go ahead to perform the next MP release, MicroProfile 4.0. As you know, we aim to release MP 4.0 this year.

Q2: If not, do we have to simply put someone forward as the committee members and move forward?

2. Implementation of Committer Members

We discussed a few options in our MP live hangout and many people expressed their opinion of keeping the implementation less formal and agile. I listed the following options for you to verify whether they are acceptable.

Option 1: Run a quick election annually and choose a committer rep. The comitter rep can vote based on his/her opinion.

Option 2: Not run an election but simply choose someone randomly. This person will act as a proxy voter and the vote is from the community. Majority vote is the vote by the proxy voter.

Q3: Can you confirm whether any or both of the above options are acceptable?

Q4: If only Option 1 is acceptable, is it down to the MP community to handle Election?

Q4a: How formal does the election need to be? I am aware of the Jakarta EE election process and duration etc, Can we make it less formal by just voting on google groups?

Thank you for your patience with us! Look forward to hearing from you!

--

Thanks
Emily

[Paul Buck]

Emily,

Thanks for the questions, comments embedded below...

... Paul

On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 6:58 AM 'Emily Jiang' via MicroProfile <microp...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hi Paul,

In MP Charter, based on the conversation on the draft, we need to add the Committer Members section. We can simply copy the statement from the Jakarta EE charter pasted below, which is not an issue.

1. Declaration of Committer Members

Committer Members
Committer Members are individuals who through a process of meritocracy defined by the Eclipse Development Process are able to contribute and commit code to the Eclipse Foundation projects included in the scope of this Working Group. Committers may be members by virtue of working for a member organization, or may choose to complete the membership process independently if they are not. For further explanation and details, see the Eclipse Committer Membership page.

I have a few questions:

Q1. Can we move the MP Charter to the next stage with the addition of the above section without documenting how to implement this? In other words, adding this section will keep WG moving so that we can go ahead to perform the next MP release, MicroProfile 4.0. As you know, we aim to release MP 4.0 this year.

 <pb> Committer Members are needed for the MP working group so it is possible for committers that are not employed by a MP WG Corporate Member can be comitters on the MP spec project(s). This is provided for with the recent related edits I suggested in the draft charter.  Once the draft charter is approved by the Executive Director and the working group created, like the Jakarta EE WG, the Foundation will create an MP Individual Working Group Participation Agreement and an Employer Consent Agreement. These agreements are required to support the IP flow governance for the spec project(s).</pb>

Q2: If not, do we have to simply put someone forward as the committee members and move forward?

 <pb> As long as there are MP spec project committers that are not employed by Corporate Members of the WG, the Committer Member member of the WG is required.</pb>

2. Implementation of Committer Members

We discussed a few options in our MP live hangout and many people expressed their opinion of keeping the implementation less formal and agile. I listed the following options for you to verify whether they are acceptable.

Option 1: Run a quick election annually and choose a committer rep. The comitter rep can vote based on his/her opinion.

Option 2: Not run an election but simply choose someone randomly. This person will act as a proxy voter and the vote is from the community. Majority vote is the vote by the proxy voter.

Q3: Can you confirm whether any or both of the above options are acceptable?

 <pb> Either Option 1., or Option 2. is acceptable. Another option is the Steering Committee once formed by the Corporate Members selects the Committer Rep. I prefer Option 1. as it allows the Committer Members to decide on their rep and holds the Committer rep accountable to the other Committer Members since the position is balloted once a year.</pb>

Q4: If only Option 1 is acceptable, is it down to the MP community to handle Election?

 <pb> For other working groups the Foundation runs the election on behalf of the working group where Committer Member seats are allocated following the Eclipse "Single Transferable Vote", as defined in the Eclipse Bylaws.</pb>

Q4a: How formal does the election need to be? I am aware of the Jakarta EE election process and duration etc, Can we make it less formal by just voting on google groups?

 <pb> I think a less formal approach is acceptable provided it is open, transparent, documented and consistent with the Eclipse bylaws.</pb>

Thank you for your patience with us! Look forward to hearing from you!

--

Thanks
Emily

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MicroProfile" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to microprofile...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/microprofile/CAECq3A_0keO0x-rmQ9Rxe5-0iekHiQpxfc0fpQ_zfsg5XkuFBA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Emily Jiang]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your clear explaination! MP Community has chosen the Option 2 - committer as a proxy voter and MPWG has been updated accordingly.  An updated version of MPWG will be sent to you for review soon.

Thanks,

Emily

[Paul Buck]

Thanks Emily. I will watch for the updated charter, when ready, and review.

... Paul

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/microprofile/666285c1-d1cb-4581-abfb-b1b22861a2fan%40googlegroups.com.

[Paul Buck]

Hi Emily,

I see now that I missed the second part of Option (2) in your email, I just responded to how the Committer rep was selected (randomly vs vote based), and not how they vote. The oversight was mine and I apologize for that. That explains the disconnect between my suggested edits last week to the charter and my response earlier to this email thread. 

Regards ... Paul

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/microprofile/666285c1-d1cb-4581-abfb-b1b22861a2fan%40googlegroups.com.

[Kevin Sutter]

 We had a long discussion on the Hangout this week related to the required Committer Reps in the Working Group.  Most of it was centered around Paul's last comment in our MicroProfile Working Group charter: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cCMN298rUAX45Nq-ZJv755WZe8yVjyAo1Gz_wN8r7wc/edit?disco=AAAAKIA27oQ

We held a straw poll at the end of the call to see if there was a clear direction we wanted to take on this topic.  The choices were

• Elected Committer Rep
  
• Committer Rep Proxy
• No Opinion

Unfortunately, there was not a clear winner with this poll... So, I'm going to present some short arguments for the Elected Committer Rep so that we can continue to make progress towards completing this Charter.

• Elected Committer Reps work.  The Eclipse Foundation has been using them for years without incident.  They have the processes, procedures, and tools in place to support these elections.  Why do we have to re-invent the wheel?
• Elected Committer Reps process is democratic.  The committer population elects their rep.  If the rep goes rogue, the MP community can recall the rep and another one gets elected.  Worse case, the rep is in place for one year and then they can be voted off the island and replaced.  How many votes really take place in one year's time?
  
• If we're still concerned about a committer rep going rogue with even a single vote, then we can establish an operations guide for the committer rep.  Maybe we require the committer rep to hold a public committer vote on any topics that require an official vote in the Committees.  We can document the rules for the committer rep outside of the charter.

I realize that we can go back to the Eclipse Foundation with our alternate plan of using a proxy, but is it really worth the effort?  We should be focused on completing this Charter and establishing the WG so that we can make progress with MicroProfile.  We have the 5 or 6 corporate members ready and willing to submit the Charter.  Is this Committer proxy idea really worth holding up the effort?  I don't think so.

-- Kevin

[Amelia Eiras]

to every MicroProfiler who missed this week's MPWG call, please listen to the recording to understand Kevin's follow up.

[Emily Jiang]

Thank you Kevin for the followup! You beat me to it! +1 on what you said.

Since all of the EF WGs use the elected committer reps and no known issues were found, I perfer to go with Elected Committer Reps and move on. As MP is an open community, personally I trust the honesty of the elected committers. We can also define our own T&Cs for the elected committer reps if we worry.

If we agree on this, we then need to work out how many Committer Reps we want. We are nearly there.

Emily

[Kevin Sutter]

FYI, Paul White (in Paul Buck's absence) provided a further explanation on the charter why the proxy approach is not tenable...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cCMN298rUAX45Nq-ZJv755WZe8yVjyAo1Gz_wN8r7wc/edit?disco=AAAAG3nxiYI

Is this sufficient to stick with the elected committer rep process already defined by the Eclipse Foundation?

Thanks,

Kevin

[John Clingan]

+1. I think, if we want to, we can establish a committer vote for guidance to committer reps. Paul has already added verbiage that OK's the pro-rating. So, if we can agree on committer reps with the option for committer votes for guidance, then we have closed the last two issues.

Can everyone review the comments on the proxy vote by tomorrow and post any objections here? I'd like to get to a final draft charter tomorrow.

[Emily Jiang]

I reviewed Paul's comments and It makes sense to me! No objections here!

Emily