Proposal: Creating a SageMath Advisory Board

[Matthias Köppe]

The purpose: Giving a formal role in the project to individuals who
had a major involvement in the project (as Sage developer or in
another function) in the past (but did not recently/currently).

There would be a clearly defined workload and set of expectations; low
but nonzero. Example: "Meet 3 times a year synchronously, read and
comment on <= 5 pages of material per year."

Rationales:

1. Many of us are perfectionists. When we haven't had the time or
energy to follow the day-to-day development in a project in a while,
putting our minds back on an old project can be extremely stressful:
We are reminded of loose ends, ambitions that did not pan out, Trac
tickets that got stuck, promises that we made but could not keep.
Because of such emotional costs, it is safer to stay disengaged.
That's why it's crucial to define the workload and expectations, to
make clear for everyone: "No, it is not expected that you catch up
with everything, it is not expected that you come back and do Sage
development."

2. Open source governance is necessarily based on participation. The
new Advisory Board would give a voice in the governance structure of
the project to past major contributors who cannot commit to full
participation in the project.


Comments? Interested in serving on the board? Nominations?
Please respond here or write to me.

Matthias
--
Matthias Koeppe -- http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~mkoeppe

[Kwankyu Lee]

The purpose: Giving a formal role in the project to individuals who ...

I think the "formal role" should be defined and written to https://github.com/sagemath/sage/wiki/Infrastructure by the members,  and approved in sage-devel.

[Dima Pasechnik]

I have hard time understanding the role of such a board in the current "0-governance" model

we have. Asking people to advice and then happily ignoring it does not make much sense.

OTOH such a board would make a lot of sense if we had a real management board, constantly active,

and which can be advised by an advisory board.

Dima

[Matthias Koeppe]

On Wednesday, June 26, 2024 at 7:03:16 AM UTC-7 Dima Pasechnik wrote:

I have hard time understanding the role of such a board in the current "0-governance" model

we have. Asking people to advice and then happily ignoring it does not make much sense.

OTOH such a board would make a lot of sense if we had a real management board, constantly active,

and which can be advised by an advisory board.

Simple: The Advisory Board would already be asked for its input when we discuss setting up a proper governance structure for the project.