2018-01-19 Samvera Governance WG Agenda and Notes

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Wiki Home: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/samvera/Samvera+Governance+Working+Group

Attendees:

Optional Steering Liaison: Mark Bussey

Regrets:

Maria Whitaker – on the road at the time of the meeting

m.mennielli

Carolyn Caizzi

Nabeela Jaffer

Agenda:

Discussion of small groups document. The context and synthesis can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IfOeTUr37f99pzS0TSCnO26RX6Qb9zFCBPazFiWoX3c/edit?ts=5a5cf556
- From Rosalyn: Is there a way that we can clearly delineate between these two needs within the document. Similar to what we did above. Can we describe them as "concerns around software development and resourcing" and "concerns around decision-making for the community". I know we touched on this in our previous discussion, but is there a way to capture that or is this good enough?
- From Various: How do we distinguish between core components and solution bundles? Rosalyn's solution: go with one example that we can all safely agree is a core component or a solution bundle.
Next steps. Identifying next steps for the group.
- Communicating to the community. We've received a lot of requests to provide input, how do we field these requests? How do we better communicate with the community about our work?
- Developing a recommendation for a governance model. What process do we want to follow to move forward with developing this document?

Action Items:

Mark will bring the document to the Steering Committee on Monday
Mark will alert us to the feedback
We are targeting 1/29 or before to release the document
Rosy will check the various doc schedules, reconcile and make sure is on Wiki page

Possibly Useful Items:

Charter and document request

Context: A one-page summary of the discussion, documentation, and feedback to-date related to the various governance models under consideration.
Synthesis: A summary of the themes and issues that the community hopes to address by refining existing or adopting new governance practices and structures. Ideally identifies key differences and decision points between the models provided for evaluation and current model. This combined context and synthesis documents should be approximately 750-1500 words (1-3 pages) in length

Samvera Governance / Roadmapping/ Resourcing Activity - 2017-11-10

Governance Models for Samvera - original

Governance Model Planning and Notes - RJS 2017-11-30

Notes:

Looking at "What about decision making writ large" vs. "Software development roadmap"

Evviva: When I write this I was trying to balance that. That is what we're supposed to be doing. Now there's code and technical in both goals - might be able to - but maybe one is aout technical stuff and the other is not

Mark: Proposal - first one feels like predictability and reliability and the second one is about transparency. How do we make code that doesn't make us constantly reinvest in problems we had solved. I like two very well how its written and can argue it and can argue it to steering group. One feels a little more - not sure what call-to-action is for one.

But two feels like a call for a decision making process that's inclusive, with similar patterns across comunnities and the project. First one feels - not sure how to scope it.

Anna: Not sure how to balance needs of community without saddling everyone with churn. Not sure if there's a way to deal with that in governance.

How to support developers in sustainable code development.

Simeon: Is this a problem in developer or adopter world?

Rosy: Reasonable and participatory is a problem in code, and working groups and interest groups.

Simeon: I think I was going to say we shouldn't try to compress this into two bullets. Churn and change management are words I used and that's different from how you discuss sustainable development.

Rosy: First one is about responsibility to community and second about responsibility of the community

Mark: 2 questions - how do I plan around being in Samvera and using Samvera and other is about how do I get involved? 1 is churn and ccles, and then - where are decisions made - how is my work contributed

Evviva: What I tried to do was - recognizing need for clear and inclusive decison making for technical community and it was representative there, and first part was basically "balancing of resource allocation - how do we balance our community/ sustain our community best?" Recognizing we may never be able to do that - recognize the technical piece is very important, but not as much on rest of the community.

Rosy: How do people plan, how do we involve everyone's voice in the community via representation.

Simeon: Delete first sentence. Take sentence 2 and 3 and make them two bullets.

Evviva: First senetence is important.

Rosy: Sustainability, planning and inclusion. Those are the sections.

Mark thinks a sentence needs to be a pre-amble to the bullet points. Not a bullet point.

Broke into three bullets.Some sentence restructuring going on.

Wordsmithing and pushing words around.

Rosy: We are saying we will get review from Partners and Non-Partners, do a legal review..

Evviva: I'm curious - I'm not saying we don't want the community's approval, and I'm not sure how much time we'll have with the legal team. Have the legal team look first and then go to the community.

Mark: Intent for legal review - will this be allowed within parameters of current MOU structure and how far can we go without breaking that. If we break MOU, we need to address code copyright and all the licensing issues.

Mark: If we say there's no more steering group - that's a legal issue. If we're not interested in a back and forth with the legal team - changes in structure will have an impact.

Rosy: Steering review is first so they know that?

Mark: Legal review may be hard to schedule. Why I was expecting a parallel path.

Rosy: When you say have it reviewed by a legal team, we have a legal team that's looked at it?

Mark: No. Duraspace or an institutional attorney. Or the DCE attorneys. Tom or Robin or Karen taking it to their legal group.

Rosy: Our legal group is close.

Mark: A partner assisting with legal review would be great. Your legal team is good!

Mark: Reason to have it there is to callout the existing legal framework and there would be impacts of breaking it. Nothing we've talked about pushes us there, but would be good to have a formal legal opinion.

Rosy: Ok.

Anna: This section is that we aren't picking a model but coalescing a model from feedback and stated attributes.

Mark: We need to be more explicit about - solicit inpit as broadly as possible, but partners who have signed on MOU who will make a decision. Do all the changes keep all of our current Apache licensing and CLA's intact?

Rosy: Partners will decide which model?

Mark: Partners will decide go-ahead strategy.

Rosy: Recommend a synthesis model. Then legal and community review.

Mark - initial charter for this paper - we're on target

Rosy: Agree Hyrax is a product bundle - but not a core component

Mark: I see Avalon's roadmap as a different beast. Avalon community is adjacent not contained by Samvera community.

Set roadmap for technical components - note the component community - what is the list of things we say we're managing? Reference the Component Maintenance working group and how they fit in for technical work taking place in parallel with this WG. No solutions for things that group is working on.

NEXT STEPS:

Ryan, Carolyn an dRosy have gotten a lot of questions about how to contribute

Late entries, etc...

Giarlo comments on agendas - dropping his info and walking off. Rosy asks people to look at those, feel free to add comments, etc... We're being transparent but we don't need to open door to let people on. Rosy is the Bad Guy. Make sure we're properly communicating with the community.

Rosy - question I had - not clear in this charter document - is this going out to the community?

Yes.

One thing that will help with communicating. Make sure people know we're meeting weekly to work on the issues. Note - here's our working group page, agendas, etc... we're doing work. Alleviate curiosity.

mark: yeah, maybe we update our timeline and link to that so people know when to expect to see certain items delivered.

Rosy: Maybe a final sentence - published timeline can be found on the Samvera Wiki.

Next thing - we can push off to next meeeting - what is the process for creating the recommendations themselves.

The doc goes to Steering for Review on Monday

Contemplate models

Contemplate the timeline. Timeline is in three places. Rosy will make sure they don't repeat each other. Make sure they're all the same.

Anything to ask Steering?

Inconceivable to go over licensing and MOU stuff. - Asking 30+ institutions to go back to their council is pretty burdensome - may actually lose some institutions. If there's a good reason - but if we can avoid that - the happier path. If Steering says "don't think on it", useful.