Thanks a
lot for your time, and have a great day.
Thanks,
Hart
From:
tsc@...
[mailto:tsc@...]
On Behalf Of Brian Behlendorf
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2019 11:29 AM
To: tsc@...
Subject: SIGs vs WGs (was Re: [Hyperledger TSC]
TSC elections: electorate should include SIGs and some
other suggestions.)
Changing
the subject to address a point in Hart's earlier email:
I
think a lot of people are, in fact, using SIGs for
relatively technical purposes. Having or starting a SIG
is much better right now than a working group: you get
all of the support from the LF that you would for a WG
(meeting times, mailing list, etc.), you aren’t mandated
to submit time-consuming work products to the TSC (that,
let’s be honest, very few people read), and the approval
process is far simpler and doesn’t require TSC approval
(which could take quite some time and be a huge
headache). If you were looking to start a group—even a
very technical one--why on earth would you choose a WG
over a SIG?
I
sincerely hope this is not the reason why one would choose
to start a SIG rather than a WG.
Working
Groups should be thought of as our connective tissue between
projects - the cross-project place where discussions about
identity, performance/scalability, architectural concerns,
learning materials, and even diversity & civility issues
can be discussed and iterated upon without that discussion
being owned by one project or another. In particular for
anyone who holds architectural or product convergence as a
priority, certain Working Groups like identity and
architecture should be the place to articulate what that
means, and then create specific technical plans that
projects can follow. They only can serve that role well to
the degree they are primarily driven by active maintainers
and contributors on the projects themselves, but given
critical mass there can be other participants on those
working groups. Creation of any new working group should
partially be gated by whether it's reasonable to expect most
of the projects to be able to have people actively following
and participating in that new WG.
Special
Interest Groups are intended to be more of a bridge to the
outside world - to people deploying our technologies for
particular categories of use cases. Those might be grouped
by industrial segment, e.g. "trade finance". Or they may be
grouped by a broad set of functionality, e.g. "supply
chain", that is more of a recurring theme across all
industries than a specific industry. But the point is that
a SIG should be composed of both insiders and outsiders - of
both technologists close to what one or more Hyperledger
projects are doing, and of those who may simply be "users"
of the technology, perhaps even one or two steps downstream,
but who is willing to share their domain expertise and
involvement in active projects at a business level to drive
adoption.
I
think based on the above, a SIG for academic involvement
makes more sense than a working group, as it's less about
cross-project issues and more about being a bridge to the
outside world (and yes, helping those outsiders become
insiders). Marta has been managing our academic outreach
efforts to date, so I'd encourage you to connect with her on
ways we can make a SIG effective.
Let
me also burst your bubble a bit - SIGs are expected to
provide a one-presentation-deck-page report each month on
their activities and accomplishments, which is provided to
the Governing Board for their monthly discussions. Also, we
(HL staff) are very deliberate about launching new SIGs -
they can often take months to pull together the right
stakeholder set, define the charter crisply enough, and make
sure they are managed closely enough by us. So it may only
look easier & quicker. :) But given all the interest
in improving our relationship with academia I think we'd be
able to move on this with reasonable expediency.
Brian
--
Brian Behlendorf
Executive Director, Hyperledger
bbehlendorf@...
Twitter: @brianbehlendorf
