SIGs aren't "represented on the TSC",
but nor are Working Groups or any particular projects. This isn't
a House of Representatives nor a Senate. TSC members are elected
by voters based on whatever criteria a voter may choose, but are
not there to represent one project or another - they are there as
individuals, and to do right by the full Hyperledger community.
Voter eligibility is based on
connection to technical contributions anywhere across Hyperledger,
as the charter says, "Anyone in the technical community that
contributes code, documentation or other technical artifacts to
the HLP codebase". SIG participants who also contribute
code or participate actively on Working Groups are already
included. If you have been technically active on a SIG but not in
the above ways, you can petition to be added.
We use the following methods to collect
the email addresses for valid voters:
1) those who have contributed in the
last year to a github or gerrit repository (including
hyperledger-labs), and we have a good email address to correlate
to your gerrit or github account. We don't always get a clean
email address from GH so we are manually maintaining that list and
doing our best to connect to other addresses we know of for you.
2) those who were named by Working
Group chairs (deadline was last week) who have substantially
participated in these working groups.
If you fall into these two buckets,
then this past TUESDAY you should have received an invitation to
join a
groups.io (
lists.hyperledger.org) mailing list set up for
announcements and links related to the Election. On Tuesday,
~500 emails went out, and right now ~150 people have confirmed
the invitation and are on the list. We received quite a few
bounces, which suggests we have bad email addresses - so please
search your inboxes, and spam folders, and either
1) Confirm your invitation to that
list, OR
2) Ask
us to
resend the invitation if you know you should have qualified as
above, OR
3) You have made other technical
contributions elsewhere, such as on the wiki, or jira artifacts,
etc. You can fill out
this form to
petition to be added to the pool of voters. Hyperledger staff
will determine whether your response to the form points to valid
technical contributions and can thus be added to the list.
For future elections we can consider
other algorithmic methods for collecting emails and determining
eligibility, beyond github/gerrit commits.
Members of that
contributor-announcements list will see updates about the process
soon, so please make sure you confirm membership to that list.
Hope this helps,
Brian
On 8/15/19 8:32 AM, Arnaud Le Hors
wrote:
Thanks for
this interesting
info but to be clear, I for one never said that SIGs aren't
doing any technical
work. My only point is that SIGs don't report to the TSC.
And until
this
changes, I think it'd be odd to have them on the TSC.
I see this as
a simple governance issue. The TSC should be formed of people
elected among
those that are governed by the TSC.
IMO, the
argument
that SIGs are doing technical work is an argument to bring up in
support
of moving SIGs under the governance of the TSC (which would then
naturally
make them eligible for the TSC), not merely to be part of the
TSC election.
--
Arnaud Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Blockchain
&
Web Open Technologies - IBM
From:
"hmontgomery@..."
<hmontgomery@...>
To:
Arnaud
Le Hors <lehors@...>, Vipin Bharathan
<vipinsun@...>
Cc:
"tsc@..."
<tsc@...>
Date:
08/15/2019
05:17 PM
Subject:
[EXTERNAL]
Re: [Hyperledger TSC] TSC elections: electorate should include
SIGs and
some other suggestions.
Sent
by: tsc@...
Hi
Arnaud,
This
is a little bit orthogonal to what you and Vipin are
discussing, but it’s
still relevant, so I’ll mention it here.
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?
As
an example, I’ve been thinking about putting together a group
related
to academic involvement in Hyperledger. The goal would be to
help
get academics to add their work to Hyperledger (in code) and
for maintainers/developers
to give research problems to academics. I’ve written up a
(very
rough) draft of a SIG proposal for this. Despite the
technicality
involved, I chose to write a SIG draft proposal instead of a
working group
proposal for the very reasons I mentioned above. While I
can’t say
for certain, I suspect that some of the SIGs that are popular
today made
the same calculation.
I
mostly think this is relevant to the WG reform process (thanks
Mic for
heading this up), and I’m not a common participant in current
SIGs. But
I think it is a little much to say that SIGs aren’t doing any
technical
work. I don’t’ know how to quantify “technical contributions”
from SIG members, though—could a frequent SIG participant
comment more
on this?
I
hope this makes sense. I guess I’m less trying to make a
point about
the TSC elections than about working group reform.
Thanks,
Hart
From:tsc@...
[mailto:tsc@...]
On Behalf Of Arnaud Le Hors
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2019 7:04 AM
To: Vipin Bharathan <vipinsun@...>
Cc: tsc@...
Subject: Re: [Hyperledger TSC] TSC elections: electorate
should include
SIGs and some other suggestions.
Hi
Vipin,
The facts are that while WGs and projects are under the
governance of the
TSC, and report to them, the SIGs don't.
My point is that if the SIGs are actually doing technical work
that should
be handled by the TSC they should then be moved (back) under
its structure.
It would then be natural to have them be part of the TSC but I
don't think
we should have something in between.
I hope this clarifies what I mean. This is not about being
exclusive as
much as being consistent.
Regards.
--
Arnaud Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Blockchain
&
Web Open Technologies - IBM
From: "VIPIN
BHARATHAN" <vip@...>
To: "lehors@..."
<lehors@...>,
Vipin Bharathan <vipinsun@...>
Cc: "tsc@..."
<tsc@...>
Date: 08/14/2019
10:50 PM
Subject: [EXTERNAL]
Re: [Hyperledger TSC] TSC elections: electorate should include
SIGs and
some other suggestions.
Sent by: tsc@...
Arnaud,
Feelings are not what I am after, but facts. Elsewhere in my
email,
it was pointed out that SIGs have large, diverse memberships
and are very
technical in nature. These folks are not protocol(dlt)
engineers but bring
a technical user perspective. As we are maturing, we need that
insight
in our tsc, if we are to spur adoption and address usability
and a path
to production. For example the healthcare SIG has 1000 members
in its mailing
list. We should not exclude this contributor constituency from
our tsc
eligibility pools and our rolls.
This will also enhance our DCI metrics. May I remind you that
the last
I stands for inclusion.
Vipin
From: tsc@...<tsc@...>
on behalf of Arnaud Le Hors via Lists.Hyperledger.Org <lehors=us.ibm.com@...>
Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2019 4:38 PM
To: Vipin Bharathan
Cc: tsc@...
Subject: Re: [Hyperledger TSC] TSC elections: electorate
should include
SIGs and some other suggestions.
Vipin,
I'm sorry if my email made you feel I had ignored that part of
your email.
I hadn't but, I don't share your point of view and my point
remains.
Regards.
--
Arnaud Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Blockchain
&
Web Open Technologies - IBM
From: "Vipin
Bharathan" <vipinsun@...>
To: Arnaud
Le Hors <lehors@...>
Cc: Hyperledger
List <tsc@...>
Date: 08/14/2019
06:25 PM
Subject: [EXTERNAL]
Re: [Hyperledger TSC] TSC elections: electorate should include
SIGs and
some other suggestions.
Sent by: tsc@...
Arnaud,
I had already addressed this question in my proposal: I quote
- There
has been a case made that SIGs are not under the TSC, and
hence are not
eligible. WGs and even the projects are only nominally under
the control
of the TSC, procedures are being worked out to make this
involvement even
lighter touch as projects, WGs and general technical output
proliferates.
Thanks,
Vipin
On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 10:54 AM Arnaud Le Hors <lehors@...>
wrote:
The problem is that SIGs have been placed outside the governance
of the
TSC so it seems odd to have them sit on a board they have no
direct relationship
with.
Am I the only one to feel that way?
--
Arnaud Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Blockchain
&
Web Open Technologies - IBM
From: "Vipin
Bharathan" <vipinsun@...>
To: Hyperledger
List <tsc@...>
Date: 08/10/2019
08:54 PM
Subject: [EXTERNAL]
[Hyperledger TSC] TSC elections: electorate should include SIGs
and some
other suggestions.
Sent by: tsc@...
Hi all,
As a long time observer, contributor and participant in
Hyperledger, I
make the following comments about the TSC election process.
- SIGs
are part of the hyperledger community.
- SIGs
did not exist when the HL charter was setup
- SIGs
focus on specific lines of business, they do have strong
technical participation
- For
example the paper written for the Telecomm SIG is
technical, the supply
chain presentation that I attended presented a port of
Grid to Fabric based
Oracle Blockchain. Healthcare SIG sponsored labs.
- SIG
calls are very well attended. Participants are often more
diverse than
the project code contributors and the working groups.
- There
has been a case made that SIGs are not under the TSC, and
hence are not
eligible. WGs and even the projects are only nominally under
the control
of the TSC, procedures are being worked out to make this
involvement even
lighter touch as projects, WGs and general technical output
proliferates.
- Contributors
to SIGs are contributing to the community. They should be
part of the electorate
for voting as well as standing for the TSC
- We
had to make a similar case for Working Groups
Chris
Ferris' (as well many others) suggestion to increase the number
of TSC
members is welcome.
To increase the transparency of the election process, please
include the
percentage of electors who voted, the votes garnered by each of
the candidates
as in a general election. There have been suggestions that doing
this may
compromise the standing of candidates who got in with the least
number
of votes. Once elected (or nominated) to the TSC, each vote is
worth the
same.
In light of many of the suggestions already made, it might be
wise to delay
the election slightly (as Hart and some of the others have
already pointed
out)
We have the issue of Enterprises of widely different sizes
collaborating
on Hyperledger. Alternate forms of choice could be considered
for the next
election including quadratic voting and other methods, otherwise
we risk
losing diversity and the voice of smaller teams and groups.
Best,
Vipin
--
Brian Behlendorf
Executive Director, Hyperledger
bbehlendorf@...
Twitter: @brianbehlendorf
