Hi Marton, I think the approach of including people from end user companies is an excellent idea. I recently completed my master's thesis on vendor neutrality in open source, and one of my conclusions was that PMCs should strive to include representation from any group that directly benefits economically from the open source project. In many cases, this will naturally include the vendors participating in an open source project. But it could indicate a need to look beyond just those vendors.
Still, I hesitate to accept the idea that one person on your PMC alone should be responsible for D&I. It might set your project up for conflict if not everyone is striving to achieve that goal. And it gives that aspect of your project a bus factor of 1.* If people on your project are interested in D&I, do you think multiple members of the PMC can share that responsibility? Best Regards, Myrle * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 10:17 AM Elek, Marton <e...@apache.org> wrote: > Hi, > > I am working on a project proposal where a sub-project of an existing > Apache project supposed to move to a separated Apache top level project. > > (the current proposal is drafting at [1], but we already had a similar > move, which is already done [2]) > > The new project requires new PMC and we already started to discuss how > it should be defined. > > One of the existing PMC members suggested to include people from > "end-user" companies. It's a new project, and there are are people, who > are interested about the project, follow and help design discussions, > sometimes help with the test, frequently call-in to the weekly community > calls.... > > They may help the adoption and seems to be important to represent them > in the project governance even if they have no code contributions. > > During the original discussions these (proposed) members called as "user > seat" members, and I started to think about a "D&I" seat. > > > I think it's would be great to have somebody in the PMC: > > 1. Who can monitor D&I related processes/actions/events (and anomalies) > 2. Who can add suggestions to make the project more open > 3. Who an propose participation in "D&I" related programs > 4. Who can help to resolve D&I relaed debates/arguments (if there are > any). > 5. Have a slightly external view of the project (can report unnoticed > problems) > 6. And have existing Apache related connections (1-5. supposed to be > done with the Apache Way) > > > In my thinking this PMC member would follow the private mailing list, > ignore all the technical content (!), but step up in case of any > problems. (Other idea: contact to this member can be shared on project > pages). > > > Finally the question: > > Is there any body here who > > > 1. like this idea > 2. would be happy to try this experiment and join to the PMC of the > new project? > > +bonus question: what is your opinion about this approach > > > Note: this idea is not yet accepted/voted by other PMCs, but discussed > offline with 1-2 of them. I would like to start with proposing a name > (more names can help). And there is a low chance that this method will > be rejected by others. (Here I represent myself, not the project) > > Thanks a lot, > Marton > > > [1] > > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/HADOOP/Ozone+Hadoop+subproject+to+Apache+TLP+proposal > > [2] > > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/HADOOP/Submarine+Project+Spin-Off+to+TLP+Proposal >
