+1 to what Aljoscha said.
The past has shown that discussions in Google docs do not reach all
interested parties and the tracability of design decisions becomes
difficult. Google services are also partially inaccessible in certain
parts of world.
We should actually do the opposite and not allow Google docs as FLIPs
anymore. Commenting should be disabled by default.
Regards,
Timo
On 18.02.20 15:20, Aljoscha Krettek wrote:
Hi,
thanks for starting this discussion!
However, I have a somewhat opposing opinion to this: we should disallow
using Google Docs for FLIPs and FLIP discussions and follow the already
established process more strictly.
My reasons for this are:
- discussions on the Google Doc are not reflected in Apache
infrastructure
- discussions on Google Docs are non-linear and hard to follow
- when discussions on Google Docs are resolved these discussions are
not visible/re-readable anymore (I know there's history, but meh)
- if discussion is kept purely to the ML this is easily observable for
any interested parties and it's there if somewhat want's to recheck the
discussion in the future
- going from Google Doc to Wiki is an extra step that seems
unnecessary to me (but that's just personal opinion, I mean, I don't
have to do the extra work here...)
Best,
Aljoscha
On 18.02.20 09:02, Hequn Cheng wrote:
Hi everyone,
Currently, when we create a FLIP we follow the FLIP process in the Flink
Improvement Proposals wiki[1]. The process mainly includes the following
steps:
1. Create a FLIP wiki page.
2. Raise the discussion on the mailing list.
3. Once the proposal is finalized, call a vote to have the proposal
adopted.
There is also a discussion[2] on the FLIP process which may be helpful
for
you.
As it is not allowed commented on the wiki, we usually have a google doc
for the discussion at step 2 and whenever there is a change we need to
pick
it to the wiki page. This makes things somehow redundant. To solve
this, we
can rearrange the step a little bit and avoid the pick:
1. Raise the discussion on the mailing list. The subject of the thread is
of the format [DISCUSS][FLIP] {your FLIP heading}. Also, the design doc
should follow the FLIP-Template strictly. (The [FLIP] tag is used to
inform
people that it is a FLIP discussion and more attention should be paid.)
2. Create a FLIP wiki page once we reached an agreement on the
discussion.
We can simply copy the google doc into the FLIP wiki page.
3. Once the proposal is finalized, call a vote to have the proposal
adopted. It should be noted that we should always vote on a FLIP wiki
page
instead of a google doc. The wiki page is the final version of the google
doc.
This can bring some benefits:
1. Make the discussion more effective as we force people to write and
discuss on a google doc that follows the FLIP template which
includes necessary information such as Motivation, Interfaces, Proposed
changes, etc.
2. Avoid redundant pick from google doc to Flink wiki page. Once we
reached
an agreement on the discussion, we can simply copy the google doc into
the
FLIP wiki page.
3. As adopted FLIP should mostly be "immutable", we can even make the
wiki
page PMC or committer editable since it just needs a simple copy from the
google doc.
Looking forward to your feedback!
Best,
Hequn
[1]
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLINK/Flink+Improvement+Proposals
[2]
http://apache-flink-mailing-list-archive.1008284.n3.nabble.com/DISCUSS-META-FLIP-Sticking-or-not-to-a-strict-FLIP-voting-process-td29978.html#a29988
