[Gt-eos] Launching the GridCF

Wed Nov 1 20:28:19 CET 2017

Hi Oliver,

One thing to think about is the difference between "official end of support" and "effective end of support".

For example, look at the number of pending pull requests that contain relevant patches (but haven't even gotten a comment from upstream):

https://github.com/globus/globus-toolkit/pulls <https://github.com/globus/globus-toolkit/pulls>

[One of these even includes a fairly trivial DoS.]

It'd sure be nice to have a mechanism for getting these fixes out on the street beyond asking Mattias Ellert to do more work.

Matyas did some nice work over the last few days to get Travis-CI integration mostly working standalone.  The ultimate goal is to have CI builds that generate souce tarballs + binaries tarballs + RPMs + debs.  This is the type of work that will really benefit from getting started relatively early.  I'm sure I'm forgetting other stuff.

Brian

PS - I'd really like to get names suggested for the PMC.  I'd love to hear nominations throughout the day, but if I don't hear any, I'll happily nominate based on those who have responded on this mailing list.

> On Nov 1, 2017, at 11:09 AM, Oliver Keeble <oliver.keeble at cern.ch> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Brian - thanks for your efforts, at CERN we're happy with what you propose and support the idea of getting the PMC up and running asap and using that forum to define the details of how we want to manage the software lifecycle.
> 
> About timelines, from reading the following
> 
> https://github.com/globus/globus-toolkit/blob/globus_6_branch/support-changes.md
> 
> I conclude that the Globus github repo isn't going anywhere, neither in Jan nor Dec next year. Thus for us at least, the Jan 2018 deadline is pretty weak, I would favour waiting until then before forking and running through a first release.
> 
> Oliver.
> 
> On 27/10/17 19:39, Brian Bockelman wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> Frank Scheiner beat me to the punch and put together a GridCF presence on GitHub.  Not seeing any negative responses yet, I put together a few scratch webpages and presences (https://gridcf.org).  Please excuse my enthusiasm.
>> I propose that we should officially launch the Grid Community Forum (GridCF).  The GridCF should be an organization to provide broad community-based support for core software packages in grid computing; it is a group of collaborators and not a legal entity.  It will not own any copyrights or trademarks on the software it produces; copyright ownership is maintained by the contributor.
>> Along these lines, I propose we do the following:
>> 1) Propose an initial project management committee.  To involve all organizations with a stake in the health of the GridCF, I would like to have one participant in the PMC from each organization that considers themselves a stakeholder.
>>   - *However*, after the initial formation of the PMC, I propose all participants be considered individuals.  They are certainly allowed (encouraged!) to advocate for their organization's interests, but we don't formally maintain a balance of organizations on the PMC.
>>   - That said, I personally think it is strongly in the PMC's interest to maintain a balance across all stakeholders.  However, that is up to the PMC and I would be reluctant to codify it in any formal rules.
>>   - I propose we should feel free to nominate individuals to represent organizations.  I leave it up to the organization to determine their internal process of selecting individuals.
>>   - I also propose we let organizations self-identify as wanting to participate and err on the side of inclusion.  My initial thinking here is to consider grid organizations (examples including EGI, NorduGrid, OSG, PRACE, XSEDE, etc) but would be fine with a broader scope.
>>   - It's hard to manage with too-large groups: I think it would be most productive with 5-10 individuals on the PMC.
>> 2) I propose we should quickly adopt a simple governance structure.  I put together a draft here: https://github.com/gridcf/gridcf.github.io/pull/1
>>   - Comments are welcome either via mail list or GitHub.  Feel free to comment on the issue or post a PR to my branch.
>> 3) With a list of participants and a proposed governance structure, I claim we should vote to officially create the forum with the governance structure posted on the GitHub branch.  For the initial vote, I would like the PMC to be unanimous*.
>> Please forgive the level of formality at the very beginning here; I think it would be useful to get this stuff out of the way as soon as possible (as opposed to when the first disagreements hit!).  I aim to be less formal once things really get rolling, particularly because I'm not good at these sorts of things.
>> I would also suggest that we try to not nitpick the setup or text: once the forum exists, it is less awkward to fine-tune or change the structure.  We *should* make changes necessary to maximize the potential for success.
>> In terms of timelines:
>> - Between now and Friday, November 3, 2018, we should discuss this proposal and try to build a list of names for the PMC.
>> - Starting Friday, November 3, 2018, we should aim to hold a vote, keeping the vote open until November 7 and posting the results on this list.
>> It's a quick timeline, but I feel it will help us keep from over-thinking it.
>> Once we agree the forum should exist, here's an example of the actions I think we should take rather quickly:
>> - Adopt a code base for the GCT.  A few of us will tinker with the repository here (https://github.com/gridcf/gct) in the meantime, but it wouldn't be official until a vote occurs.
>> - Vote on a list of code committers, being as inclusive as reasonable.
>> - Put together a timeline for a first release of the GCT.  Given we're working against a January 2018 deadline, I would aim to have the first code release be prior to that and essentially consist of the current fork point from the Globus Toolkit.
>> Phew - thanks for staying with me!  I would like to thank you in advance for enthusiastically contributing to the (hopefully) forthcoming GridCF!
>> Brian
>> * It's a bit tricky to state precisely what unanimity means within a group of people that does not exist in order create their existence.  I am hoping that everything I write is as widely acceptable as possible and that we all can come together constructively in order to get things off the ground.
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> 
> -- 
> Oliver Keeble                      Information Technology Department
> oliver.keeble at cern.ch                                           CERN
> +41 75 411 5965                                    CH-1211 Geneva 23

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