FINOS Technical Steering Committee [TSC] Request for Comments [RFC]

[ColinEberhardt]

This issue is a Request for Feedback (RFC) regarding the formation of a Technical Steering Committee (TSC). The purpose of the RFC is to outline the key responsibilities of a TSC and the benefits this would deliver to FINOS.

We are keen to receive feedback from member organisations and contributors alike on any aspect of this RFC, which will remain open until Jan 31st 2022.

FINOS activities are currently organised around three constructs:

• Special Interest Groups (SIGs) which bring together interested parties to discuss topics of common interest and business challenges, often spurring into the creation of Projects,
• Software Projects, which create open source code
• Open standard Projects, which produce standards or specifications and and may organise themselves via one or multiple Working Groups.

The activities that the SIGs and Projects undertake are guided by a combination of the FINOS team and the FINOS Governing Board. As FINOS increases in size, with a healthy pipeline of new projects to approve and a growing portfolio to manage, this is becoming a significant undertaking.

With the formation of a TSC, a construct commonly found in large open source foundations (e.g. CNCF TOC, Hyperledger TSC, LFN TAB, etc.), we are looking to create a technically focused steering / decision making group that complements the Governing Board. At a high level:

• SIGs focus on the ‘problem space’, with their activities aligned the Governing Board
• Projects focus on the ‘solution space’, with their activities aligned to the TSC

The TSC would be an elected group, with representation on the Governing Board (for example, it’s common for the TSC chair to sit on the Governing Board). The TSC would have the following responsibilities:

• Collaborate with the FINOS team and Governing Board in setting the strategic technology direction of the foundation and overall desired evolution of the FINOS projects landscape
• Put forward technical advisory and recommendations to the Governing Board on strategic and governance decisions
• Establishing technical norms, workflows, or best practices (e.g. security) practices to be adopted by FINOS projects
• Discussing, advising and assisting in reaching consensus where necessary, on technical matters that affect multiple projects of members
• Approval of new project proposals and management of the overall project lifecycle
• Foster alignment, standardization and reduce duplication of efforts across different projects in the FINOS landscape

The TSC would meet regularly (likely monthly), with an agenda that focuses on the responsibilities outlined above. As an illustration, here some concrete decisions which could constitute a potential agenda for the initial meeting should a TSC be ratified by the Board:

• Approval of new Contributions
• Technical approach to the potential contribution of ISDA CDM into FINOS
• Review of current Security Vulnerabilities Responsible Disclosure Policy and evaluate roll-out of LFX Security in response to the log4j vulnerability
• Evaluate Legend role in the FDC3 need for context data standardization
• Recommendations on key technical themes for 2022 and consequent update of taxonomy at https://landscape.finos.org/

There is further work required to elaborate the TSC composition and election process. For now, we’d like to focus discussion on:

• Your support for this proposal (please add a 👍 below)
• Feedback on the responsibilities of this group and the benefits this should yield (please add a comment below)
• Your appetite to actively participate in a TSC - there’s sweat equity and active work involved, albeit we expect it to be relatively low effort (please express your interest in a comment below)

Please provide your feedback below!

[eranbarak]

Thanks, Colin for this thoughtful proposal.
I would appreciate more color on the need for the TSC. Is it that FINOS projects proposals are being delayed due to a lack of capacity by the BOD? is it that we need more coordination between projects?
We can also explore multiple ways to address the issues including increasing BOD frequency or size to help out.

[mindthegab]

Echoing @eranbarak - Thanks @ColinEberhardt for getting this started.

@eranbarak, I can chime in here given this is a conversation that has been ongoing at the Governing Board level for a while (in fact this step of community socialization is the next step we agreed with the Governing Board before further top-down determinations are made).

The problems we are trying to solve / opportunities we're trying to generate (see 2021Q4 governing board deck) in principle are:

• Expert project portfolio ownership: As projects grow in value, SMEs should lead the way on how on our portfolio evolves (i.e. which new projects we accept and how projects integrate with each other as needed)
• Governing Board overload: GB is asked input on both business & technical decisions, while most foundations of our size have a clear technical responsibility delegated to a technical committee which advises the Board
• FINOS team neutrality: Currently FINOS ED approves new contributions, a move done in 2019 (when we removed Programs / PMC) for efficiency and in reflection of the lack of OSS maturity of this community, but it's always been envisioned to return this responsibility where it belongs, ie. with the community
• Avoiding project proliferation: We currently have an ad-hoc community socialization process for new contributions, as opposed to a formal and deep technical gate of approval.
• Influence path for technical talent: Both as is relates to technical talent within institutions and leaders of our Community, a TSC provides an avenue / reward path, in line with our governance by contribution principles

To your point, Governing Board overload is a relatively minor reason for this and there would be other avenues to address that. But when putting all the reasons together a TSC seems sensible, but of course I'd love to hear more from the Community.

Finally, comparable wise, all Linux Foundation umbrella projects of our size have a comparable proven-to-be-useful construct and even FINOS, in his previous Symphony Software Foundation embodiment, has an Engineering Steering Committee (ESCo).

[eranbarak]

Thanks for the additional color. Makes perfect sense.

[peter-thomas-db]

This sounds interesting and I am fully supportive. As the lead of one of the projects, I have found it difficult to see the synergies between mine and other projects and I am hoping that this proposal would assist in this. External technical support, sponsorship and direction would be useful to assist the project too.

Also @mindthegab mentions portfolio ownership - I think a holistic view of a portfolio products and strategy would be useful to help us identify gaps in the offering which we can then actively look to fill - perhaps similar to CNCF's landscape approach.

[ColinEberhardt]

This sounds interesting and I am fully supportive.

Thanks @peter-thomas-db

[gravax]

I think it's a great idea as well.

[mattjamieson]

👍 makes perfect sense to me

[eddie-knight]

👍 Logical.

[brunodom]

I think that is necessary. I am serving in the steering committee of the SLSA project and there are several areas where the TSC can help make the connection beyond the FINOS ecosystem. I want to volunteer myself to TSC collaborate. Count on me.

[peter-thomas-db]

@brunodom, that is interesting re SLSA, I think we are interested in that within the DevOps Mutualisation group - so that's already an example of synergy 💯

[stephengoldbaum]

Another +1 from me. In addition to the other points, I agree that a holistic strategic view across projects and their potential interrelations would be beneficial all around.

[vmbrasseur]

This makes good sense. The TSC can help create and guide a coherent technical vision for the org & its projects, open and promote collaboration points for the projects, and remove a big burden from the board (where it shouldn't be, anyway).

Big +1 to the idea in concept, but I'd like to see proposed charter wording for this governance change before making any final decision. The devil is always in details.

[jonfreedman]

Good idea, I'd be happy to be involved pending employer approval...

[ColinEberhardt]

Thanks @jonfreedman very much appreciated

[opoupeney]

Fully supportive to the initiative, I strongly believe in innovation networks, fuelled by the synergies the TSC can identify and promote. I'd like to participate actively.

[caradelia]

Thank you for thoroughly outlining the key responsibilities. Red Hat is supportive of the initiative and would like to be involved.

[mindthegab]

This sounds interesting and I am fully supportive. As the lead of one of the projects, I have found it difficult to see the synergies between mine and other projects and I am hoping that this proposal would assist in this. External technical support, sponsorship and direction would be useful to assist the project too.

Also @mindthegab mentions portfolio ownership - I think a holistic view of a portfolio products and strategy would be useful to help us identify gaps in the offering which we can then actively look to fill - perhaps similar to CNCF's landscape approach.

@peter-thomas-db that's exactly the goal - a more proactive management of landscape.finos.org would be one of the primary goals of the TSC (and partially the reason I hired @jgavronsky :).

[mindthegab]

I think that is necessary. I am serving in the steering committee of the SLSA project and there are several areas where the TSC can help make the connection beyond the FINOS ecosystem. I want to volunteer myself to TSC collaborate. Count on me.

Thanks @brunodom - it would be paramount to have pre-existing TSC experience, so we'd love to have you involved. Thanks for the support and the offer!

[mindthegab]

@ColinEberhardt thanks for getting this started - from a qualitative glance, it seems there's overwhelming / unanimous community support for the creation of a TSC.

The next step is to discuss more specifically on:

1. initial + ongoing composition of the TSC
2. Named volunteers who'd like to participate and can put forward their public commitment (of course that would be pending GB approval and the rules of composition itself)

If we can do this through Feb, then the goal would be to bring a proposal to the Membership & Governance Committee in March and potentially to the GB in April.

I wonder if it makes sense to open a separate issue to discuss that, and close this one referencing the new issue.

[ColinEberhardt]

Thanks for summarising @mindthegab - yes, looks like there is quite a lot of support for this idea. I'll raise a new issue with next steps, outlining the composition of the TSC, and how we form the initial group.

I wonder if it makes sense to open a separate issue to discuss that, and close this one referencing the new issue.

Yes, I think that makes sense. Let's close this one down, and I'll create a new issue shortly.

[rikoe]

Late to the game but just want to say this is a great idea, and I would love to be involved in some capacity. I think there are lots of opportunities for synergies across the FINOS project estate, and I have had several such discussions with various projects about it!

[ColinEberhardt]

Thanks @rikoe - really appreciate your support.

[martin-traverse]

This all makes a lot of sense to me. I'd be keen to volunteer myself and I know my employer also supports this idea (Accenture).

[alvin-c-shih]

Spent a bit of time catching up on TSC at today's KDB Project Call.

One point of interest was the job posting for "Senior Technical Architect - FINOS":

• https://www.linuxfoundation.org/JobPosting/?743999800794535
• "FINOS seeks an exceptionally talented individual who can define, drive and help execute a technology strategy that enables financial services firms and the entire FINOS ecosystem to realize the value of open source in financial services."

Will that person chair the TSC?

[mindthegab]

Hey @alvin-c-shih, good eye :)

I believe @ColinEberhardt will open a separate issue to discuss more specifically composition, but while of course we would expect the Senior Technical Architect Role to represent FINOS and support the TSC, if you ask me, I'd rather see a TSC Chair from the Community, appointed by the TSC itsef, and getting a Governing Board seat to represent the TSC, and more broadly technical landscape, at Governing Board level.

[ColinEberhardt]

Thanks everyone for your input - much appreciated. The conversation has now moved to the next RFC, which outlines the formation / election process #162