Revise SEP 2: A New Governance Structure for SunPy #62
Conversation
Co-authored-by: Nabil Freij <nabil.freij@gmail.com>
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Apologies for those changes coming as a hard commit. I didn't know how to make suggestions in code. Since there were just spell checking, I though they would be non controversial. |
Co-authored-by: David Stansby <dstansby@gmail.com>
SEP-0002-revised.md
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| 1. The candidate is then put to the Project Members. | ||
| The name and nomination statement of the candidate will be shared with the Project Members. | ||
| The candidate can become a Project member if five existing Project members approve the candidate and no Project Members call for an election within two weeks of the candidate being put to the Project Members. | ||
| 1. Project Members can call for an election either by posting in the discussion of the candidate or reaching out privately to the Steering Committee or the Ombudsperson. |
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"discussion of the candidate" is really weird - I certainly wouldn't put myself forward if I was going to be "discussed"!!! If anyone wants to object I think they should do it by getting directly in touch with the steering comittee.
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Point taken, I wouldn't mind making this "inform the steering committee".
The thinking behind putting this here is because of how I expect this process to practically work (again largely stolen from astropy).
- Steering committe gets nomination and verifies it
- Steering committee posts to a private section of the Discourse for the project members, saying "hey this person has been nominated, do you approve or desire a vote"
- Someone decides they want a vote and just says "vote on this one please".
Co-authored-by: David Stansby <dstansby@gmail.com>
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Overall I think this is a good thing. I like the idea of giving more power to the project members. I'm not a fan of the current steering committee structure. They should be equally strong. I do worry that this adds more formalism and bureaucracy that may not actually lead to any visible change to how the project is run and by whom given that our community is rather small.
SEP-0002-revised.md
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| * **The deputy lead developer** in the absence of the lead developer, the deputy shall perform all the duties of the lead developer. | ||
| * **The financial officer** the financial officer is primarily responsible for ensuring the health of the project finances and setting up processes for managing expenses and reporting to the board on financial matters. | ||
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| The steering committee is elected by the **project members**. |
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Must the steering committee members originally be project members? I don't see that written anywhere but i may have missed it.
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I have not stated that either way. Astropy did not make that a requirement, I am open to opinions either way.
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I don't think we would enforce it, you never know but I would be very surprised if they were not project memebers beforehand.
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I have for the moment added a comment saying they do not need to be project members. I am happy to discuss that though.
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I disagree with this. I feel like they should have to have been Project Members before being elected to the Steering Committee. The Project Members will elect them and it is best if they know them and have worked with them before than some external person that Project Members may not know at all.
I have tried to keep this to a minimum while achieving the objective of getting more people involved in the governance. I think all the extra complexity here is inescapable when you choose to have the executive be elected rather than appointed by a self-electing board. I have tried to reduce the administration required in the adding new Project Members, and the election of the committee is an objective for me so hard to avoid! |
SEP-0002-revised.md
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| * The Advisory Board shall consist of at least 3 members and no more than 5 members. The Advisory Board selects how many members within this range are needed. | ||
| * All members shall serve a maximum of a two-year term, and may be re-appointed at the end of their term. | ||
| * Membership terms should be staggered so that approximately half the number of members will end their terms in any given year. | ||
| * The Advisory Board may appoint members to its number up to the maximum number of members. |
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| * The Advisory Board may appoint members to its number up to the maximum number of members. |
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Without this there isn't wording which states how people are appointed to the board?
SEP-0002-revised.md
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| The name of a candidate should not be shared outside of the Project Members until they become a Project Member. | ||
| A public list of Project Members will be kept on the SunPy website. | ||
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| Nominations, approvals and any elections of Project Members should take place before the initial election of the Steering Committee. |
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What does this mean? Can't elections of Project Members occur at any time?
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Yes, this is specifically about the first set of elections. To phrase it a slightly different way it is saying "the initial set of project members must hold an election for more project members before electing the first steering committee".
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@Cadair do we need another board meeting to discuss further? |
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@ehsteve I suggest we schedule one with the objective of approving and merging this. |
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@Cadair looks like this is still a draft. How much time is needed to clean this up and have it ready for a vote? |
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Not much. I shall try and do it tomorrow. Certainly less than it takes to schedule a board meeting 😝 |
Co-authored-by: Steven Christe <ehsteve@users.noreply.github.com>
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@Cadair hope you have some time to clean this up so we can't get this behind us finally! |
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This PR is now replaced by #80 |
Rendered Markdown
This is rewrite of SEP 2 (The SunPy governance document), currently I have added it as a new file for ease of review, but I think ultimately it may replace SEP 2.
Remaining Discussions
This PR is getting unwieldy so here is (as of the 14th June 2023) the main points of discussion:
There are some other unresolved conversations, but hopefully they are all clarifications / minor corrections.
I have been thinking about the current issues with our governance over the last few years, and was also involved in the Astropy governance work which lead to the drafting of APE 0. This rework of the governance was discussed at a session of the 2022 coordination meeting, and I hope that I have taken on board the key points raised in that discussion.
Reviewing this document
For this new governance structure to be accepted there needs to be community discussion and hopefully consensus. Then the board will approve the SEP and the new structure will come into effect.
I am sure there will be lots of word smithing to be done and tweaking to be had, but I would hope that we can maintain a lightweight governance. To that end I am very open to suggestions of where to strip things out of here.