Re: [eclipse.org-planning-council] Proposed Change to Eclipse Bylaws

[Ed Merks <ed.merks@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mikaël,

Comments below.

On 24.09.2019 17:16, Mikaël Barbero wrote:

I fully agree that the removal of the planning council from the Bylaws will help clarifying the Eclipse Foundation position.

As this is a time for a change, what about transferring all the resources associated with the planning council to an actual Eclipse project or a Working Group?

Working Groups are rather heavy weight for such a thing.  It's not as if there will be a budget to be allocated or that anyone will pay fees to be a member of such a group.

Currently, simrel's resources (git repos, Jenkins instance, etc.) are somewhat owned by the planning council but there is no tangible Eclipse project associated with those resources.

Well, in the end the planning council mostly manages SimRel and we already have a SimRel project of some sort:

https://git.eclipse.org/c/simrel/

So I think a "project" kind of already exists...

Likewise, the planning council membership is currently defined in the Bylaws, but when it will be removed, I guess there will be no more record of it. IMHO, it is desirable to clarify those points before the bylaws get changed to have a clear message to give to the community.

Yes, that's a good point.  Although I tend to think that anyone who wants to be involved should be able to do so.  I.e., do we really actually need a formal definition?

Is a project enough? Should this project be part of a larger initiative like a working group?

I'd say no, that's just too heavy weight...

I would say that from a day to day operational point of view, we need at least a project whose committers are the planning council members.

I would wonder how that will be different from the committers for the simrel repo; those are the people doing the real/actual work after all. :-P

It could be a brand new project or we could merge the simrel effort into EPP and make it the central project for the Eclipse IDEs distributions. Again from an operational point of view, simrel and epp have been working so closely for so many years that I think it makes sense to have the resources of both getting even closer. 

WDYT?

In general much of this is a cat herding exercise.  I'm not sure the cats will be more inclined to be less unruly by virtue of project reorganization.  Also, reorganizing existing infrastructure is work and therefore has a cost.  Who will do that and will the benefits justify the overhead?

I think the general goal should be to make things as simple as possible so as to run more smoothly.  Also, to my thinking, anyone who wants to be helpful with regard to streamlining the simultaneous release process should be welcomed with open arms.

Cheers,

Mikael

Le 26 août 2019 à 23:23, Mike Milinkovich <mike.milinkovich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> a écrit :

All, 

As you may already be aware, the Board of Directors of the Eclipse Foundation is contemplating making updates to the Eclipse Bylaws.  

The Bylaws are our base governance document, and define the relationship amongst all our members.  FYI, they have not been updated at all since 2011, and have never had a major update since they were adopted originally in 2004.  

The Bylaws were originally drafted with only the original Eclipse IDE and platform in mind.  Of course, we have changed dramatically since then, now having more than 350 projects in diverse areas, as well as multiple working groups.  As a result, the proposed changes are intended to better reflect our current reality, and to make it easier to welcome new communities, projects, and technologies. 

One change being considered is to remove the explicit references to the Planning Council from the Bylaws.  The idea is that the current role of the Planning Council is largely to drive the IDE-focused simultaneous release, which, while involving a large number of projects, does not serve all members or all projects.  As an example, the Bylaws currently stipulate that all Strategic members are expected to participate in the Planning Council, but in reality we have many Strategic members who are not engaged in any way in the simultaneous release and thus don’t participate in the Planning Council. Attempts to expand the remit of the Planning Council beyond the Eclipse IDE and platform have not been successful.

To be very clear, there are no changes to the membership in or work being done by Planning Council contemplated by this proposal.  Rather, the change under consideration is to simply remove it as an body explicitly defined in the Bylaws. The intent is to keep the body active, and to have the Council continue in its current role. 

I hope you agree that such changes to the Bylaws will better position Eclipse Foundation to continue to serve its members and projects in the coming years. 

Your thoughts and feedback would be appreciated.

Regards,

Mike

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