[dpdk-moving] description of technical governance

[Thomas Monjalon]

2016-10-28 16:52, Matt Spencer:
> 1 - we adopt the model as is - one TSC member per committer
> As this stands today, that would give us 56 TSC members,
> with almost half of them from one company
> 
> 2 - we adopt the model as is - one TSC member per committer -
> to a maximum of 20% membership of the TSC
> This would ensure that no one company can 'own' the TSC -
> 56 committers, so max TSC membership from one company would be 11
> 
> 3 - Maximum one member of TSC per committing company,
> plus one TSC assignee per paid member
> This would keep the TSC to a manageable level, give companies
> an incentive to join, but not require membership to be on the TSC
> 
> 4 - Something else?
> 
> My current thoughts are with 3 because we should end up with a
> representative cross section of the stakeholders of the project,
> whilst still incentivising membership of the foundation.

Thanks for sharing your view.

I'm an Open Source guy and I might lack some politician skills.
So please excuse me if I take the freedom to talk really frankly :)

First of all, this email thread was dedicated to the technical governance.
And Matt is introducing money in this topic by talking about incentives.
I think it is a very interesting point that we must discuss.
>From the beginning, everybody were saying that we must keep technical
governance and legal structure separate.
However one question has still no good answer: what is the incentive
for contributing money in the structure?
Is money going to biase the desired meritocratic system?

My second comment is about having one company controlling the technical
governance.
I won't enter into the number details, and it's true that Intel provides
at least 50% of the contributions nowadays. Intel is also the biggest
contributor to Linux. No surprise.
I understand that a voice from ARM is requiring to mitigate this fact.
I would prefer ARM related companies working to achieve the same
level of commitment as Intel. They are increasing their contribution pace
but may never really compete with a giant like Intel.
That's why I second Matt to say that we must give a chance to every
vendors to influence the technical decisions.
Introducing a membership threshold looks to be a good idea.

Having said that, I must state that the DPDK reality is a lot more
complex than a competition between vendors.
We are proving that a consensus based model works very well without
the need of a TSC or a board.
We can create such organization, but please keep in mind that it should
not be really helpful in the day-to-day job.