Thanks Isabel! For those dev@community list readers, I'll try to add some context to this discussion over who does what and how the ASF relies on volunteers here.
Isabel Drost-Fromm wrote on 3/28/18 1:39 AM: > > This message was initially circulated on an ASF internal list. Surfacing > here to make the discussion visible to those who aren't members of the > foundation in an effort to make it as accessible as possible. Moving the > internal list to BCC: ...snip... > Hi, > > in his questions to the board, Daniel Gruno included one that I believe > is very interesting: The Membership of the ASF[1] recently elected a new Board of Directors[2], as we do every year at our annual corporate meeting. A part of that process, individuals who are nominated by the Membership for the election post a candidate statement about their vision for the ASF[3]. This year, Daniel posted an excellent list of questions, prompting the director candidates to think about different aspects of how to keep the ASF going strong for the future. A big part of discussions is how the ASF can scale our internal operations - the corporate stuff, plus the services we provide to all our projects (press, branding, infrastructure, etc.)[4] while we're continuing to grow. In particular, how do we do this while maintaining our independent and volunteer-led leadership - while still managing paying for critical services that volunteers can't fully support. >> Which roles do you envision moving towards paid roles. Is this the >> right move, and if not, what can we do to prevent/delay this? ...snip... > I took me seeing the following talk to get a vague understanding of the > dynamics at play when we start talking vendor neutrality at the > foundational level: > > https://archive.fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/corporate_shenanigans/ > > https://www.slideshare.net/MikeMilinkovich/corporate-shenanigans > > > I would like to figure out the dynamics at play at the ASF and how they > impact us. Please bear with me - those who were here for nearly two > decades will need to do a lot of explaining. A *requirement* of all Apache projects is that they are managed by volunteers and are run independently of undue corporate influence: https://community.apache.org/projectIndependence.html Apache bylaws are explicitly structured so that all Apache projects report directly to our independent board. Thus, if a PMC running a project does 'go off the rails' or get influenced by a vendor at the expense of the community, the board can directly work with them to course correct. In particular: the ASF expects that PMC members & committers are acting in the best interests of their Apache project as a whole. This often causes a tension when those committers are paid employees of $BigCo that runs a business on top of various Apache projects, and has it's own corporate interests. > > What roles do we have at the ASF? > > ------------------- > > project committers - volunteers, expected to make decisions in the best > interest of their project. > Source of conflict of interest: often paid by an employer who has a > vested interest as they are either using the project or helping > customers (in return for money) use the project or because their product > is built on top of the project. > > How to capture? Hire the majority of committers or even all of them. > Current counter measure: PMC oversight - scalpel vs. hammer. PMCs being self-aware and reporting this kind of thing to the board are the scalpel. The hammer is when situations like this go unreported, or become a detriment to the project as a whole, and the board gets involved to ensure the project is managed independently. > > We mildly care if ppl go away here - communities are expected to be > open for new people to flow in, if all else fails and there are no users > to step up and help the project either personally or by funding it's > developers projects go to the attic, harm done: potentially grumpy users. "communities are expected to be open for new people to flow in" - this is a requirement. A known anti-pattern is when one employer's employees who are committers start doing project work while ignoring other committers, and while freezing out (either in terms of code or new committers being elected) anyone not from that company. That's when the board will get involved, if the PMC can't self-correct. > ------------------- > > pmc members - volunteers, otherwise same as above. Current counter > measure against capture: Education and board oversight - hammer vs. > scalpel. > > ------------------- > > infra - used to be all volunteers recruited from projects, I would guess > they used to by paid by their employers. > > I don't see a "how to capture" risk here. The ASF currently has an Infra Admin on staff, along with our crack team of infrastructure sysadmins. So our core infrastructure support can't be "captured" by a commercial company. But. But... many of our projects rely on donations of services from individual corporations - especially our big data projects. There is a separate - and subtle - risk where a single company effectively controls the servers that an Apache project needs to build and test their code. > > We do care if they go away - so what we did was to hire contractors, > hire an Infra Admin. There is still a volunteer providing oversight. https://whimsy.apache.org/foundation/orgchart/infra-admin > > We do care about budget conflict of interest, that's why Infra Admin > is no longer on the board approving his own budget. > > ------------------- > > ... ? > > > ------------------- > > Three observations: > > I) > > I don't believe in volunteers doing extensive amounts of unpaid work. No > matter what time zone I traveled to, days always had 24hours. Assuming > people need 8 hours of sleep, work for 8 hours, spend 1 hour commuting, > spend 3 hours for breakfast, lunch and dinner this leaves us with 4 > hours a day (and I'm sure I forgot something here - in my first > iteration I forgot about eating). So if we expect people to work here, > > - either their employer will pay for their time (if they get permission > to contribute time during working hours). This makes us dependent on > capable volunteers having a day job that is not only fun for them but > also allows them to spend time at the ASF. It also means that those > employers get an advantage in terms of influence who can afford to hire > an ASF person just to work at the ASF. Are those the dynamics we want? > > - or they will work here after-hours which means that either their > family or their health will pay for the work done here. We also have a regular and repeated history of our volunteers burning out. This is a harm to the individuals, but is also a harm to our operations, when suddenly the volunteer who was performing a task goes away (sometimes without much notice). Thus, risk to efficient work. > II) > > I do see how having to pay to gain access to resources puts smaller > players at a disadvantage. That's something I would want to avoid. > > I do see how having to pay to gain influence (e.g. paid board seat) puts > smaller players at a disadvantage. Again that's something I would want > to avoid. Never going to happen. Our bylaws, 501C3 status, and broad-based membership make it clear that we'll always have an independently elected board of individuals. This is a clear differentiator between the ASF and organizations like Eclipse and Linux Foundation. > I do see how professionalizing means that volunteers with limited time > resources will have trouble keeping up and getting involved. We have > seen this happen in our projects. I would guess it to be equally true at > the operational level. Is that something we want to solve? (Me > personally I'm grateful for having been given the behind the scenes look > as a director w/o having to change jobs, the opportunity to work with > the experienced ppl we have here). Is that something where we have > patterns/ experience how to deal with it? Given the number of projects, > I'd be surprised if that was a new problem to have. It depends on the task and the kinds of skills needed to perform it. Accounting - we should just hire that (we do). But other roles, where volunteers could help? Yes - we need to ensure that we keep part of the job description for paid roles includes documenting the tasks, and making it easy for volunteers to understand what's happening, and how and where volunteers could get involved. > > III) > > I don't see how turning volunteer positions into paid ones removes the > risk of people walking away - it merely makes that risk smaller (notice > periods help, the need for other employers to offer significantly more > money than we do also helps ...). I do see us repeatedly in a position > where we need to find replacement for someone on short notice. I do > believe we need to do more than just hope for payment to remove that > risk. The term succession planning comes to mind, in particular this talk: > > https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/community_passing_the_batton_foss_leadership/ -- - Shane Director & Member The Apache Software Foundation [1] https://www.apache.org/foundation/governance/members.html [2] https://www.apache.org/foundation/governance/board.html [3] Most candidate statements are posted inside the ASF, but some directors also post them publicly: https://communityovercode.com/2017/03/shanes-director-position-2017/ http://blog.isabel-drost.de/posts/my-board-nomination-statement-2018.html [4] https://www.apache.org/board/policies - ASF services & policies --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@community.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@community.apache.org
