On Tuesday, February 14, 2012, Matthew Brett <matthew.br...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 1:54 PM, Travis Oliphant <tra...@continuum.io> wrote: >> >> There is a mailing list for numfocus that you can sign up for if you would >> like to be part of those discussions. Let me know if you would like more >> information about that. John Hunter, Fernando Perez, me, Perry >> Greenfield, and Jarrod Millman are the initial board of the Foundation. >> But, I expect the Foundation directors to evolve over time. >> >> >> I should say that I have no knowledge of the events above other than >> from the mailing list (I say that only because some of you may know >> that I'm a friend and colleague of Jarrod and Fernando). >> >> >> Thanks for speaking up, Matthew. I knew that this was my first >> announcement of the Foundation to this list. Things are still just >> starting around that organization, and so there is plenty of time for input. >> This sort of thing has actually been under-way for a long time --- it just >> has not received much impetus until now for one reason or another. >> >> To be clear, there were several email posts about a Foundation to this list >> last fall and we took the discussion of the Foundation that has really been >> in the works for a couple of years (thanks to Jarrod), to a Google Group >> (very poorly) called Fastechula. There were 33 people who signed up for >> that list and discussions continued sporadically on that list away from this >> one. >> >> When we selected the name NumFOCUS just a few weeks ago, we created the list >> for numfocus and then I signed everyone up for that list who was on the >> other one. I apologize if anyone felt left out. That is not my >> intention. > > My point is that there are two ways go to about this process, one is > open and the other is closed. In the open version, someone proposes > such a group to the mailing lists. They ask for expressions of > interest. The discussion might then move to another mailing list that > is publicly known and widely advertised. Members of the board are > proposed in public. There might be some sort of formal or informal > voting process. The reason to prefer this to the more informal > private negotiations is that a) the community feels a greater > ownership and control of the process and b) it is much harder to > weaken or subvert an organization that explicitly does all its > business in public. > > The counter-argument usually goes 'members X, Y and Z are of > impeccable integrity and would only do what is best for the public > good'. And usually, members X, Y and Z are indeed of impeccable > integrity. Nevertheless I'm sure I don't have to unpack the evidence > that this approach frequently fails and can fail in a catastrophic > way. > >> Perceptions can be damaging. This is one of the big reasons for the >> organization of the Foundation -- to be a place separate from any commercial >> venture which can direct resources to a vision whose goal is more >> democratically determined. > > Are you proposing that the Foundation oversee Numpy governance and > direction? From your chosen members I'm guessing that the idea is > for the foundation to think about broad strategy rather than - say - > whether missing values should be encoded with masked arrays? > >> I think we do have a NumPy steering group if you want to call it that. >> It is currently me, Mark Wiebe, and Charles Harris. Rolf Gommers, Pauli >> Virtanen, David Cournapeau and Robert Kern also have opinions that carry >> significant weight. Are there other people that should be on this list? >> There are other people who also speak up on this list whose opinions will >> be listened to and heard. In fact, I hope that many more people will come >> to the list and speak out as development increases. > > The point I was making was that the concentration of numpy development > hours and talent in your company makes it urgent that the numpy > governance is set out formally, that the interests of the company are > made clear, and that the steering group can be assured of explicit and > public independence from the interests of the company, if and when > that becomes necessary. In the past, the numpy steering group has > seemed a virtual organization, formed ad-hoc when needed, and with no > formal governance. I'm saying that I firmly believe that has to > change, to avoid the actual or perceived loss of community ownership. > > Best, > > Matthew >
I have to agree with Mathew here, to a point. There has been discussions of these groups before, but I don't recall any announcement of this group. Of course, now that it has been announced, maybe a link to it should be prominent on the numpy/scipy pages(maybe others?). It should also be in the list of mailing lists. A funding org much like the Linux Foundation would be great, and I am all for it. A separate governing committee is also important, and I think we had some very good ideas in previous discussions. I also have to agree with Matthew's concerns about the concentration of developer resources at Continuum. I think that establishing a community-driven governance committee would be crucial in making sure that Continuum's (and Enthought's??) efforts go to serve both the community and the company's customers. Travis, in about a month, I will be starting up work at a company that has been users of the SciPy stack, but has not been active members of the community. I wish to change that. Will this Funding committee serve as a face for numpy for private companies? Thanks, Ben Root
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