[chef] Re: Re: [chef-dev] Ownership Changes of Chef Cookbooks Revisited

[Christopher Webber < >]

So first off, thank you for the email Ryan. These issues are super important 
and I want to make sure we address them in a thoughtful and open manner.

So a couple of things stand out to me:

1) At this point, software quality isn’t really a solved problem. We have 
great tools like ChefSpec, Test Kitchen, Rubocop and Foodcritic to give us 
information about the quality of our code but they are not 100%. With that 
said, we should probably work towards a community standard of what 
constitutes a quality cookbook, if only to give those of us writing cookbooks 
a yardstick to measure ourselves by.

2) I worry about the idea of “enforcing” high quality. Things like setting 
standards for unresponsiveness and cookbook abandonment make a ton of sense 
to me, but the problem with enforcing around quality is that it becomes a 
very dangerous path and I think I would rather see us get some of the other 
aspects down before we even begin that process.

3) There is another idea that we really haven’t discussed around ownership. I 
don’t have enough background to know the actual agreements around the 
cookbooks that the community has taken on, but it doesn’t seem like the cool 
thing to just take back a cookbook. Additionally, I worry about the precedent 
that doing so would set as the associated implications of doing such a thing. 
I think about it this way… Just because a sysadmin has the ability to read 
all the email on a system doesn’t mean it is right of them to do so. There 
are usually organizational policies and guidelines that govern when it is 
acceptable to do so. If we start down a path of governance and defining rules 
around these things, this would be a place I would like to see us address.

I really would like to hear what the community thinks about all of the things 
presented. More than anything, I would like to know if working towards a 
governance policy or set of guidelines is something the community wants 
undertake. I know we (Chef Software, Inc.) would love to be a part of 
facilitating that discussion and are key stakeholders, but I don’t think any 
of us want to go down the Governance path if there isn’t support from the 
greater community to do so.

Thanks!

— cwebber

On May 23, 2014, at 4:56 PM, Julian C. Dunn 
<
 >
 wrote:

> Hey Ryan,
> 
> I'm actually gonna shift this thread to chef@ so that it gets broader
> visibility.
> 
> I've been meaning to address some of the points here since we had the
> Cookbook Governance BoF at ChefConf (and I have been remiss in not
> posting a summary from that). I have a short deck that summarized how
> I set up the conversation at the BoF:
> http://www.slideshare.net/JulianDunn/chef-cookbook-governance-bof-at-chefconf
> 
> What we heard from folks there is that the community wants Chef
> (Software, Inc.) to be more prescriptive about managing the namespaces
> on the community site. In other words, folks who were at the BoF
> wouldn't mind if we set some standards for evicting unresponsive
> maintainers from those namespaces, and/or transferring ownership to
> others who want to take over cookbooks -- provided, of course, that we
> have made a good faith effort to contact maintainers & encourage them
> to do their duty.
> 
> I'd like to hear from others who weren't at the BoF if they also feel
> this way. If you do, then I think we (Chef Software, Inc.) should work
> with the community to develop some of these rules, and then enforce
> them, to the extent that 'enforce' means 'be the broker of last resort
> in case of dispute or cookbook abandonment'.
> 
> I've also asked Chris Webber, our community software developer, to
> weigh in on this thread. He has some thoughts that may be pertinent.
> 
> - Julian
> 
> On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 4:58 PM, Ryan Hass 
> <
 >
>  wrote:
>> A little over six months have gone by since many of the cookbooks were
>> handed off to various community maintainers. Now seems like a good time
>> to continue this discussion with wisdom at hand; I am sure many others,
>> like myself may have questions and surely have ideas on how to improve.
>> 
>> Many of the cookbook maintainers have done an outstanding job of working
>> with the community, resolving issues, and accepting and mentoring
>> changes. Unfortunately, there are a few which have not met the quality
>> standards which preceded their maintainer-ship. Having said this, I
>> would like to discuss the Chef governance policy with regards to
>> maintainers whom have been unable to fulfill their duties, and the
>> process of ensuring these cookbooks continue to have high quality going
>> forward.
>> 
>> Some questions I have are:
>> 
>> * What is the current governance of cookbooks which were previously
>> maintained by Chef (Opscode)?
>> 
>> * How can the community get involved in this governance process to
>> ensure high quality standards persist for said cookbooks?
>> 
>> Please do not hesitate to share your questions or thoughts on the
>> subject of the cookbooks which were handed off. As mentioned, I am sure
>> there are many others with related questions and ideas on the topic.
>> 
>> -Ryan H.
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> [ Julian C. Dunn 
> <
 >
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