death to the TWG, long live the TWG!

Wed Dec 20 17:22:05 GMT 2006

hello =)

the technical working group (TWG) was founded out of discussions had at the 
2005 annual general meeting of the KDE e.V. assembly. we had a trial run of 
it with a charter and everything, however it hit some rocky ground. namely:

 - it turns out that the charter of the TWG wasn't clearly (enough) in line 
with the jobs of the TWG
 - the people involved with the TWG were mostly the same people who were 
previously too busy and it turns out (shock!) that bestowing charters doesn't 
magically make people able to do more things ;)
 - the fact that the TWG was an elected body made up of e.V. members drove 
subtle schisms through the project

the latter point is an important one. electing someone doesn't make them feel 
more motivated and responsible compared to them stepping up and taking on 
personal ownership of a task. this election mechanism was also borne to some 
degree by the level of paranoia in our community about such structures; the 
non-elected working groups have done really well for their respective topics, 
as a set of comparison data points.

so at the last aKademy, several pillars of community such as Coolo, David and 
Dirk, got together and thought long and hard about these issues. they came up 
with a new draft charter. you can find it attached to this email.

the most important points in it are 3.x, as they outline what the TWG is 
actually supposed to be doing and chunk it out into separate jobs each of 
which one or more people can take on.

when the new TWG election was called within the e.V. the issues coming out of 
our first run at it simply reared their heads: who would step up? turns out 
the same old people; after some prodding and threats of cancelling the whole 
thing some new people stepped up. of course there was also: oh no, not more 
voting! but for me the most telling part was how it was accompanied by people 
talking at me (and i'm sure, others) on irc and email about how evil and 
schism inducing these evil nasty working groups were. (cue the violin music)

so at the e.V. board meeting last month in germany we decided to pull our 
support for the TWG as it was formulated. understand, the e.V. only took this 
on because the community by and large had completely and utterly failed to do 
so. so, now that the e.V. will not be coordinating this much needed work ... 
now what?

well, if you read through the charter you'll see what needs to be done. it was 
drafted by those who have been doing it for years (to all of our benefit), so 
i'm certain you'll hear the same wisdom in those words that i do.

our challenge to you, the community (which we are a part of, so it's also 
something of a challenge to ourselves ;), is to form up a voluntary body of 
people who are taking on the responsibilities outlined in the new TWG draft 
charter and help ensure the future success of KDE.

there are already people lining up to on parts of this, and i salute them with 
my support. they will be introducing themselves on this list along with their 
ideas for implementation. however, they need more bodies and more energy. i 
urge you to answer the call.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

Full time KDE developer sponsored by Trolltech (http://www.trolltech.com)
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Charter of the Technical Working Group of the KDE e.V.
======================================================

1 Purpose

  The purpose of the Technical Working Group (TWG) is to define and execute the
  official software releases of KDE. It should also support and guide the
  processes of taking technical decisions within the KDE project. It has to make
  sure that the open source development process is kept intact and that the KDE
  community is involved in all important decisions.

2 Open Source Process

  The TWG has to respect, support and take into account the open source
  development process. This in particular means that it should support
  peer-review, maintainership, the "those who do the work decide" practice and
  strengthen the responsibilities and initiative of the individual contributors.

  The TWG should also respect and coordinate with existing decision making
  groups and processes where they exist in sub groups or sub projects of KDE.

  The TWG should also make sure that specific experts, especially those who
  work on the topics under decision, are involved in the decision making
  process.

3 Responsibilities

  3.1 Release Schedule

    The TWG is responsible for setting release schedules for the official KDE
    releases. This includes release dates, deadlines for individual release
    steps and restrictions for code changes.

    The TWG should coordinate release dates with the marketing and press efforts
    of KDE.

  3.2 Definition of Release

    The TWG defines what code is included in the official KDE releases. It
    decides which modules are released and which features are included based on
    the feature plan and criteria for inclusion of features. The criteria should
    be documented and publically available. The maintainers of the code have to
    be involved in the decision making process.

    The TWG decides which translations are included in a release. Other groups
    concerned with translations have to be involved in the decision.

  3.3 Release Management

    The TWG assigns one or more release managers for coordination of the
    official KDE releases. The release managers should coordinate with
    developers and packagers to organize packages for the release. They should
    also take care of branching and tagging the source code repository and
    prepare the source code packages released to the distributors and the
    public.

  3.4 Reviewing applications

    The TWG oversees which application and libraries are included in the modules
    of the source code repository. It should support existing decision making
    processes and make sure that decisions are taken in a coordinated and
    consistent way in the best interest of the KDE project.

    If it is not possible to reach consensus about individual decisions the
    TWG can specifically decide about inclusion of new applications and
    exclusion of obsolete, redundant or unmaintained applications. The
    maintainers of the applications have to be involved in the decision making
    process.

    The TWG is directly responsible for the core modules (kdelibs, kdereview 
    and kdebase). For other modules it should leave the responsibility to 
    module maintainers or specific decision making groups, where they exist.
    The TWG takes care of
    inter-module issues, balances interests between modules and oversees the modules
    released together in the official KDE releases as a whole.

  3.5 Software Dependencies

    The TWG decides about external or inter-module software dependencies.
    The TWG has to ensure that concrete decisions about tools and deployed versions
    are made and adhered to. All decisions should be taken transparently,
    involve the KDE community, in particular specific experts, and respect the
    needs of the various KDE contributors.

  3.6 Communicating and moderating

    The TWG summarizes decision making processes and helps finding consensus
    and moderates important discussions which affect greater areas of KDE. It
    should act as a technical contact for KDE in general.

4 Members

  The TWG consists of five elected members. They are elected by the membership of the
  KDE e.V. Only members of the KDE e.V. can be voted for the TWG. In addition, any
  of the voted members can select additional people to become part of the TWG and act
  in the role of the TWG.

  4.1 Elections

    The members of the TWG are elected by the membership of the KDE e.V. by
    online vote. The general rules for online votes on persons apply.

    Members of the TWG are elected for a term of one year.

    The board of the KDE e.V. is responsible for the execution of the election.

  4.2 Extraordinary Elections

    If at least seven members of the KDE e.V. demand an extraordinary election
    of the members of the TWG, the board of the KDE e.V. dissolves the
    membership of the TWG and holds an election of new members even if the term
    of one year has not passed yet.

5 Transparency

  The decision making process and other activities of the TWG should be
  transparent to the membership of the KDE e.V. and to the KDE community at
  large. The TWG should regularly report its activities to the KDE community
  and publically document all decisions taken.

  The TWG should involve the KDE community in the decision making process at
  all times. Discussions should preferably be held on public mailing lists like
  kde-core-devel.

  All policies on which decisions are based should be documented and publically
  available.

6 Coordination

  The TWG has to coordinate with other KDE e.V. working groups and the board of
  the KDE e.V. on all matters which do not exclusively fall under the
  responsibility of the TWG.

  The TWG should also provide the means to coordinate between groups
  working on different modules or different applications where no sufficient
  coordination mechanisms exist.
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