KernelCI TSC Reset

Hello everyone,

Recently, we have been discussion the current state of the Technical Steering Committee(TSC)
in KernelCI. Over time, a disconnect emerged between the members of the TSC and the current
active contributors to the KernelCI community and we didn't act in time to correct course. That's
part of the pains of a growing community.

On the flip side, it opens the door for us to rethink the TSC structure from scratch - something the
KernelCI Project Advisory Board jumped on and took a proposal for feedback to the weekly
community meeting last week. Now, we want to share it with the wide community to discuss any
feedback people may have before we take this to final stages.

Of course, just having a new structure is not the solution to all problems. It
will require engagement and commitment from TSC members to help the community grow,
keep an open collaborative space, seek alignment of technical roadmap to our main goals and
mediate key strategic decisions.


# Proposal for the new KernelCI TSC

The current proposal was build taking inspiration from how other TSC (eg ELISA, Zephyr, Yocto) 
are structured today. It has two main spaces: 
* the TSC itself
* the KernelCI Infrastructure Working Group(Infra WG)

In a nutshell, the Infra WG is responsible for the core infra of the project (Maestro, KCIDB, Storage,
Web Dashboard) and the TSC drives the engament with the Linux kernel community, bridging the
gap between the user needs and infra roadmap development.


## TSC 

*  5 members total
    -> 4 by community vote with 1 year term
    -> plus the KernelCI Infrastructure WG Lead
*  Most voted person elected TSC Chair for a 1 year term
*  Max of two employees from the same company
*  Any of the community members listed below are eligible to vote and be voted to the KernelCI TSC:
   -> Contributors to KernelCI git repositories
   -> Technical members of CI systems and labs connected to KernelCI
   -> Upstream Linux kernel maintainer who interacts with KernelCI results and/or give public feedback to the project 


## KernelCI Infrastructure WG

* Responsible for the software projects deployed as KernelCI services
   ->Maestro, KCIDB, Storage, Web Dashboard
* Manages the Sysadmin team. With the creation of the Infrastructure WG, the Sysadmin WG becomes a
  team inside the Infrastructure WG with some people getting access to the sysadmin secrets.
* Initial member selection is based on key contributions and ownership
* WG can vote new members in and out at any time
* Members who haven’t contributed to the KernelCI projects for over 6 months are automatically removed from the WG
* WG Lead shall preside for two years
* Voting members for WG Lead include the WG members and TSC members


### Additional TSC responsibilities

Beyond what is already listed in the Charter, the TSC should be responsible for:

* Seeking feedback from the Linux kernel community and company members as driving the
 creation of processes for improving the feedback process over time;
* Setting up a process (e.g. RFC, PEP, …) for decision making around important architectural
decisions in the project. Such a process should be used whenever consensus is not achieved
trivially.

###  Final thoughts

For reference, today's the current TSC structure is described in the project charter[1] and any
modification we will make to the TSC structure will require voting by the Advisory Board.

In the next steps, once we collect extra pieces of feedback here, the board will evaluate and
hold a voting for changing the charter. Once that happens an election process can start.

Let us know your thoughts,

Best,

- gus

[1] https://docs.kernelci.org/files/KernelCI_Project_Technical_Charter_20181107.pdf


--
Gustavo Padovan

Collabora Ltd.