07-31-23 SMIRNOFF Committee Meeting

MT – vdW methods and periodicity:

JW/DM – Committee tempo/ procedures

• Recap issues discussed previously in /wiki/spaces/MEET/pages/2590736396

  • Brief summary: Current process owned too much by infrastructure team, including:

    • (possibly) Define spec change

    • Review change, discuss spec change, answer questions, defend spec change, carefully consider all aspects

    • Get all stakeholders to agree/iterate to convergence

    • Implement

  • Creates perverse/adverse incentives: Requires a huge amount of work to define the work that needs to be done.

  • Possible new procedure:

    • The infrastructure team is only involved in review, final approval, and implementation; there needs to be another driver

      • Driver has the right to limit scope, e.g. “This is a good thing to consider but falls outside scope of current proposal; suggester can create new proposal and be driver on that”

    • Relevant committee commits to meet at some predictable frequency to make synchronous decisions

      • Meet monthly on recurring schedule and change voting?

      • Or meet one-off each month?

    • Batching small changes so a variety go into a spec update

      • e.g. Q4-2023 branch which will have several different EPs merged into it that will eventually go into next point release of section spec, e.g. 0.5, when quarter’s changes wrap up.

      • Proposed goal: Release once a quarter, but changes are approved and can be implemented once EPs merged.

  • Suggested monthly meeting

    • Should we change committee composition and/or requirements to make a recurring meeting? Or schedule one-off each month?