[Numpy-discussion] Governance model request

Wed Sep 23 06:39:59 EDT 2015

Hi Fernando,

I am happy that you decided to chime in here.  This thread derailed in a
bad way and I hope that your wise words will help to redress the situation.

In fact, I would like to propose you having part of a future steering
committee of NumPy.  I know that you may never have been implied in the
hard core development of NumPy, but my perception is that your opinions are
highly respected by almost everybody in the NumPy ecosystem.  More than
that, you have this rare ability of being able to get both a donation from
Microsoft and at the same time (same year?) being awarded by the FSF, which
frankly, is not an easy thing to do ;)

Just to clear, I am not saying that you should act as the person for
deciding the roadmap for NumPy at all, but a person that should be in
charge of acting as an independent referee in the foreseeable Conflicts of
Interest in the NumPy roadmap.

Sorry if that means more work for you Fernando, because I know that you
have become a very busy person, but I also know how much do you care about
the NumPy ecosystem, and IMHO the NumPy community needs a person like you
*now*.

Francesc

2015-09-23 10:02 GMT+02:00 Fernando Perez <fperez.net at gmail.com>:

> Hi all,
>
> I would like to pitch in here, I am sorry that I didn't have the time
> before...
>
> First, I want to disclose that recently Continuum made a research gift to
> the Jupyter project; we were just now writing up a blog post to acknowledge
> this, but in light of this discussion, I feel that I should say this up
> front so folks can gauge any potential bias accordingly.
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 3:44 AM, Travis Oliphant <travis at continuum.io>
> wrote:
>
>> I'm actually offended that so many at BIDS seem eager to crucify my
>> intentions when I've done nothing but give away my time, my energy, my
>> resources, and my sleep to NumPy for many, many years.    I guess if your
>> intent is to drive me away, then you are succeeding.
>
>
> Travis, first, I'd like to kindly ask you not to conflate BIDS, an
> institution where a large number of people work, with the personal opinions
> of some, who happen to work there but in this case are speaking only for
> themselves.  You say "so many at BIDS", but as far as I know, your
> disagreements are with Stefan and Nathaniel (Matthew doesn't work at
> BIDS).  You are painting with a very wide brush the work of many people,
> and in the process, unfairly impacting others who have nothing to do with
> this.
>
> If anything, the only things I'm aware BIDS has done in an official
> capacity regarding you or Continuum is to offer hosting for Continuum
> developers at the DS4DS workshop and beyond (after an explicit request by
> Matt Rocklin, and one we were delighted to honor), and our hosting of your
> lecture in our Friday Data Science Lecture Series last week.
>
> With that out of the way...
>
>
> 1. I hope the discussion can move past the suspicion and innuendo about
> Continuum and Travis.  I haven't always agreed with how Travis communicates
> some of his ideas, and I've said it to him in such instances (e.g. this
> weekend, as I myself was surprised at how his last round of comments had
> landed on the list a few days back).  But I also have worked closely with
> him for years because I know that he has proven, not in words, but in
> actions, that he has the best interests of our community at heart, and that
> he is willing to try and do everything in his power to help whenever he
> can.
>
> When we founded Numfocus back in 2012, it would have been impossible for
> it to really bootstrap without Travis' generosity, since he effectively
> footed the bill for resources that were critically needed at the start. And
> yet, he was always willing to take every step necessary to help Numfocus
> grow independent of Continuum, so that it could be a real community asset:
> today, there's not a single Continuum employee on the NF board (Travis and
> I both resigned from the board a while back to allow for some fresh blood).
>
> The creation and open-sourcing of conda has also been a critical
> contribution, that I know many of us have benefited from: we all carry the
> scars from the python packaging horror shows, and conda/anaconda has been a
> life-changer. The fact that conda itself is open, means we have a core tool
> that we can build upon.
>
> To put it bluntly, few people in the whole world have given more of their
> life, energy and resources to our community than Travis, and have done so
> as generously as he has.  He may have made mistakes, and again, I often
> disagree with how he communicates.  But accusations and innuendo like the
> ones in this thread are damaging, hurtful and useless.  And one thing that
> I hope people will remember is that, famous and powerful as Travis may be,
> he's still our colleague, a member of our community, and *a human being*,
> so let's remember that as well...
>
>
> 2. Conflicts of interest are a fact of life, in fact, I would argue that
> every healthy and sufficiently interconnected community eventually *should*
> have conflicts of interest. They are a sign that there is activity across
> multiple centers of interest, and individuals with connections in multiple
> areas of the community.  And we *want* folks who are engaged enough
> precisely to have such interests!
>
> For conflict of interest management, we don't need to reinvent the wheel,
> this is actually something where our beloved institutions, blessed be their
> bureaucratic souls, have tons of training materials that happen to be not
> completely useless.  Most universities and the national labs have
> information on COIs that provides guidelines, and Numpy could include in
> its governance model more explicit language about COIs if desired.
>
> So, the issue is not to view COIs as something evil or undesirable, but
> rather as the very real consequence of operating in an interconnected set
> of institutions.  And once you take that stance, you deal with that
> rationally and realistically.
>
> For example, you accept that companies aren't the only ones with potential
> COIs: *all* entities have them. As Ryan May aptly pointed out, the notion
> that academic institutions are somehow immune to hidden agendas or other
> interests is naive at best... And I say that as someone who has happily
> stayed in academia, resisting multiple overtures from industry over the
> years, but not out of some quaint notion that academia is a pristine haven
> of principled purity. Quite the opposite: in building large and complex
> projects, I've seen painfully close how the university/government research
> world has its own flavor of the same power, financial and political
> ugliness that we attribute to the commercial side.
>
>
> 3. Commercial actors.  Following up on the last paragraph, we should
> accept that *all* institutions have agendas, not just companies.  We live
> in a world with companies, and I think it's naive to take a knee-jerk
> anti-commercial stance: our community has had a productive and successful
> history of interaction with industry in the past, and hopefully that will
> continue in the future.
>
> What is true, however, is that community projects should maintain the
> "seat of power" in the community, and *not* in any single company.  In
> fact, this is important even to ensure that many companies feel comfortable
> engaging the projects, precisely so they know that the technology is driven
> in an open and neutral way even if some of their competitors participate.
>
> That's why a governance model that is anchored in neutral ground is so
> important.  We've worked hard to make Numfocus the legal entity that can
> play that role (that's why it's a 501(c)3), and that's why we've framed our
> governance model for Jupyter in a way that makes all the institutions
> (including Berkeley and Cal Poly) simply 'partners' that contribute by
> virtue of supporting employees.  But the owners of the decisions are the
> *individuals* who do the work and form the community, not the
> companies/institutions.
>
>
> If we accept these premises, then hopefully we can have a rational
> conversation about how to build a community, where at any point in time,
> any of us should be judged on the merit of our actions, not the
> hypotheticals of our intentions or our affiliations (commercial,
> government, academic, etc).
>
>
> Sorry for the long wall of text, I rarely post on this list anymore.  But
> I was saddened to see the turn of this thread, and I hope I can contribute
> some perspective (and not make things worse :)
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Fernando Perez (@fperez_org; http://fperez.org)
> fperez.net-at-gmail: mailing lists only (I ignore this when swamped!)
> fernando.perez-at-berkeley: contact me here for any direct mail
>
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>
>

-- 
Francesc Alted
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