Conda Technical Review Board

Proposal

I’m proposing to form a “Technical Review Board” subteam to improve the process of authoring, reviewing and voting on Conda Enhancement Proposals.

Team Charter

Following the governance policy, this is a static charter with the additional conditions that:

any member of the Conda Steering Council may join this team at any time
the number of non-steering TRB members is at most 3
the Conda Steering Council may change the number of non-steering TRB members via a simple majority vote
the non-steering TRB members are elected, and can also be removed, by the Conda Steering Council in a secret ballot similar to sensitive voting items listed in the Conda Governance Policy
the vote threshold for addition or removal of a non-steering TRB member is a simple majority
the elections happen annually after an application period of 2 weeks before the election date
the Conda Steering Council will call for applications
applications must contain a short statement by the candidate towards confirming their credentials and their ability to work as a technical reviewer
the Conda Steering Council retains the right to call votes on CEPs without the approval of the TRB

Work areas

The Technical Review Board is charged with the following:

follow the Conda Code of Conduct
act in the best interest of the conda community
provide their technical expertise to the conda governance process
facilitate the review, handling and shepherding of Conda Enhancement Proposals that are labelled as "technical"
enable the Conda Steering Council to vote on technical CEPs

Responsibilities

co-maintenance of the conda-incubator/ceps repository, especially of CEPs labelled "technical"
guide and mentor the CEP authors in scope of this team charter
provide quarterly reports to the Conda Steering Council about the current status of the technical CEPs
submit all technical CEPs that are deemed ready for vote by the CEP author(s) and TRB for vote to the Conda Steering Council
provide a recommendation to the Conda Steering Council (e.g., “Our vote recommendation: yes”)
to reduce the effort needed by the Conda Steering Council, the technical CEPs may be submitted as an omnibus proposal set (read: one vote for many technical CEPs)
if the vote by Conda Steering Council does not match the TRB’s recommendation, the technical CEPs must be reviewed again by the TRB and may be submitted in the future, after appropriate changes are made
communicate the voting results to the CEP authors and communications team

Scope

The “Technical Review Board” is working for the Conda Steering Council and follows the Conda Code of Conduct. The team provides guidance to new and existing authors of Conda Enhancement Proposals with the objective to submit the proposals for vote to the Conda Steering Council individually or optionally as part of a regular (quarterly) omnibus set.

The team in particular exists to enable the Conda Steering Council to conduct votes on matters that require deep technical understanding and to facilitate the participatory process.

Initial applications

As part of the adoption of this proposal, I suggest to:

vote on the proposal (see below)
if passed, call for applications for the founding Technical Review Board

Vote

This proposal falls under the "Sub-team Formation" policy of the conda governance policy, please vote and/or comment on this proposal.

It needs 50% of the Steering Council to vote yes to pass.

To vote, please leave "Yes" or "No" below as comments.

If you would like to propose changes to the current proposal or have questions, please leave a comment below as well.

This vote will end on 2023-XX-XX.