Leave questions, observations, discussion topics below.


background: team discussions

tmandry: I've heard this topic come up a few times.

  • Should we follow more of the types team model?
  • Can we engage ecosystem members more?

launching pad

JP: We're part of the launching pad. The goal of the launching pad is to no longer exist, to find a home for each part of the launching pad. How do we do that?

JP: I've been asking various working groups, e.g. Rust Embedded what they want from the Rust Project. For them it's to know what's going on.


where things stand now

tmandry: I think "WG" is a weird label to put on both us and the other groups when we are deeply embedded in the project. I also don't feel like we have that much of a sense of ownership right now.

yoshua: There is a difference between the informal and formal understanding. Yosh feels strong ownership over async Rust, even if we don't have formal ownership yet. We should formalize that ownership.

eholk: Delegating work without delegating authority. Working groups are sort of "light teams" - we want the status of "full membership" - with checkbox authority.

That said, scoping the authority is going to be hard. Async features impact the language as a whole.

JP: Tyler, do you wish it was different?

tmandry: Yes. Also history of people leaving. And async is very horizontal; we touch lang, libs, dev tools, etc.


team structure

eholk: I think a good model is the types team. Types is a subteam of both lang and libs. We touch compiler, libs, lang.

eholk: It might make sense to split teams into "vertical" and "horizontal".

yoshua: Another example is the const generics initiative/working group. They clearly have a compiler, language, and library aspect.

yoshua: One point of friction that may arise is our relationship to std. I have some ambitions here, but the full libs team might not be on board. We should have a clear set of authority that we're delegated and make sure we each understand what needs broader buy-in.

tmandry: Another challenge I see is that it's going to be hard to have a horizontal team that focuses on all these different areas. That's a lot of competencies.

JP: "Horizontal team" might be confusing. Some might argue the right term is WG. And should those teams have representation on the council?

yoshua: I think we should. Not liking the "prestigiousness" split of the different teams.

eholk: I'm okay with subteam structure. This connects to the question of how big the council should be. I was skeptical that nine people would work, though it's been okay so far. That said, probably shouldn't grow too much.

JP: Adding seats in the council is kind of like carving out a new state

tmandry: I think I'm okay with subteam structure. Maybe we need to have a mega horizontal team that represents some product goals or something.

yoshua: I would be okay with that. We don't need one team equals one rep on the council. The failure I want to avoid is being represented by the vertical teams. We will always exist in tension with those teams, and therefore can't expect them to represent us.

tmandry: Elaborate?

yoshua: Libs and async each have our own priorities. These don't have to overlap fully. At that point we need to decide the tradeoffs. We need a path to resolution, it shouldn't be the same group that represents us that we have tension with.

eholk: If we're a subteam of three teams that seems a little weird, we have eligibility to be the rep for three different teams. Maybe it could work.

yoshua: As example of tension, you can have tension within a team: You have competing priorities within lang that you're trying to satisfy (tmandry: expressiveness vs ease of use). You can also have tension between teams. This is healthy, and you also need a clear path to resolution for resolving those tensions.

eholk: I think of libs and lang as being complementary, working toward shared goal

JP: Seems like one of the problems is the term "working group"

tmandry: Yes; I think it's confusing to share it with other groups that are very different. I also agree with what Yoshua said; we need a way to resolve tensions. I've been musing about a "product team" that would own a shared product vision, but I think it would only work if they had shared membership with all the vertical teams.


Topic

name: prompt


Select a repo