[Governance Review]: Pixie

[aimichelle]

Project Name

Pixie

Project Website

px.dev

Contact Details 1

aimichelle

Contact Details 2

zasgar

Links to communication channels

CNCF Slack (#pixie)

Reason for governance review request

Application for moving levels from Sandbox to Incubation

Are there any sub-projects, plugins, and related?

N/A

Governance model

Our new governance model consists of a governing board of 2 maintainers, 2 end users, and 2 community users. End users represent people who actively use Pixie. The community users are active members of the Pixie community, but do not have maintainer responsibilities.
The goal of the governing board is to make decisions of the high level vision and direction of the project. For example, many users request to run Pixie in non-K8s environments, whereas Pixie's focus has always been on K8s.

Other governance duties, such as making decisions on architecture/design or pull requests falls to the maintainers of the project.

Governance documents

Project purpose: https://github.com/pixie-io/pixie/blob/main/README.md
Maintainers: https://github.com/pixie-io/pixie/blob/main/MAINTAINERS
Decision making process/maintainer process: https://github.com/pixie-io/pixie/blob/main/GOVERNANCE.md
Code of Conduct: https://github.com/pixie-io/pixie/blob/main/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
Contributing Guide: https://github.com/pixie-io/pixie/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
Security: https://github.com/pixie-io/pixie/blob/main/SECURITY.md

Governance Execution Examples

We have just recently changed to this new governance model, so do not yet have examples.

Governance Evolution

We originally open sourced Pixie under the BDFL model: https://github.com/pixie-io/pixie/blob/490e08266649267fd8ff34e27192e0da7e6f55c6/GOVERNANCE.md

However, we would like to move away from the BDFL model now that we have matured. We would like to maintain the governance board, as we believe it is easier to make high-level decisions across a small group of people from different backgrounds.

Any specific aspects of your governance structure are you seeking feedback on?

No response

Do you have any concerns or specific areas where you feel your governance could be improved?

No response

Additional notes and resources

No response

[jberkus]

Hi! I'll be reviewing this, but I will not be able to start until early June. If this review becomes the one thing holding up Incubation, please alert the TAG.

[TheFoxAtWork]

@jberkus when this is up for review a couple of considerations:

• the governance was recently updated to move from BDFL model to a dual governance model
• the new governance outlines two leadership groups, board and maintainers but does not articulate how these two groups work together or provide representation/feedback to one another

[jberkus]

This review has been completed.

I hope that our assessment will help Pixie make continuous improvements on the project. Thanks for your patience, everyone.