Support Transition of Custom Image Tooling into new Project Organization

[bsherman]

Summary

A proposal to support the transition of Custom Image Tooling (startingpoint, bling, and related docs) to their own Github organization.

Description

Recent discussions have taken place about Custom Image Tooling(toolkit). This includes the startingpoint and bling Github repositories. Questions were raised about the scope and alignment of the toolkit within the greater Universal Blue Project.

Toolkit contributors communicated their goal of creating tools minimizing the barrier to entry for making custom images. Some tool ideas shared included: BlueBuild, a new recipe compiler structure similar to vib, and a web based image generator. Interest was also expressed for supporting different upstreams beyond Universal Blue and Fedora.

In the discussion thread, past disconnects between core maintainers and toolkit contributors were highlighted. Startingpoint began with a small scope. As it grew, the goals of toolkit contributors and core maintainers diverged. This led to conflict as the two groups attempted to grow their projects in different ways.

From a core maintainer perspective, an ideal startingpoint is a guide to understanding the cloud-native processes used by Universal Blue. It is not something which primarily aims to simplify the creation of custom images. It is something that helps users understand and contribute to the project and upstream projects. It should educate users about subjects common to cloud-native developement and operations.

An idea proposed in the discussion was moving Custom Image Tooling and related docs into a new Github organization. We agree with this suggestion because it would free the toolkit contributors to build the tools which excite them, leaving Universal Blue core maintainers to pursue the direction they prefer.

Scope of Changes

1. Toolkit contributors will create a new Custom Image Tooling Github organization (CIT-Org)
2. startingpoint and bling will move to CIT-Org
3. Custom Image Tooling docs will move to a CIT-Org managed documentation site
4. Universal Blue custom image documentation will be removed until a refactor is completed

Limit of Scope

• The new CIT-Org will be independant of Universal Blue, having its own guidelines, mission, and community of contributors.
• Universal Blue team members will not be responsible to create the new Github organization

Timeline

The transition should begin immediately but as circumstances always occur, we propose a completion deadline of no later than Feb 29, 2024. Any difficulty meeting this date should be discussed sooner rather than later.

Authors

• @bsherman
• @noelmiller

[bsherman]

/vote

[git-vote]

Vote created

@bsherman has called for a vote on Support Transition of Custom Image Tooling into new Project Organization (#476).

The members of the following teams have binding votes:

Team
@ublue-os/approver
@ublue-os/member

Non-binding votes are also appreciated as a sign of support!

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The vote will be open for 3days. It will pass if at least 66% of the users with binding votes vote In favor 👍. Once it's closed, results will be published here as a new comment.

[corpsouth]

I vote in favor.

[HikariKnight]

To me startingpoint especially and its tooling is very important for bringing in new users to the OCI desktop space, be it ostree or any other system in the future, it serves as a good startingpoint for people who want to make small alterations to an existing system (like me) or at a later point make a lot of changes and feel that directly forking bluefin, bazzite, etc is a bit overboard.

It is simple enough to get started and powerful enough for people to get into the weeds of OCI images if they want to dive deeper.
Having startingpoint and bling in their own orgs seem like a good idea, and im looking forward to cooperating to make the experience better.
I see lowering the barrier of entry as a good thing always.

[git-vote]

Vote closed

The vote did not pass.

64.29% of the users with binding vote were in favor (passing threshold: 66%).

Summary

In favor	Against	Abstain	Not voted
9	0	0	5

Binding votes (9)

User	Vote	Timestamp
@HikariKnight	In favor	2024-01-17 11:24:30.0 +00:00:00
@akdev1l	In favor	2024-01-20 2:06:01.0 +00:00:00
@noelmiller	In favor	2024-01-17 3:27:00.0 +00:00:00
@bsherman	In favor	2024-01-17 3:56:15.0 +00:00:00
@EyeCantCU	In favor	2024-01-18 15:30:16.0 +00:00:00
@KyleGospo	In favor	2024-01-17 3:29:49.0 +00:00:00
@marcoceppi	In favor	2024-01-17 15:38:33.0 +00:00:00
@castrojo	In favor	2024-01-17 3:27:59.0 +00:00:00
@p5	In favor	2024-01-18 13:22:00.0 +00:00:00

Non-binding votes (4)

User	Vote	Timestamp
@fiftydinar	In favor	2024-01-17 3:42:12.0 +00:00:00
@corpsouth	In favor	2024-01-17 4:23:46.0 +00:00:00
@m2Giles	In favor	2024-01-17 14:31:43.0 +00:00:00
@gmpinder	In favor	2024-01-18 0:43:22.0 +00:00:00

[castrojo]

Ok so we should fix gitvote to account for lazy concensus which is the actual governance model. 😄

[noelmiller]

So if we take lazy consensus into account, the vote passed correct? Or do we need to call for another vote?

[xynydev]

Thanks for participating yall! I understand that due to lazy concencus the vote passed (no-one against), and we'll be going through the changes, then.

BlueBuild is a kind of a "product" name I came up for this a while back, so I'm using that to refer to the project. I have created an empty GitHub org with the name: https://github.com/blue-build (wasn't available without dashes). I'm not sure how moving repos works, but I'm certain that just coldly moving bling&startingpoint would cause issues. images-website can be moved right away, though.

I created a Discord just now (https://discord.gg/srHrqa5TPk), as I assume Ublue wouldn't like it's server spammed with somewhat unrelated stuff. Discord servers are useful for gauging community activity and synchronous support, but as the project is heavily developer-aligned, I'd like to use GitHub for as much stuff as possible.
Join if interested, we'll go further from there.

To move bling&startingpoint we'd have to craft an announcement, a simple migration path, and of course update the repos to not depend on each other existing in the ublue org.

[bsherman]

I have created an empty GitHub org with the name: https://github.com/blue-build (wasn't available without dashes). I'm not sure how moving repos works, but I'm certain that just coldly moving bling&startingpoint would cause issues. images-website can be moved right away, though.

Regarding the moving the moving of repos, I believe there will need to be some coordination.

So perhaps it is good to get a few other things setup as desired before transferring those two core repos. Once, I think the old org/repo URL will redirect to the new org/repo.

[bsherman]

Ok so we should fix gitvote to account for lazy consensus which is the actual governance model. 😄

Agreed, we should figure that out.

I also want to point out that both our 66% threshold and 3 day deadline were somewhat arbitrary ... and the final vote which would have made git-vote call this a pass was from @xynydev only a bit after the (arbitrary) deadline.

So I think we can call this officially passed, and not just by lazy consensus.

[xynydev]

Regarding the moving the moving of repos, I believe there will need to be some coordination.

@bsherman I'll dm you when I wish for that to happen, then, if that's alright. You don't need to answer right away of course, I'm online a lot.

[bsherman]

Regarding the moving the moving of repos, I believe there will need to be some coordination.

@bsherman I'll dm you when I wish for that to happen, then, if that's alright. You don't need to answer right away of course, I'm online a lot.

Sure... I actually am not sure if I've got the access to implement a transfer, but I'll help if possible.

[noelmiller]

Hi @xynydev,

I wanted to check in to see how things are going with the migration. Do you feel that you are on track to meet the February 29th deadline?

Thanks,

Noel

[xynydev]

There was a deadline? Oh, I'll try to make sure we got the docs wrapped up in a month. We can certainly make that @noelmiller. Just gotta write an announcement post with migration guides and it can be done almost anytime. Having sufficient docs on the new org's side is something I would like to do first, though.

I'll ping yall when we're ready.

[noelmiller]

Hi @xynydev,

I didn't expect the deadline to be a surprise as this was in the original proposal above:

Timeline

The transition should begin immediately but as circumstances always occur, we propose a completion deadline of no later than Feb 29, 2024. Any difficulty meeting this date should be discussed sooner rather than later.

I understand the desire to have docs for the project available before moving the repositories. Is there anything we can do to assist with the transition?

Thanks,

Noel

[xynydev]

I didn't expect the deadline to be a surprise as this was in the original proposal above.

My fault, sorry.

Is there anything we can do to assist with the transition?

Just moving the documentation from Ublue's site should take 1-2 days spent on it max, and I have help with writing new docs. I'm not so certain on what to do on Ublue's site regarding the docs then. I mean, they should be removed because they're unrelated. Would y'all be fine with a redirect or a simple page pointing to the announcement of the split and BuildBlue, though? It'd be nice to have continuity.

[noelmiller]

@xynydev I wanted to check in with you to see how things are going with BlueBuild. I was out all last week, so I apologize if I may not be caught up to speed if you have had conversations with others.

[xynydev]

@noelmiller It's going great! Docs is great, just need to write the introductory blog post / migration guide. We're also working on some non-crucial features that would be nice to finish before next month.

[xynydev]

As you can see above, I've created a bunch of PRs in preparation for the nearing migration. Our blog and migration guide is basically ready too, so we're basically ready enough for the transition.

I'd rather not do the transition in the middle of a week, and Saturday is a no for me. Would it be possible to coordinate to do the transition on Sunday the 25th of February? I think an org owner is needed for this (@castrojo ?). We can talk timing as soon if this is alright with you.

[xynydev]

It's done!

https://blue-build.org/blog/introducing-bluebuild/