RFC @cncf/toc

I believe this should be presented to SIG App Delivery first before it goes to the TOC.

@caniszczyk Thank you, will schedule a presentation.

Presentation: Argo Proposal for CNCF Incubation on October 9th.
CNCF Argo Proposal.pdf

cncf/tag-app-delivery#18 is the SIG App-Delivery review, waiting on review from @AloisReitbauer + App-Delivery group

This was reviewed by the CNCF SIG App Delivery: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rhL9CIInKAArIVpLiabiSuNCi14sSUD_0sDUbjEWPw0/edit#

It's now up for the @cncf/toc to decide if you want to move it to a vote, here are the comments from CNCF SIG App Delivery:

The chairs of SIG app delivery unanimously agree to accept the Argo project into the CNCF:

Argo fulfills all the formal criteria and has the required maturity.
Argo represents a good extension to the current landscape for continuous delivery.
The project is mature enough to be accepted into incubation.

The SIG chairs also recommend a couple of action items to advance the project further:

Argo is not a single project but rather a suite of projects. There is some potential that new projects get added and extend the scope. We recommend a clear governing and specification model to avoid scope creep of the project.
The project still seems to be very driven by Intuit. The team should work on getting an equally strong contributor from a second organisation (which will be a graduation criteria anyways)
The merge with the Flux project is still ongoing. The team explained how they want to move towards a unified GitOps engine. Progress on this topic should be provided to the SIG as part of the next project review.
Many customers seem to be using Argo as a workflow engine and not for continuous delivery purposes. As the project wants to primarily be a continuous delivery solution, increased adoption of Argo CD would be good.

I'm picking this up to evaluate from a TOC perspective.

Argo checks out from both a technical and open source perspective. I'm happy to sponsor. I think it'd be a great project to have in the CNCF and the community would benefit. It's already a well adopted project. I only have one question. Argo is a suite of 4 projects that can be used independently with Argo Workflows being the most popular. We generally have one project that gets accepted into the CNCF (housed in single repo) with perhaps several subprojects. In this case, are we looking to accept Argo Workflows as the main project and Events, CD, Rollouts as subprojects or is the whole suite the project we accept? If we accept the suite then what happens if other projects come under the Argo umbrella? Are they considered sub projects?

@cncf/toc - do you have thoughts around this? @xiang90 - would love to hear your thoughts since I think you've also looked into Argo.

@michelleN thank you for sponsoring the project!

Argo is an application delivery platform for Kubernetes. While components can be used individually, the trend is to use a combination of components to manage jobs and applications on Kubernetes.

We've discussed the governance model for the project with SIG App Delivery. In particular, conducting a joint review of any new projects for inclusion under the Argo umbrella to ensure consistency of purpose and avoid project creep.

@edlee2121 I think that is a good path forward. Is that documented somewhere?

@michelleN We will update the governance doc if/when Argo is accepted.
Please let us know if you prefer that we update it now.
https://github.com/argoproj/argo/tree/master/community

Hey @edlee2121 - I'd really love to see what the governance would look like. Who would do the joint review? Would future projects under the Argo umbrella be considered subprojects or will there be an incubator type process? I just want to get a clear understanding of this before we vote.

@edlee2121 if you're looking for an example of a governance policy that you can add projects, see envoy which has done subprojects https://github.com/envoyproxy/envoy/blob/master/GOVERNANCE.md#adding-new-projects-to-the-envoyproxy-github-organization -

@caniszczyk Thank you. This looks like a good mechanism that we can adopt as well. We would also submit a proposal to SIG App Delivery, similar to what we just did for the initial Argo proposal. So the joint review would be done by the Argo Project and SIG App Delivery. New projects would have to fit within the scope of the Argo Project. Anything too big or too different would be an entirely new submission to CNCF and would go through the standard sandbox/incubation process.

@michelleN Does this answer your questions? Please let me know if you would like to have a quick chat by phone/zoom. Thank you!

Currently, the SIG serves as a set of domain experts that help review projects. They are not a decision making body so the joint review proposal is a completely new process and not in the scope of the SIG. Also, projects should be able to govern themselves.

If we can clearly articulate the scope, then I don't think a decision from the SIG or a SIG review of an additional tool in Argo would be necessary as long as the new project is considered a sub project until it gains a level of maturity matching incubation requirements. At which point, I'd be comfortable with the Argo project calling it a top level project. I want make sure Argo can act independently and govern the project independently but I also want to make sure we're giving the community all the right signals.

This is the scope I'm drawing from the project:
The Argo Project is a set of Kubernetes-native tools for running and managing jobs and applications on Kubernetes. All the Argo tools are implemented as controllers and custom resources. These tools can be used independently but are even more powerful when used together.

Happy to get on a call. Feel free to ping me on the cncf slack.

Yes, agreed that top level Argo projects should meet CNCF incubation requirements.
Yes, the scope statement you reference looks good.

@michelleN Updated the PR/proposal as discussed.

Thanks @edlee2121

Just to update everyone on what we discussed:

The Argo project will be the set of tools described in the proposal. If additional projects are added to the project, they will be sub-projects and labeled appropriately. The sub-projects may become top level projects when it meetings CNCF incubation criteria and the project maintainers will add it to the top level at their discretion.

To ensure there isn't scope creep, @edlee2121 updated the description of the project. Although I think we should consider replacing jobs and applications on Kubernetes to workflows on kubernetes for even further clarity.

As the SIG App Delivery chairs mentioned, the project is heavily driven by Intuit. They have a healthy number of maintainers and contributors from outside the company though so this really should not be a blocker for getting into incubation. Part of a project graduating in the CNCF means that it will be around for a while, that end users can trust the project and that if a set of maintainers from one company walks away then the project won't fall apart. I'd ask the Argo maintainers just think about that during the incubation period and ensure the governance allows for longevity of the project.

The Argo projects wants to take in and merge the Flux project in the future. I think this is a great step forward and they should follow the process outlined above to do that.

@resouer @AloisReitbauer @bryanl -- please feel free to provide any feedback here and thank you for your work.

@amye - Unless there are any objections from the TOC or SIG chairs to the agreements above, please help us kick off a vote for this project EOD.

Thank you so much for you patience @edlee2121 and all the Argo folks.

Thank you everyone for your time and consideration!

@michelleN @resouer @AloisReitbauer @bryanl @caniszczyk

Welcome Argo!

Binding: 8/10
Michelle Noorali: https://lists.cncf.io/g/cncf-toc/message/4401
Justin Cormack: https://lists.cncf.io/g/cncf-toc/message/4417
Xiang Li: https://lists.cncf.io/g/cncf-toc/message/4425
Matt Klein: https://lists.cncf.io/g/cncf-toc/message/4439
Sheng Liang: https://lists.cncf.io/g/cncf-toc/message/4441
Alena Prokharchyk: https://lists.cncf.io/g/cncf-toc/message/4446
Liz Rice: https://lists.cncf.io/g/cncf-toc/message/4448
Katie Gamanji: https://lists.cncf.io/g/cncf-toc/message/4451
Brendan Burns: https://lists.cncf.io/g/cncf-toc/message/4411

That was my error, Brendan Burns was a late add from an out-of-thread reply.