This week, we launched the Haskell Foundation Technical Working Group (TWG), a successor to the Haskell Foundation Technical Track. The purpose of this group is to serve as an advisory organization for both the HF management and the Haskell community as a whole, by evaluating specific proposals for projects that can have broad, ecosystem-wide effects. These proposals can be:
- Community RFCs that seek the community’s input on a project
- Community projects that will be executed primarily by the proposer, but seek administrative or financial support from the HF
- HF projects that a community member would like us to execute
- Other topics of relevance to the community
Volunteers wanted!
We presently have three openings on the working group, and we’re seeking volunteers. Members are expected to attend a monthly meeting, to participate in and moderate discussion threads regarding specific proposals, and to evaluate proposals for their technical merits. From time to time, committee members may also be asked to help a community member revise their proposal. We’re especially interested in members with a good working knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes, data science, and machine learning. Communication skills are also very important.
This is your chance to guide the future of the whole Haskell ecosystem.
If you are interested, or if you know someone who might be, please get in touch with me at david@haskell.foundation! You don’t have to be a long-term Haskeller, or someone who is deeply embedded in Haskell development - we have members with this background already. If you are unsure as to whether you would fit in, please get in touch, and we can have a chat about it. We would like to have members with diverse backgrounds, professional experiences, and knowledge.
What’s New?
The Technical Working Group is broadly similar to Tech Track, and performs most of the same functions. If you’re familiar with the workings of Tech Track and would like to see the diff, please check the pull request that documented the changes. Broadly speaking, we’ve learned from our experiences and updated the group in the following major ways:
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The name “Technical Working Group” is meant to make it clear that TWG is the same kind of organization as the Stability Working Group.
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There is now an explicit mandate for the committee to evaluate Community RFCs, which are proposals that do not ask for HF funding or other resources. The TWG forum will be used as a way to connect the community with those who are planning projects. While this already happened in Tech Track (e.g. the GHC.X.Hackage proposal), there is now a separate template and explicitly documented expectations around these RFCs.
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The process description now matches the actual evolved practices of the working group.
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There is now an explicit mandate for committee members to help keep discussions on track.
Additionally, the process now has fewer hard-and-fast rules, and instead describes a set of concerns to be addressed by proposals combined with suggested ways to address them.