Working Group minutes from 4 Dec 2020

Haskell Foundation
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Hello everyone,

Below are the minutes from the Haskell Foundation Working Group meeting of 4 December 2020.

If you are interested in the protocol by which these minutes are produced and ratified, do note that the transparency task force will have a meeting next Monday (10:00 EST). Please do come!

Cheers

  • Ben

Haskell Foundation Working Group minutes (4 Dec 2020)

Present: Ben Gamari, Emily Pillmore, Richard Eisenberg, Davean
Scies, Dan Burton, Simon Peyton Jones, Alexander Bernauer, Tim Sears,
Wendy Devolder, Ian Connolly, Alex Grcol, Dmitrii Kovanikov, Gabriele
Keller, Jasper Van der Jeugt, Moritz Angermann, Rebecca Skinner, Ryan
Trinkle, Stephanie Weirich, Veronika Romashkina, Mathieu Boespflug
(later)

Introductions:

  • Alexander Bernauer
  • Wendy Devolder: Founder of Skills Matter
  • Veronika Romashkina

Veronika will coordinate to remind the community of the on-going board
call for applications

Agenda

Executive director (Simon PJ)

  • Executive director job description agreed: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CGFLdyuxeldEetp2RB\_qi1VXWPVgxi12Hgubb5lZMAU/edit?usp=sharing
  • Next step: advertise for opening
  • Rebecca: To add JD to website and add URL here when available.
  • Volunteers:
    • The Haskell Foundation is seeking an Executive Director. Please find the job description here: https://haskell.foundation/ed-job-description/
    • The Haskell Foundation (HF) is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to driving Haskell adoption and open-source development.
    • HF seeks a full-time Executive Director (ED) to lead and develop the organization going forward. The ED is responsible for furthering the HF’s mission and vision, ensuring that resources are in place to accomplish its goals. The HF is supported by an active group of volunteers, and the ED will be a key focal point for that community, in addition to hiring support staff.
    • This is a salaried position. Salary will be commensurate with the experience, qualities, and location of the individual, and will also reflect the Foundation’s status as a non-profit organisation funded by donations.
  • Still needed: Draft text for advertisement (Tim and Emily will handle) — Subject (header) and body. Most social medias have a header (short one-line) and description (ideally no longer than 260 characters + link to fit in Twitter)
  • Job description will go on the website (Rebecca will handle by close of play today, and add the URL to these minutes)

Communications (Simon)

Working group (Simon)

  • Remit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10e_UnTzr3xrwJyoET2RKZHcfLLQiaYkgNvVoi6kMX-A
  • Many people have already added their names to the working group participant list
  • Track members should add their names and describe the goals of their track
  • Wendy: Proposes “Community track”:
    • Focus on fostering social infrastructure and community
      engagement
    • Diverse membership: Beginners, seasoned users alike
    • Richard: Perhaps a paid community manager would be
      worthwhile?
    • Generally positive response
    • Move forward
  • Transparency track
    • Emily and Michael Snoyman will work on this, perhaps with
      others
  • Working group needs a chair:
    • At the invitation of the Interim Board Emily will fill this
      role (thank you Emily)

Funding (Emily):

  • IOHK is closed
  • Well-Typed, Tweag, Obsidian pending
  • Follow-up needed from Flipstone, ?
  • GitHub moving ahead
  • *Juspay * offered to contribute 100kUSD (hooray!)
  • Things looking good! Just need to close more.

Incorporation (Ryan Trinkle)

  • Still waiting on the gears of bureaucracy for 501c.3

Website:

  • On hiatus
  • https://github.com/haskellfoundation/haskell.foundation
  • Existing site was meant to be temporary
  • Obsidian working on a hakyll rewrite
  • Nearing completion early next week
  • To dos for existing site:
    • Vision statement (under “who we are”)
    • ED job statement
    • Public Calendar (probably not on this site, perhaps this should just be a Google Calendar)
  • Requirement? Blog
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As I mentioned in the other thread, I think this is a major mistake and should be remedied. I believe immediate minutes postings should be the norm, with clearly defined topics for a meeting beforehand. Otherwise any topic discussed outside of these WG meetings is essentially non-binding.

I’d also like to point out that instead of one week, these notes were posted 15 days after the meeting took place, meaning that the following meeting occurred before these meeting minutes were posted publicly. At this point, those outside of these biweekly meetings have effectively been shut out.

All of this is news to me, and directly affects the activities I’ve been asked to be involved in. In my original thread, we were already asking people interested in getting involved to provide feedback on the existing site. From the minutes here, it’s unclear whether those contributions would be welcome or not.

Again, this has the effect of icing out collaborations and creating an in-group with real control. I don’t think this is the stated intent of the Haskell Foundation, and I don’t ascribe any motivations to those involved in these decisions. I’m merely observing what seems to be the direct outcome.

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I don’t think this is the stated intent of the Haskell Foundation, and I don’t ascribe any motivations to those involved in these decisions.

Thanks. Indeed it’s not the intent! Nor are they decisions – they are just the absence of actions! We’ve been debating (on Discourse) what our mechanisms should be and, until we have an agreed mechanism, everything is just limping along.

I don’t everyone agrees the principles, esp doing work in public, providing opportunities for everyone’s voice to be heard, etc. We may have differences of judgement (e.g. I think that a group should have a chance to check the minutes before making them public, whereas you’d like to make them public right away), but I’m sure they are resolvable (e.g. by agreeing a relatively short window for such checking).

It’s hard to agree specifics in a big group. So the IB and WG have invited the transparency task force to propose specific mechanisms, and perhaps yesterday’s meeting did just that. I’m looking forward to getting onto a more systematic basis in the new year.

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