I would like to nominate Tobias Macey (@blarghmatey) as a Core Contributor to OpenedX. Tobias has been a long time operator of open edX installation and MIT, and has made significant contributions to the platform and the community.
Tobias’s Contributions
Tobias has been contributing to open edX ever since 2016 when he began working at MIT Open Learning. His contributions can be seen here.
Access Sought
With an eye towards the MIT Open Learning becoming the maintainer of edx-notes-api, this nomination recommends Tobis to be named a core contributor to:
Tobias is a dedicated member of the edX, python, and open source communities. His experience with open edX as an operator is deep, with a particular interest in how it integrates with other services.
Commitment:
Tobias and his team have a commitment from MIT to contribute 20 hours/month towards core contributor work.
Comment Period:
For this nomination to pass, Tobias needs 5 positive votes and no unaddressed objections in the next 3 weeks, by April 1 – no joke!
[seeking information] what is MIT OL’s involvement with edx-notes-api? I don’t see that Tobias has any contributions to that repo. Do y’all maintain a fork with contributions over there?
I also see only 3 contributions to edx-platform, from 2020, 2018, and 2016. Being a CC on this foundational, large repository is a big responsibility not to be taken lightly. Is there a specific area of edx-platform that Tobias is intending to be focused on that his contributions highlight? I admit I do have a bit of hesitation around this aspect of the nomination.
[clarifying] I want to clarify a point in my above questions. In the Maintainers Working Group (not sure if you were there), we discussed allowing contributions made to forks as evidence for a nomination for Maintainer of a repo, especially when the repo in question has few contributions or existing CCs/maintainers.
Thus when I asked about contributions to a fork, I intended that request to be for evidence supporting the nomination. I wasn’t sure if that was super clear so I wanted to make sure it was!
@sarina@pdpinch@feanil Since currently we really need new maintainers, is there a way we could still make this work? If we don’t want to relax the criteria too much, maybe a test PR/contribution, to evaluate the skills? Personally, in the current circumstances for maintenance needs, I would take @pdpinch 's word - this is MIT after all. And having an untested maintainer is better than no maintainer?
While I agree with you Sarina that Tobias’ contributions might be a tad too light to promote him as a core committer (in particular for edx-platform), I do want to point out that Tobias has made many significant contributions to several projects and working groups. In particular, his insights in terms of data and deployment architecture have been very useful in the data working group. I have no doubt at all that he would make high-quality contributions to any repo where he would be assigned as a core committer.
Should we wait until Tobias makes further contributions to the notes/forum/edx-platform repos before nominating him again? The incoming Python 3.12 upgrade and Redwood release will be good opportunities to open pull requests in these repos.
Thanks for the context, @regis . What you’ve described certainly speaks to “commitment” to the community, “conduct” within the community, and “caliber” - quality contributions.
We do think that we want more maintainers, and that MIT ODL is in a good position to maintain edx-notes-api. On the face of it, I don’t think I am opposed to Tobias’ maintainership of that repo.
For forums and edx-platform, I would like to see more continued contribution (demonstrating “commitment” to the codebase and “caliber” of code contributions), and your suggestion of leveraging the current and upcoming deluge of package upgrades is a really great way to contribute and build the contribution portfolio.
@pdpinch - how would you feel about a new forums thread (to start a fresh discussion) nominating Tobias as CC and maintainer of edx-notes-api, and providing some more context as to why MIT ODL is in a good place to provide maintainership of this currently orphaned repo (ie, how you use it and what your experience with it is)?
And having an untested maintainer is better than no maintainer?