Harp protocol and standards review board meeting

[glopesdev]

In recognition of the growing Harp contributor community and the expanding need for new devices and clients interoperating with the Harp binary protocol, clock synchronization and the other existing Harp standards, we are introducing a regular schedule for Harp standards review board meetings.

The goal behind the Harp standards review board is to constantly monitor and evaluate contributions and proposals to improve the Harp standard, and also to improve the clarity of existing documentation for developers of new devices and architectures. It will include members from all organizations currently maintaining published Harp devices, interface software, and documentation.

We will meet every month starting on Thursday, Dec 14th. The agenda for each meeting will be published online one week prior to the meeting, detailing the proposals, issues and/or contributions that will be under consideration for discussion. These will for now be exclusively chosen from issues and pull-requests submitted to harp-tech/protocol. The main contributors championing each proposal will be invited to attend the meeting. If in any given month there is not a minimum of at least three proposals for discussion, the standards review board may decide not to call a meeting on that month.

At the end of each review meeting we will label each agenda item [COMMENT], [REQUEST CHANGES], or [APPROVE] and respond with a review of the corresponding pull-request. If the conclusion for an agenda item is [APPROVE] the PR will be merged and a roadmap will be drawn for adoption of changes across the ecosystem. It is likely that specific agenda items might take multiple meetings to complete a review cycle. In this case that agenda item will be labeled with [COMMENT] summarizing the ongoing discussion and carried over to the next meeting.

Given the limited duration of meetings, we ask that all board members review the selected proposals ahead of time, and highlight the critical points for discussion. It is not our intention to provide extended clarifications or introduction to each proposal at the meeting itself, but rather to hear the critical arguments for/against a given proposal so we can work through all submitted proposals in a reasonable period of time. Our approach will be based on consensus of the board, and we expect everyone in attendance to provide critical and constructive feedback. All reasonable oppositions need to be addressed and clarified in full. Furthermore, consideration of each proposal should be fair and supportive. If the decision is to reject a proposal under consideration, we should aim to make clear what are the critical points preventing acceptance, and if possible provide any existing workarounds or alternative routes to achieve the same goals with the existing standards.

These meeting guidelines will likely be reviewed from time to time from experience and we may update this discussion to reflect this.