Last year, the Rust Project decided to put a moratorium on creating new working groups. This was put in place for the Rust project to keep some breathing room before the Rust 2018 edition release. While there is still a lot to catch up on, we feel like it’s time to enable people to create official working groups again.
Previously, domain working groups (WGs) were set up at the discretion of the Rust core team and the process was not transparent. We have been thinking about a process to propose and set up new WGs and it isn’t finished. Still, we feel comfortable that we have a good sketch of one. For that reason, we would like to experiment. This means that if you have a lingering, uncompleted formation, you can get back in touch with us now! Please be aware, though, that due to the experimentation nature, we might have requests for changes down the line. Note that this is for fresh domain working groups, not for formation of subgroups of existing teams/WGs. Also, to avoid rush situations, we’d like to create one working group at a time and will give a slight preference to people that have already been in touch with us.
An application should check off this list:
- create a charter around the following questions:
- What value do you want to bring to the project?
- Why should it be put into place?
- What is the working group about?
- What is the working group not about?
- Is your WG long-running or temporary?
- If it is temporary, when should it spin down?
- What is your long-term vision?
- How do you expect the relationship to the project be?
- How do you want to establish accountability?
- Which other WGs do you expect to have close contact with?
- What are your short-term goals?
- Who is the initial leadership?
- This is preferably multiple persons
- How do you intend to make your work accessible to outsiders?
- Everything that is already decided upon
- e.g. places to chat, write and mail
- Where do you need help?
- Preferred way of contact/discussion
While working groups may sometimes implement their own libraries and frameworks within the project, WGs formed about promoting a specific technology or a specific implementation of a subject may not be accepted on those grounds. We appreciate that this line is not clear-cut, so if you are unsure, please get in touch! It is recommendable to make a clear case why the working group must be inside the project to be effective and what its service to the wider ecosystem is.
The goal of this process is to unblock the current situation in a productive way that provides the governance team and following working groups with learning experiences. We intend to derive a standard process from those experiences.
After completing this process to become an official working group, you’ll be listed on https://www.rust-lang.org/governance so that other folks can find you. The Rust project will provide you with infrastructure, such as mailing list, chat, moderation and similar. Working group leaders will be expected to give periodic public updates on the group’s projects (we’re still working out the right format and cadence for these status updates, but it’ll be something like a 15 minute report in a recorded video meeting once every three months). You’ll also be expected to provide high-level goals for the yearly Rust roadmap. Your working group will get support from the Rust project in fulfilling your goal and will be the first group of experts to be approached when language changes need input. A working group is also a good place to collaboratively propose changes to the Rust ecosystem. You will also be able to attend the yearly all-hands.
We will then contact you and start the process of setting a WG up. Please note that this might take some time, to make sure that we have appropriate capacity for working with you! This is a process of productive discussion and exploration, so there might be changes coming out of that. If you start the process, please be in touch early so that we know about you and can help you as early as possible. This can be in private (write to core@rust-lang.org) or public (just post to https://internals.rust-lang.org), to your preference.