[jakehow]

The stewardship of community contributions seems particularly poor in Docker. One of the more frustrating projects I have tried to help, and is really the only red flag. The promise of docker is awesome.

See this thread (and previous discussions around the issue) begging for docker core to participate and getting nowhere for ~1 year: https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/7284

Is there an outline somewhere on your plan for governance and stewardship for community contributions, how proposals move through the pipeline, and whether anyone outside of Docker, Inc has the commit bit?

[nickstinemates]

I'm sorry to hear you've had a frustrating experience. The governance model should be outlined in the CONTRIBUTING.md file located in the repository which should address the concerns.

There are project maintainers that are not on the Docker, Inc. payroll, and getting anything committed requires the approval of at least 2. We actually consider this a litmus test for our involvement with the ecosystem, and it's fundamentally a great thing.

As for the issue at hand, I personally understand desire on both sides. I have been frustrated multiple times by the lack of being able to have multiple Dockerfiles per repo as a simple example. On the other, providing strict guarantees about context ensures true portability of Dockerfiles.

What I will say, is that this is a topic we talk about a lot, whether it be on the issues themselves or in IRC. It's tough to get the right balance.

[jakehow]

Docker, Inc employees have popped in to make an offhand comment at various points, similar to the one you made "On the other, providing strict guarantees about context ensures true portability of Dockerfiles." but actual participation is nonexistent.

This has been the case on other issues I have seen as well, either things languish, or they get magically swept into the project, with the decision happening elsewhere.

Stewardship would mean actually explaining the position above, and discussing with the community how the issue affects them in order to gain an understanding of what we are talking about.

Yelling "repeatability" with no context and then disappearing is pretty frustrating.

[shykes]

Jake, you're being disingenuous. Back in April I gave a detailed explanation [1] as to why I hesitated to make the proposed change. When comments kept rolling in I followed up in June with a possible solution and a conclusion that "if somebody contributed this, we would love to merge it" [2] To my knowledge nobody has.

I know for a fact that you are aware of this since my comment was in direct response to you.

And since comments are still rolling in (even though there is already an open call for contribution, with a pre-approved design), I am focusing on it again this week [3].

There are definitely lots of growing pains in how we run the project, and having any participation at all from you is super appreciated. But the picture you pain here is unfair and inaccurate.

[1] https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/2112#issuecomment-39...

[2] https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/2112#issuecomment-47...

[3] https://github.com/docker/docker/issues/7284#issuecomment-55...