functor.systems RFCs (Request For Comments)

Many changes, including bug fixes and documentation improvements can be implemented and reviewed via the normal pull request workflow.

Some changes though are "substantial", and we ask that these be put through a bit of a design process and produce a consensus among the functor.systems community.

When this process is followed

This process is followed when one intends to make "substantial" changes to the functor.systems ecosystem. What constitutes a "substantial" change is evolving based on community norms, but may include the following.

• Big restructuring of functorOS
• Expansions to the scope of functorOS (new arch, major subprojects, substantial changes to default behavior or software, ...)
• Substantial organizational restructuring of functor.systems

Certain changes do not require an RFC:

• Adding, updating and removing packages in functorOS
• Fixing security updates and bugs that don't break interfaces

Pull requests that contain any of the aforementioned 'substantial' changes may be closed if there is no RFC connected to the proposed changes.

Terminology

RFC Steering Committee

The inaugural RFC Steering Committee consists of @youwen and @q9i. We explicitly do not yet propose a system for modification of this committee. When such a process is required, it should be submitted as an RFC by any community member.

Process from Creation to Merge

In short, to get a major change included in the relevant area, one must first get the RFC merged into the RFC repository as a markdown file under the rfcs directory. At that point the RFC is accepted and may be implemented with the goal of eventual inclusion.

graph TD
    Start((Start)) --> Draft
    Draft -->|Ready for Review| Discuss
    style Draft fill:#008,color:#FFF

    Discuss[Discuss and Refine]
    Discuss ---> |On Hold| Draft
    Discuss --> |Can't Find Shepherds| NoShepherds
    Discuss --> |Motion for FCP| FCP

    FCP[Final Coment Phase]
    FCP --> |FCP Canceled| Discuss
    FCP --> |Accept| Merged
    FCP --> |Reject| Rejected

    Merged
    style Merged fill:#080,color:#FFF

    Rejected[Closed - Rejected]:::closed

    Withdrawn[Closed - Withdrawn]:::closed
    Discuss & Draft --->|Author Withdraws| Withdrawn

    classDef closed fill:#800,color:#FFF

0. Have a cool idea!
1. Fill in the RFC. Put care into the details: RFCs that do not present convincing motivation, demonstrate understanding of the impact of the design, or are disingenuous about the drawbacks or alternatives tend to be poorly-received. Consider using Semantic Line Breaks in order to get better diffs on later amendments. to gather initial feedback and iron out the remaining typos.
2. In case your RFC is a technical proposal, you might want to prepare a prototype of your idea to firstly make yourself aware of potential pitfalls and also help reviewers understand the RFC. Code may be able to explain some issues in short.
3. Submit a pull request. As a pull request the RFC will receive design feedback from the larger community, and the author should be prepared to revise it in response. that is specific to each RFC, anyone interested can either nominate another person or themselves to be a potential member of the RFC Shepherd Team. This can already be done when submitting the PR. Shepherd Team and designates a leader for it. This has to be done unanimously.
4. Build consensus and integrate feedback. RFCs that have broad support are much more likely to make progress than those that don't receive any comments. Feel free to reach out to the RFC Shepherd Team leader in particular to get help identifying stakeholders and obstacles. in the comment thread of the pull request itself. Discussion outside of the pull request, either offline or in a video conference, that might be preferable to get to a solution for complex issues, will be summarized on the pull request comment thread.
5. RFCs rarely go through this process unchanged, especially as alternatives and drawbacks are shown. You can make edits, big and small, to the RFC to clarify or change the design, but make changes as new commits to the pull request, and leave a comment on the pull request explaining your changes. Specifically, do not squash or rebase commits after they are visible on the pull request.
6. The FCP is advertised widely, so that it is open for at least 5 business days. This way all stakeholders have a chance to lodge any final objections before a decision is reached.
7. In most cases, the FCP is quiet, and the RFC is either merged or closed. However, sometimes substantial new arguments or ideas are raised, the FCP is canceled, and the RFC goes back into development mode. The feedback during FCP may result in minor adjustments to the RFC, this is not necessarily a reason to cancel FCP.
8. In case of acceptance, the RFC Steering Committee merges the PR. Otherwise the RFC's pull request is closed. If no consensus can be reached on the RFC but the idea in general is accepted, it gets closed, too. A note is added that is should be proposed again, when the circumstances, that are stopping the discussion to come to another decision, change.

Unhappy Cases

Ideally every RFC will complete review and be accepted or rejected. Unfortunately this can not always be the case. Much like in distributed systems, timeouts are needed to avoid spending resources monitoring tasks that will never complete.

On Hold

If the author is unable or unwilling to update the RFC in a timely fashion they may mark an RFC as "On Hold" to indicate that the RFC should not continue to be pushed forward for the time being.

The author may mark the PR as a Draft.

RFCs in Draft status will be completely ignored by the functor.systems RFC Steering Committee. It is also expected that community members will largely refrain from review until the author has indicated that the RFC is once again ready.

At any point of time the author can either remove the Draft status from the RFC to indicate that they believe that it is ready for additional review and that they have the time to continue the RFC process. Or they can close the RFC to indicate that this RFC is unlikely to to ever move forward.

The RFC life-cycle

Most RFCs describe changes that eventually need to be implemented, usually in form of pull requests against one of functor.systems repositories. Ideally, implementations are ready to be merged alongside the RFC when it gets accepted. Other times, implementation happens only after the RFC gets accepted. Being accepted is not a rubber stamp, and in particular still does not mean the feature will ultimately be merged; it does mean that in principle all the major stakeholders have agreed to the feature and are amenable to merging it. In general though this means that the implementation will be merged as long as there are no substantial technical objections to the implementation.

Furthermore, the fact that a given RFC has been accepted implies nothing about what priority is assigned to its implementation, nor does it imply anything about whether a functor.systems developer has been assigned the task of implementing the feature. While it is not necessary that the author of the RFC also write the implementation, it is by far the most effective way to see an RFC through to completion: authors should not expect that other project developers will take on responsibility for implementing their accepted feature.

RFC documents are intended to be seen as the documentation of a decision and a snapshot of a moment in time, rather than a specification-like normative document. Think more of a Matrix Spec Proposal and less like an IETF RFC. Therefore, once accepted, RFCs should generally not be substantially changed. Only very minor changes should be submitted as amendments (via a follow-up pull request). It is the general expectation that any information intended to be normative and "outlive" the initial RFC process should live outside of the RFC document, mostly in documentation and code. These may be subject to change as usual, and of course any "substantial" changes will again require a new RFC. Usually there is no need to update the original RFC to keep it up with updates on the implementation.

License

All contributions are licensed by their respective authors under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 License.

This document is derived from NixOS/rfcs/README.md.