Nominate Ben Leggett for istio-cni maintainer

[linsun]

Istio-cni is an important component for sidecar and even a critical component for ambient. I propose to add a few maintainers for the istio-cni node agent and I want to nominate @bleggett due to his outstanding contribution: istio/istio#48253 along with many other contributions and reviews in this component. Opening this issue to discuss this openly. @bleggett, feel free to add your contributions for recording purpose.

[linsun]

cc @istio/wg-networking-maintainers for comment

[howardjohn]

FWIW I don't think we formally have an "istio-cni maintainer". It is owned by the networking group more broadly. That being said I think Ben probably meets the bar (https://github.com/istio/community/blob/master/ROLES.md#requirements-3) more broadly, or is at least extremely close to doing so ( didn't look very closely here)

[linsun]

Thanks John for your input. Agree we don't have istio-cni maintainer formerly. Depends on folks' input and comfortable level, we can decide to create a dedicated group for istio-cni or have Ben join the networking maintainer group.

tagging a few networking leads for input @ramaraochavali @stevenctl @lizan

[nrjpoddar]

I think adding a CNI maintainer is a good thing to have specially w/Ambient beta on the horizon. I'm in favor of it and adding @bleggett given other TOC members are good with it.

[linsun]

Thanks Neeraj. Just checked, Ben has 32 merged PR which includes substantial PR(most recent one is the huge in-pod istio-cni PR) as well. I'll let the other networking leads weigh in, if they are okay with adding Ben to networking maintainer group, we can add him there instead of forming the istio-cni maintainer.

[hzxuzhonghu]

istio-cni is a little different, with more undelying networking expertise requirements. I think a sub-group is necessary.

[zirain]

istio-cni is a little different, with more undelying networking expertise requirements. I think a sub-group is necessary.

like @istio/wg-networking-maintainers-pilot ?

[ramaraochavali]

Looking at PRs, most of them are in cni area. So it makes sense to create istio-cni and add him

[linsun]

@ramaraochavali @hzxuzhonghu @zirain thank you for the feedback! Seems you all are good with moving forward to promote Ben as istio-cni maintainer.

@stevenctl @lizan any feedback from you, please let me know by end of today.

[zirain]

To be clear, it's good to create an sub-group named istio/wg-networking-maintainers-cni, and grant authority(both istio/wg-networking-maintainers-cni and istio/wg-networking-maintainers) with /cni folder.

same to #1315 and #1316

[linsun]

I'd like to do a vote from networking maintainers and leads. Leads' vote count, maintainers vote are helpful too

option 1: create dedicated group for istio-cni and promote Ben to istio-cni maintainer
option 2: promote Ben to wg-networking-maintainers.

Please use emojis (option 1 heart, option 2: rocket)

[linsun]

cc @istio/wg-networking-maintainers @howardjohn @stevenctl @lizan @ramaraochavali ^^^^

[linsun]

To be clear, it's good to create an sub-group named istio/wg-networking-maintainers-cni, and grant authority(both istio/wg-networking-maintainers-cni and istio/wg-networking-maintainers) with /cni folder.

same to #1315 and #1316

Let us separate #1315 and #1316 into their own github discussions as nomination/voting is personal.

[howardjohn]

Subgroups have maintainer access to the parent group too.. so if the goal is to block someones access to "networking", subgroup would not work.

IMO fewer groups is easier to maintain and grok. A networking maintainer doesn't need to be an expert on all things "networking" in Istio -- and I don't any current maintainers are given the breadth of Istio. Part of the responsibilities of a maintainer is not just to approve PRs, but also know when not to approve PRs. For example, if a Maintainer was a CNI pro but had no other expertise (which is not the case for Ben, IMO, just an example), I would simply expect them to not approve PRs outside of CNI.

Note the "pilot" subgroup is a bit different scenario. That was about making a higher bar for a critical code portion. This CNI group discussion is more like a side-group, not sub-group. Generally our groups are all bucketed under WGs, though, which makes the not possible in GitHub. As noted above though, I don't think we need to anyways.

[stevenctl]

+1 to John's comment.
Also big +1 to making @bleggett a maintainer

[linsun]

@stevenctl thanks, can you vote on here with your desired emoji? #1314 (comment)

[linsun]

Added this to the agenda of tmr's WG meeting, please vote here - #1314 (comment)

[srampal]

+1 for @bleggett as maintainer!

[linsun]

Notes from today's WG meeting: @bleggett is approved as networking WG maintainers, there is no objection recorded in the meeting. I'll submit a PR shortly.