Thanks @Katherine_Scott for leading this all the way into its resolution, from that standpoint, I appreciate it and thank you and @fmrico for bringing this into the TSC discussions.
For transparency, here’s the feedback provided by the TSC concerning REP-2014 and that led to to its rejection:
Feedback provided by the TSC concerning REP-2014
- It does not include other alternatives.
- The proposal includes recommendations that are valid, but REPs are for things that ROS does or will do holistically. That is not feasible and so I will vote against accepting the REP proposal. In addition, I don’t see why it needs to be a REP. This info could just as well be part of the documentation and doing so does not detract anything from the messaging. If anything it gives more flexibility and chance to evolve.
- The proposed REP is composed primarily of informative information such as what would be found in a tutorial rather than a common specification. The authors should propose adding a benchmarking tutorial to the ROS 2 documentation instead.
- There is definitely a lot of value in writing down some procedures and best practices for running benchmarks with ROS 2. However, the goals and tools used for benchmarking can vary wildly based on the exact thing being measured. And these tools will evolve over time (which is acknowledged in this REP in the sentence “The guidelines in here are intended to be a living document that can be updated as new information becomes available.”). Because of these factors, I believe that this document doesn’t really fit into the REP process. Rather, I think it would be better as a document that lives on https://docs.ros.org
- I’m unclear on the benefit of this being a REP rather than a blog post. Besides, concerns were raised about the level of community agreement around this.
I’m obviously not happy about the rejection. Most aspects in the feedback were discussed and addressed (see https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/rep/pull/364) and despite skeptics, there’s a general acknowledgement of its value. An open discussion would’ve been more constructive. What I’m most frustrated about is the fact that feedback is mostly non-technical, but comes as a rejection from the ROS 2 TSC (which stands for ROS 2 Technical Steering Committee 
).
This unfortunately confirms once again that in my view:
- working with this TSC has been “complicated” for a while now. There’s increasingly less and less technology, and more politics.
- that the current setup of TSC “thought-leaders” (most of which have never contributed to a REP, or ROS with relevance) adds very little value, and
- raises again various questions about the value of the current TSC setup, missing strong contributors, key players and individuals, with a strong track of record in this community (but of course, not backed by
X company, and its aligned interests).
I can’t help but continue being surprised everytime someone totally unknown (and without relevant ROS contributions) is appointed by company Y as new TSC representative. This is a reflection of the status of affairs. Seeing that distorted now increasingly, conveys a very strong message against contributing (and we’re all seing the huge slowdown in Discourse engagement/involvement).
I’ve heard a few times already promises concerning “relevant changes” in the ROS community governance model. I’d like to see that happening so that we stop seeing “anonymous lobbying” for once. Also, please, let’s stop the “confidential” tone being set around the ROS TSC discussions for a while now. Transparency is one aspect that inspired many of us, and one of the key values of how this community (and technology) was built by many of us.
For what’s worth, It might be a good idea to remind TSC members of the differences between Informational REPs and other types as described in REP-0001:
An Informational REP describes a ROS design issue, or provides general guidelines or information to the ROS community, but does not propose a new feature. Informational REPs do not necessarily represent a ROS community consensus or recommendation, so users and implementors are free to ignore Informational REPs or follow their advice.
As with various other topics within the feedback, this was already clarified in the public discussion.
Let’s be more public and transparent for what concerns forward actions from the TSC please.