[chromium-dev] When people leave the project, please remove them from OWNERS

[Chris Palmer]

Hello,

I'm finding a lot of OWNERS files containing people who have left Chromium.
In some cases, that leaves directories effectively unowned (!). This is
bad, especially for security-sensitive directories (e.g. stuff in
third_party!).

Please let's go through and remove people who have left, and replace them
with people who are still here. :) Thanks! I'll send a few starter CLs and
CC this thread to get the party started.

[Chris Palmer]

Here are some starter CLs for your entertainment! :)


- libxslt
<https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1362243>
- dominicc
<https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1362244>
- scottmg
<https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1362282>


dcheng noted that XML and related things are perhaps used only by web
platform team? They should at least be co-OWNERS of all XML-related things,
even if they are not the exclusive users of XML. Any volunteers or
suggestions? As of those CLs, dcheng and I are the XML OWNERS, which is far
less than ideal.

[d***@chromium.org]

Post by Chris Palmer
Here are some starter CLs for your entertainment! :)
- libxslt
<https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1362243>
- dominicc
<https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1362244>
- scottmg
<https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1362282>

- cc and viz
<https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/1363963>

Post by Chris Palmer
dcheng noted that XML and related things are perhaps used only by web
platform team? They should at least be co-OWNERS of all XML-related things,
even if they are not the exclusive users of XML. Any volunteers or
suggestions? As of those CLs, dcheng and I are the XML OWNERS, which is far
less than ideal.
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[Mark Mentovai]

How do you want to define "left the project?" Googlers being assigned to
different management chains doesn't necessarily say anything about activity
within Chromium.

Post by Chris Palmer
Hello,
I'm finding a lot of OWNERS files containing people who have left
Chromium. In some cases, that leaves directories effectively unowned (!).
This is bad, especially for security-sensitive directories (e.g. stuff in
third_party!).
Please let's go through and remove people who have left, and replace them
with people who are still here. :) Thanks! I'll send a few starter CLs and
CC this thread to get the party started.
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[Dirk Pranke]

Generally speaking, from an account management standpoint, we assume
nothing about someone's involvement with Chromium (or Chrome) regardless of
whether they switch teams in a company or leave the company they're at.
Someone can ask to have everything disabled, though, of course.

Separately, we do have a vague practice of disabling accounts after they've
been inactive for some extended period of time, and we need to get stricter
and cleaner about that.

-- Dirk

Post by Mark Mentovai
How do you want to define "left the project?" Googlers being assigned to
different management chains doesn't necessarily say anything about activity
within Chromium.

Post by Chris Palmer
Hello,
I'm finding a lot of OWNERS files containing people who have left
Chromium. In some cases, that leaves directories effectively unowned (!).
This is bad, especially for security-sensitive directories (e.g. stuff in
third_party!).
Please let's go through and remove people who have left, and replace them
with people who are still here. :) Thanks! I'll send a few starter CLs and
CC this thread to get the party started.
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[Chris Palmer]

Sure, we may have to take it on a case-by-case basis. But that's not a
reason to let the status quo, in which some OWNERS are definitely not
owning, linger. XML is a key example.

If, for whatever reason, a listed OWNER is not really acting as an OWNER of
that directory, then we need to replace them with 1 or more people who
really are. We (sheriffs, CL authors, et al.) depend on OWNERS files to be
accurate. When they're not, it wastes everyone's time, and sometimes bugs
get mis-assigned and go un-handled. I'm running into this just about every
time I am security sheriff, and not uncommonly when trying to get CLs
reviewed.

[Dirk Pranke]

Yes, I didn't mean to confuse things; code ownership (even in the most
mundane sense of getting up-to-date OWNERS files) is definitely still an
area where we could improve a bunch.

-- Dirk

Post by Chris Palmer
Sure, we may have to take it on a case-by-case basis. But that's not a
reason to let the status quo, in which some OWNERS are definitely not
owning, linger. XML is a key example.
If, for whatever reason, a listed OWNER is not really acting as an OWNER
of that directory, then we need to replace them with 1 or more people who
really are. We (sheriffs, CL authors, et al.) depend on OWNERS files to be
accurate. When they're not, it wastes everyone's time, and sometimes bugs
get mis-assigned and go un-handled. I'm running into this just about every
time I am security sheriff, and not uncommonly when trying to get CLs
reviewed.

[Mark Mentovai]

It's definitely desirable to purge inactive owners and to keep OWNERS files
up-to-date. But whatever policy might lead to a conclusion that Scott is
not an active, competent owner, at least in the parts of the tree I'm
familiar with, is an overreach. You framed this as a blanket thing, but I
don't agree that "left the project" alone, at least how you seem to have
interpreted it here, is a reasonable place to set the bar.

Post by Chris Palmer
Sure, we may have to take it on a case-by-case basis. But that's not a
reason to let the status quo, in which some OWNERS are definitely not
owning, linger. XML is a key example.
If, for whatever reason, a listed OWNER is not really acting as an OWNER
of that directory, then we need to replace them with 1 or more people who
really are. We (sheriffs, CL authors, et al.) depend on OWNERS files to be
accurate. When they're not, it wastes everyone's time, and sometimes bugs
get mis-assigned and go un-handled. I'm running into this just about every
time I am security sheriff, and not uncommonly when trying to get CLs
reviewed.

[Chris Palmer]

On Tue, Dec 4, 2018 at 4:03 PM Mark Mentovai <***@chromium.org> wrote:

It's definitely desirable to purge inactive owners and to keep OWNERS files

Post by Mark Mentovai
up-to-date. But whatever policy might lead to a conclusion that Scott is
not an active, competent owner, at least in the parts of the tree I'm
familiar with, is an overreach. You framed this as a blanket thing, but I
don't agree that "left the project" alone, at least how you seem to have
interpreted it here, is a reasonable place to set the bar.

Understood.

And I would never impugn Scott's (or anyone's!) competence. I don't think I
did.

But indeed I am seeing areas of the code that are close to un-owned.
There's no blame; this is natural. But we need to fix it, so I am trying.

[b***@chromium.org]

I think that the person who is being removed should be the first reviewer
on the CL. If they have no comment or if they are okay with it then it can
be reviewed by others. That gives the owners a chance to say whether they
still want to participate.

Post by Mark Mentovai
It's definitely desirable to purge inactive owners and to keep OWNERS

files up-to-date. But whatever policy might lead to a conclusion that Scott
is not an active, competent owner, at least in the parts of the tree I'm
familiar with, is an overreach. You framed this as a blanket thing, but I
don't agree that "left the project" alone, at least how you seem to have
interpreted it here, is a reasonable place to set the bar.

Understood.
And I would never impugn Scott's (or anyone's!) competence. I don't think
I did.
But indeed I am seeing areas of the code that are close to un-owned.
There's no blame; this is natural. But we need to fix it, so I am trying.

[Václav Brožek]

I second Bruce's suggestion that it's good to involve the owner being
removed first (as long as they are still responding).

And I share Chris' concern that stale information about people's
affiliation with the code is adding unnecessary churn, and can even be
dangerous.

Speaking from a very recent experience <https://crbug.com/908813>, there is
a surprising amount of things to do when a person is leaving the project:

- Updating OWNERS
- Updating <owner> tags in histograms.xml
- Updating/fixing TODOs
- Updating WATCHLIST

I might even have forgotten something in the above list (suggestions
welcome).

Perhaps we could write a short "leaving guide" (I'm happy to volunteer) and
try to get into the habit of going through it for every person which
leaves. Even if the person who leaves forgets to check the above steps,
they usually do have managers and team-mates who could help bringing this
topic up.

Cheers,
Vaclav

Post by b***@chromium.org
I think that the person who is being removed should be the first reviewer
on the CL. If they have no comment or if they are okay with it then it can
be reviewed by others. That gives the owners a chance to say whether they
still want to participate.

Post by Mark Mentovai
It's definitely desirable to purge inactive owners and to keep OWNERS

files up-to-date. But whatever policy might lead to a conclusion that Scott
is not an active, competent owner, at least in the parts of the tree I'm
familiar with, is an overreach. You framed this as a blanket thing, but I
don't agree that "left the project" alone, at least how you seem to have
interpreted it here, is a reasonable place to set the bar.

Understood.
And I would never impugn Scott's (or anyone's!) competence. I don't think
I did.
But indeed I am seeing areas of the code that are close to un-owned.
There's no blame; this is natural. But we need to fix it, so I am trying.

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[Václav Brožek]

Post by Václav Brožek
I second Bruce's suggestion that it's good to involve the owner being
removed first (as long as they are still responding).
And I share Chris' concern that stale information about people's
affiliation with the code is adding unnecessary churn, and can even be
dangerous.
Speaking from a very recent experience <https://crbug.com/908813>, there
- Updating OWNERS
- Updating <owner> tags in histograms.xml
- Updating/fixing TODOs
- Updating WATCHLIST
One more point: removing the leaving person from the sheriffing rotation,

to avoid having unexpected "channel is the sheriff" outages.

Post by Václav Brožek
I might even have forgotten something in the above list (suggestions
welcome).
Perhaps we could write a short "leaving guide" (I'm happy to volunteer)
and try to get into the habit of going through it for every person which
leaves. Even if the person who leaves forgets to check the above steps,
they usually do have managers and team-mates who could help bringing this
topic up.
Cheers,
Vaclav

Post by b***@chromium.org
I think that the person who is being removed should be the first reviewer
on the CL. If they have no comment or if they are okay with it then it can
be reviewed by others. That gives the owners a chance to say whether they
still want to participate.

Post by Mark Mentovai
It's definitely desirable to purge inactive owners and to keep OWNERS

files up-to-date. But whatever policy might lead to a conclusion that Scott
is not an active, competent owner, at least in the parts of the tree I'm
familiar with, is an overreach. You framed this as a blanket thing, but I
don't agree that "left the project" alone, at least how you seem to have
interpreted it here, is a reasonable place to set the bar.

Understood.
And I would never impugn Scott's (or anyone's!) competence. I don't
think I did.
But indeed I am seeing areas of the code that are close to un-owned.
There's no blame; this is natural. But we need to fix it, so I am trying.

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Inside Google, we do actually have an exit checklist, but I'm not sure how
widely it is used.

-- Dirk

Post by Václav Brožek

Post by Václav Brožek
I second Bruce's suggestion that it's good to involve the owner being
removed first (as long as they are still responding).
And I share Chris' concern that stale information about people's
affiliation with the code is adding unnecessary churn, and can even be
dangerous.
Speaking from a very recent experience <https://crbug.com/908813>, there
- Updating OWNERS
- Updating <owner> tags in histograms.xml
- Updating/fixing TODOs
- Updating WATCHLIST
One more point: removing the leaving person from the sheriffing rotation,

to avoid having unexpected "channel is the sheriff" outages.

Post by Václav Brožek
I might even have forgotten something in the above list (suggestions
welcome).
Perhaps we could write a short "leaving guide" (I'm happy to volunteer)
and try to get into the habit of going through it for every person which
leaves. Even if the person who leaves forgets to check the above steps,
they usually do have managers and team-mates who could help bringing this
topic up.
Cheers,
Vaclav

Post by b***@chromium.org
I think that the person who is being removed should be the first
reviewer on the CL. If they have no comment or if they are okay with it
then it can be reviewed by others. That gives the owners a chance to say
whether they still want to participate.

Post by Mark Mentovai
It's definitely desirable to purge inactive owners and to keep OWNERS

files up-to-date. But whatever policy might lead to a conclusion that Scott
is not an active, competent owner, at least in the parts of the tree I'm
familiar with, is an overreach. You framed this as a blanket thing, but I
don't agree that "left the project" alone, at least how you seem to have
interpreted it here, is a reasonable place to set the bar.

Understood.
And I would never impugn Scott's (or anyone's!) competence. I don't
think I did.
But indeed I am seeing areas of the code that are close to un-owned.
There's no blame; this is natural. But we need to fix it, so I am trying.

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[Daniel Bratell]

There is a fair number of OWNERs that have comments in the code review
system that discourages contacting them for reviews. It's not supposed to
be like that and just removing very busy owners might not make things
better. At least that is better than those who are inactive with no
comment. There it can take a long time (days) of experimenting until you
find a reviewer.

/Daniel

Post by Dirk Pranke
Inside Google, we do actually have an exit checklist, but I'm not sure
how widely it is used.
-- Dirk

Post by Václav Brožek

Post by Václav Brožek
I second Bruce's suggestion that it's good to involve the owner being
removed first (as long as they are still responding).
And I share Chris' concern that stale information about people's
affiliation with the code is adding unnecessary churn, and can even be

Post by b***@chromium.org

Post by Chris Palmer

Post by Václav Brožek
dangerous.

Speaking from a very recent experience, there is a surprising amount
Updating OWNERS
Updating <owner> tags in histograms.xml
Updating/fixing TODOs
Updating WATCHLIST

One more point: removing the leaving person from the sheriffing
rotation, to avoid having unexpected "channel is the sheriff" outages.

Post by Václav Brožek
I might even have forgotten something in the above list (suggestions
welcome).
Perhaps we could write a short "leaving guide" (I'm happy to
volunteer) and try to get into the habit of going through it for every
person which >>>leaves. Even if the person who leaves forgets to check
the above steps, they usually do have managers and team-mates who
could help bringing >>>this topic up.
Cheers,
Vaclav

Post by b***@chromium.org
I think that the person who is being removed should be the first
reviewer on the CL. If they have no comment or if they are okay with
it then it >>>>can be reviewed by others. That gives the owners a
chance to say whether they still want to participate.

Post by Chris Palmer

Post by Václav Brožek
It's definitely desirable to purge inactive owners and to keep
OWNERS files up-to-date. But whatever policy might lead to a
conclusion >>>>>>that Scott is not an active, competent owner, at
least in the parts of the tree I'm familiar with, is an overreach.
You framed this as a blanket >>>>>>thing, but I don't agree that
"left the project" alone, at least how you seem to have interpreted
it here, is a reasonable place to set the bar.

Understood.
And I would never impugn Scott's (or anyone's!) competence. I don't
think I did.
But indeed I am seeing areas of the code that are close to un-owned.
There's no blame; this is natural. But we need to fix it, so I am trying.

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[d***@chromium.org]

Post by Daniel Bratell
There is a fair number of OWNERs that have comments in the code review
system that discourages contacting them for reviews. It's not supposed to
be like that and just removing very busy owners might not make things
better. At least that is better than those who are inactive with no
comment. There it can take a long time (days) of experimenting until you
find a reviewer.

This is exacerbated by the fact that we have been over time trending
towards OWNERS in smaller and smaller pieces of the subtree, and I wonder
if we should reexamine this practice in favor of larger sets of more
central (or a single set) of OWNERS. Some areas have resisted this trend,
but it is something I see at large.

Post by Daniel Bratell
/Daniel
Inside Google, we do actually have an exit checklist, but I'm not sure how
widely it is used.
-- Dirk

Post by Václav Brožek

Post by Václav Brožek
I second Bruce's suggestion that it's good to involve the owner being
removed first (as long as they are still responding).
And I share Chris' concern that stale information about people's
affiliation with the code is adding unnecessary churn, and can even be
dangerous.
Speaking from a very recent experience <https://crbug.com/908813>,
there is a surprising amount of things to do when a person is leaving the
- Updating OWNERS
- Updating <owner> tags in histograms.xml
- Updating/fixing TODOs
- Updating WATCHLIST
One more point: removing the leaving person from the sheriffing

rotation, to avoid having unexpected "channel is the sheriff" outages.

Post by Václav Brožek
I might even have forgotten something in the above list (suggestions
welcome).
Perhaps we could write a short "leaving guide" (I'm happy to volunteer)
and try to get into the habit of going through it for every person which
leaves. Even if the person who leaves forgets to check the above steps,
they usually do have managers and team-mates who could help bringing this
topic up.
Cheers,
Vaclav

Post by b***@chromium.org
I think that the person who is being removed should be the first
reviewer on the CL. If they have no comment or if they are okay with it
then it can be reviewed by others. That gives the owners a chance to say
whether they still want to participate.

Post by Mark Mentovai
It's definitely desirable to purge inactive owners and to keep OWNERS

files up-to-date. But whatever policy might lead to a conclusion that Scott
is not an active, competent owner, at least in the parts of the tree I'm
familiar with, is an overreach. You framed this as a blanket thing, but I
don't agree that "left the project" alone, at least how you seem to have
interpreted it here, is a reasonable place to set the bar.

Understood.
And I would never impugn Scott's (or anyone's!) competence. I don't
think I did.
But indeed I am seeing areas of the code that are close to un-owned.
There's no blame; this is natural. But we need to fix it, so I am trying.

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[Peter Kasting]

Post by d***@chromium.org

Post by Daniel Bratell
There is a fair number of OWNERs that have comments in the code review
system that discourages contacting them for reviews. It's not supposed to
be like that and just removing very busy owners might not make things
better. At least that is better than those who are inactive with no
comment. There it can take a long time (days) of experimenting until you
find a reviewer.

This is exacerbated by the fact that we have been over time trending
towards OWNERS in smaller and smaller pieces of the subtree, and I wonder
if we should reexamine this practice in favor of larger sets of more
central (or a single set) of OWNERS.

Given that Chrome largely doesn't use "set noparent", it's already possible
today to escalate to higher-level OWNERS if absolutely necessary, so I
don't think discouraging fine-grained OWNERS would do anything to aid
responsiveness. If there aren't multiple, responsive OWNERS for areas of
the code, we should aim to fix that by adding more people willing to take
on greater OWNERship in those areas over time.

OTOH, coarse-grained OWNERS increase "forum-shopping" reviews to the people
you already know well, make it more difficult for reviewers to figure out
which people will have the most context on the code they're changing, and
tend to encourage setting one OWNER as the reviewer of an entire large CL
(which is hard on the reviewer).

For those reasons, I would see "move away from fine-grained OWNERS" as a
change that incurs several significant costs without providing any benefit,
at least until convinced otherwise :).

PK