Second Contribution by Avishkar Gunjal

[Avi-88]

Name: Avishkar Gunjal
Projects: PyTorch | Electron
Project Governance Model Links:

• PyTorch's governance model
• Electron's governance model

Introduction

• PyTorch

  PyTorch is an open-source machine learning framework developed primarily by Facebook AI Research. It is widely used for developing and training deep learning models and is known for its ease of use and dynamic computation graph

• Electron

  Electron is an open-source framework that allows developers to build desktop applications using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It was created by GitHub and released in 2013 as "Atom Shell".

Similarities

• Both the projects have a clearly defined leadership structure with a core team which is responsible in decision making and governing the overall project
• Both projects have a well defined set of rules and guidelines that outline how contributors are accepted or how decisions are made
• Both of these projects also include a well structured code of conduct that outlines the expected behavior and interactions within the community
• Both projects have a strong and diverse community of developers and users which contribute to the project and provide valuable feedback.

Differences

• PyTorch has more of a centralized governance structure where decision is influenced by both the core team and the community while Electron has a distributed governance structure with several working groups (teams) that focus on different aspects of the project.
• PyTorch has core mentors which drive the overall project development with a lead core maintainer responsible for catch-all decision making. Electron had different working groups which focus on driving the development of their respective domains. They do have a administrative working group which oversees the entire governance and project.
• In PyTorch maintainers and core maintainers are selected either by each modules own process or by filling up this form which is publicly accessible. In Electron members of a working group are selected on basis of their contribution to the working groups tasks as well as approvals from existing members.
• in PyTorch the lead core maintainers which are responsible for governing the overall project have the authority to make decisions incase the maintainers don't reach a consensus. In Electron however the administrative working group members aren't allowed to make individual technical decisions and aren't allowed to participate in other technical groups.

Final thoughts

Overall both projects have a governance structure that focuses on collaboration and community involvement. According to me ,Electrons governance model is slightly better in terms of how different aspects of the project are handled. By assigning a specific working group which isn't influenced by individual technical decisions from the administrative working group members it allows for a more distributed decision making process, where as lead core maintainers in PyTorch who are responsible for overall governance of the project do have a say in making technical decisions irrespective of domain making it more of a centralized one.