[mat-wg] MAT WG as an advisory body for RIPE NCC tools

Hi all,

Thanks Brian for the proposal.

On 17/10/2019 17:27, Brian Trammell (RIPE) wrote:
> Greetings, all,
>
> We ran out of time today to discuss the proposal I alluded to at the beginning of the meeting, so I'm taking it to the mailing list:
>
> I would propose that we make the role of MAT WG in providing information and advice to the RIPE NCC's tools teams more explicit. In this proposal, mat-wg at ripe.net mailing would be considered a primary channel for proposals for features for RIPE Atlas.
I support this idea and I would extend it to all R&D RIPE NCC projects 
(not only Atlas), including RIPEstat, RIS, and RIPE IPmap.
If we want to officially adopt this mailing list as a "primary channel", 
we need the approval from the R&D team.
In any case, I'm strongly in favour of this proposal also because it 
would increase public trackability of feature requests and provide a 
clear roadmap for the future developments of the projects.

> These proposals would then be discussed on the list and/or during MAT WG meetings, and once the discussion on converges, the outcome passed to the RIPE NCC tools team as advice. This would turn the current process, where the tools team disseminates updates about current work and future plans, into a two way street.
I agree on providing the advice only after the discussion converges, in 
a way to don't introduce additional overhead on the R&D team.

I would anyway prefer the discussion to happen in the list, more than in 
the meetings.
I love the MAT as a session for researchers and developers from all over 
the region/world to share their results in the field.
Unfortunately the session is already too short and I'm scared that 
possible discussions will move the focus even more towards RIPE Atlas.
We could actually move this to a dedicated measurements/tools BoF!

>
> While I propose that this should be more explicit, I am not proposing that this be made more formal: this would not use the PDP, and would not be in any way binding on the NCC.
Agreed 100%

Ciao,
Massimo
> What do you, the WG, think?
>
> Thanks, cheers,
>
> Brian (as MAT-WG co-chair)