new readme, new company listing incl logos, new team listing

[rvagg]

Complete overhaul. The main highlights are:

• Company listing including blurbs and logos, see the rendered version at https://github.com/nodejs/build/blob/new-readme/README.md. The main aim here is to recognise and thank these companies for contributing, with a secondary aim to provide additional incentive for other companies to contribute (i.e. we'll give you a PR boost if you contribute). I've separated them into two tiers because DO and Rackspace really do hold us up and need kudos for doing so.
• New team listing, based on activity and attendance. I hope I'm not offending by adjusting this, please speak up if you think I've got this wrong, it's simply based on what I feel to be the current list of active participants in the work we do here but I could easily be overlooking people.

I also propose that if this PR is merged that the team listed become the @nodejs/build team, updated to remove inactive members and add newly active members.

The team that I've listed in this PR atm is:

• Johan Bergström @jbergstroem
• João Reis @joaocgreis
• Rod Vagg @rvagg
• Alexis Campailla @orangemocha
• Michael Dawson @mhdawson
• Hans Kristian Flaatten @Starefossen
• Julien Gilli @misterdjules
• Rich Trott @Trott
• Myles Borins @thealphanerd
• Ryan Graham @rmg

[jbergstroem]

Great to finally see our README.md getting some treatment 👏 -- comments inline. Also, how about we ask the members of the suggested working group if they (still) want to be part of it?

[Starefossen]

Looks very good, Rod! Nice work 👍

[orangemocha]

Thanks for doing this, @rvagg !

One nit about Microsoft sponsorship: the sponsor is actually "Microsoft". "Microsoft Azure" is the platform where some (ok, all except for the serial port machine) of those hardware resources are hosted.

LGTM otherwise.

[rvagg]

@orangemocha can you check with someone at Microsoft re what they'd like represented? I've got the impression from folks there that pushing the Azure brand is pretty important at this stage. Happy to comply with whatever you/they want to go with.

[orangemocha]

Ok, @rvagg , I am double checking. Thanks!

[orangemocha]

One more nit: all verbs where the subject is a company name appear conjugated in the 3rd plural person "provide" "donate". Shouldn't it be "provides" "donates"? (disclaimer: I am not a native English speaker)

[mhdawson]

Could you change

IBM, via their cloud company, SoftLayer and the Oregon State University Open Source Lab provide PPC-based test and build infrastructure and other key hardware for testing and benchmarking for the Node.js project's CI system.

to:

IBM, via their cloud company, SoftLayer and the Oregon State University Open Source Lab provide PPC-based test and build infrastructure and other key x86 hardware for testing and benchmarking for the Node.js project's CI system.

I don't want it to sound like we only provide PPC resources.

[mhdawson]

Just read @jbergstroem's earlier comment. Splitting it up would also work

[Trott]

One more nit: all verbs where the subject is a company name appear conjugated in the 3rd plural person "provide" "donate". Shouldn't it be "provides" "donates"? (disclaimer: I am not a native English speaker)

In US English, it would be "IBM provides..." etc. In UK English, company names (and band names and all sorts of things that represent collections of more than one person) are collective nouns and treated as a plural noun. "IBM provide..."

So either could be correct.

It seems that Node.js has standardized on US English. We seem to favor US English rather than favour UK English. So I would be mildly inclined to go with @orangemocha's suggestion. But again, either could be correct.

[rvagg]

I think I've addressed all of the comments raised here so far, please review latest commit

[rvagg]

Added a new section on community donations, listing all of the donations and donaters that we've had so far, including hardware that is not in active service.

[jbergstroem]

Looking great, Rod. LGTM

[rmg]

LGTM

[joshgav]

Representing Microsoft's view, I agree with @orangemocha that our company name should be Microsoft, not Microsoft Azure. Here's what we propose for the Microsoft line:

Microsoft provides Windows-related test infrastructure on Azure for the Node.js CI system.

Could we take the logo from our logo page (as below) for the image?

---

Somewhat relatedly, do we have a quantifiable differentiation between "1st tier" and "2nd tier"? It's something that might cause controversy so would be nice to be crisp. Also, perhaps "gold" and "silver" or any sequence that doesn't number sponsors might be more politic :)

[mikeal]

Some companies are particular about how/where/when their logo is used. If we get a complaint please forward it to me right away and I'll figure out what the foundation need to do in order to get approval.

[mhdawson]

lgtm

[mhdawson]

One thing we discussed in the last WG meeting was to define a concrete definition for what contributes makes Tier 1 (# cpus, memory etc.)

[rvagg]

A concrete definition is going to be hard for two main reasons:

1. Some providers don't want us to publicise how much we are using their stuff, for various reasons
2. Making a comparison between resources of the various providers is nearly impossible due to huge variations in what resources are available and used.

The definition for now is based on a rough calculation of $$ spent if we were paying for these, and by far DigitalOcean and Rackspace lead everyone else in how much they are going out of their way to support the project. So IMO, putting them in a special category at the top is both appropriate and deserved. That said, we have contenders that have the potential to reach up in to Tier 1 for the same reason. SoftLayer, Joyent and Azure could be ramped up to reach similar levels.

I haven't done the spend-analysis for a few months, the Foundation Board asked for it a while back to understand the risks associated with having in-kind offerings. My suggestion would be for the core Build group to privately maintain this analysis, updated with latest usage across providers and when we have the numbers is should be very clear who is in Tier 1, or whether the blurring between the tiers is enough to justify adding another or removing the designations all together.

Objections from Tier 2 providers about having the tiered designation suggests to me that it works as an incentive. I'm more than happy to have providers compete to be in the top tier and be thanked more loudly than others, this whole PR is largely about incentive construction.

[rvagg]

I've just uploaded the spreadsheet I made back in August into Google Docs and shared it with @jbergstroem, @joaocgreis, @orangemocha and @mhdawson. It's very out of date and needs a lot of work to become accurate again. Let's try and keep this maintained (but the numbers private to respect the wishes of the various companies please).

[rvagg]

If only companies offered downloadable versions of their logos while telling people how to use their logos ... @joshgav can you point me to a higher res version of the Microsoft logos that I can use? https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSImages/imgOne.jpg?version=2089bd70-681c-1e6e-0b1a-680002dd31d6 is not terrible but surely there's a vector or high-res version of individual files instead of something I have to cut up manually?

[rmg]

http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-news-center-photos/msft_logo_rgb_c-gray/ should do the trick..

[rvagg]

thanks @rmg, although that brand use page says to use it on white or blue, this is grey!

[rvagg]

oh, nmind, that grey must be the transparency colour

[rvagg]

Updated the Microsoft logo and text, latest can be seen @ https://github.com/nodejs/build/blob/234e3dadd28cafffef395e2dab37d776d18ef67e/README.md

How firm are the objections to the tiers? Enough to hold this up or can we go ahead with this and fix it up later?

[jbergstroem]

Regarding tiers: whatever way we currently define it, digitalocean and rackspace are most used. I'm happy to merge without a clear definition of tiers and improve as we go.

[orangemocha]

I've just uploaded the spreadsheet I made back in August into Google Docs

Thanks @rvagg , I will update the spreadsheet with the Azure spend.

It's not a problem to merge as is and refine things later. Once we do, I think we might want to set a time period over which to compute a sponsor's contribution (in $). 1 month is probably too short as these numbers can fluctuate. If we were to consider contributions from all time, and even before the Foundation, Joyent and Microsoft would definitely have to be in the top tier. I would suggest to use a "last 12 month" period and define the tiers in terms of $ thresholds.

[mhdawson]

I'm fine with merging as is.

[joshgav]

LGTM. Thanks!

[rvagg]

If we were to consider contributions from all time, and even before the Foundation, Joyent and Microsoft would definitely have to be in the top tier.

Maybe, you have to consider that the resources we are using across the board are on a totally different scale than were ever maintained for jenkins.nodejs.org. I'd not be surprised if total spend in the last 12 months completely eclipsed any previous total spend on infra by the project.

Personally I'd rather time-limit it or even make it a snapshot thing cause calculating spend over spans of time is way more difficult and would require more dillegence than any of us can afford. So perhaps it's a quarterly, or 1/2 yearly thing we do.

Let's aim to have the spreadsheet updated by the next Build WG meeting we have and we'll come up with a strategy that properly recognises the major contributors and puts incentives in place that encourage new contributing providers and existing providers to level-up how they contribute.

[jbergstroem]

Yeeeees 🎉

[rvagg]

💥

improvements via PR please

[orangemocha]

👍