Define how partners should be ranked

[bjohansebas]

We should document how partners are ranked, since up until now I was the one who assigned the rankings, and they were based on my own subjective criteria from quite a while ago.

My reasoning was that a higher number meant a higher priority:

• Tier 3: Critical infrastructure, or partners that covered multiple categories.
• Tier 2: Partners that provide an important service in a single category (e.g. ESP or Security).
• Tier 1: Partners that support non-critical infrastructure, such as downloads or content.

I don't think these criteria should just be based on my personal opinion, though. They should be documented and agreed upon by the people who oversee the project as a whole.

[ljharb]

why not show every sponsor all at once, but use criteria like the above to determine ordering and relative size, with a little randomness thrown in?

[bjohansebas]

That's actually how the site works today. All partners are displayed, both on the homepage and on the dedicated partners page. The only place where not all of them are shown is the downloads page And the tiers are used to determine how likely a partner is to be shown before the others.

[bjohansebas]

We just need to define the criteria, and I think some team, probably the web admins or the TSC should be responsible for deciding how partners are classified, especially in Vercel's case (as discussed here: https://openjs-foundation.slack.com/archives/CVAMEJ4UV/p1782951607421969)

[MattIPv4]

👋 Coming out of the web team meeting today, @bmuenzenmeyer and I recommend that instead of obscure weights associated with each partner, we derive the weighting based on what categories a partner falls into. This removes any ambiguity about the situation, leaving the only open questions to be what those categories should be (and their weights), and what categories each partner is in.

Our recommendations for the categories are, and how the current partners map to them:

• Distribution, any partner involved in the day-to-day distribution of Node.js, weight 10.
  • Cloudflare
• Build, any partner involved in the build + release processes of Node.js, weight 8.
  • Microsoft
  • MacStadium
  • DigitalOcean
• Website, any partner involved in the delivery of Node.js' website, weight 6.
  • Cloudflare (weight 10 from Distribution would take precedence)
  • Vercel
• ESP, any partner involved in Node.js' ESP, weight 4.
  • HeroDevs
  • Nodesource
  • TuxCare

Notably, we could not figure out a sensible category in which to include CodeMod, who is listed as a partner on the site today (also currently without any associated categories). We did not understand what services they actually provide to Node.js.

We also noticed that there are a few partners that we don't list today, and wanted to seek clarity on why:

• Build: We seem to list only a few of the partners here, but https://github.com/nodejs/build#infrastructure-providers lists many more?
• Website: The website relies on services provided by Sentry + Crowdin + Chromatic

While these are our recommendations as @nodejs/web-admins, we most definitely wish to seek consensus from @nodejs/tsc + the Foundation on this, given it involves partnerships, many of which we are not read into.

[bmuenzenmeyer]

Before anyone gets upset about We did not understand what services they actually provide to Node.js referring to codemod, that's not quite true. They are a partner (see Codemod Becomes an OpenJS Foundation Partner to Support Node.js Migrations | OpenJS Foundation https://share.google/pelQJsczsizsuIYDr), it's just that we don't have a category defined and therefore again assign arbitrary weight, and no other display logic, unlike other parts of the site.

[MattIPv4]

Ah, yes, my bad on the wording there 🫣 They don't map well to any of the existing/proposed categories, as they are all focused on being service providers in some capacity, whereas Codemod is something that Node.js participates in.

[bjohansebas]

We also noticed that there are a few partners that we don't list today, and wanted to seek clarity on >why:

Build: We seem to list only a few of the partners here, but https://github.com/nodejs/>build#infrastructure-providers lists many more?
Website: The website relies on services provided by Sentry + Crowdin + Chromatic

The reason is that they don't have formal agreements with the foundation; the relationships are only based on verbal agreements. One of the requirements for being listed as a partner on the website (when the page was originally created) was having a formal agreement.

Since then, it doesn't seem like any additional formal agreements have been made, at least for the build side, but @bensternthal would know more about that.

For the website partners, it's the same situation. Although, as far as I know, Sentry is a member of foundation, so it might make sense to add them, but we'd check with @bensternthal or Robin first. The other companies you mentioned would also need formal agreements if they want to be listed on the website

They weren't omitted by mistake or anything like that.

[aymen94]

Agree, category-derived weighting is much cleaner than arbitrary tiers. Two quick asks before we lock this in: [nodejs] (https://nodejs.org/en/about/partners)

• Let's get explicit sign-off from @nodejs/tsc since this touch's partnerships broadly, not just web display logic.
• Codemod (and any future "non-service-provider" partner) needs a fallback category/weight so it's not left undefined.

Once categories + weights are agreed, I can help draft the PR to wire it into the partner data.