@roboll I think we need more arguments!

Probably @naseemkullah could add something from a more user-centric view.

From a maintainer's perspective, I have only two benefits in my mind to move this project:

Long-term maintenance of Helmfile
Raising the bar while helping other projects in the ecosystem

And I'd prefer moving to Helm for now. Details follow. Any feedback is welcomed.

Long-term maintenance of Helmfile

We have users and I just want keep Helmfile maintained longer for users. I believe increasing velocity is one of the ways to keep the project maintained longer. I expect that moving to CNCF or Helm increases the project's velocity and results in the project maintained longer.

Increased velocity means we are able to put more resources on user-support, bug fixes, developing features. Things like great governance, tooling, maintainers all increase velocity.

By moving the project under a umbrella like CNCF or Helm, I'd expect the project's visibility increased, attracting more users, and potential maintainers(this may include my added time to work on the project sponsored by my employer), that contributes to velocity, that results in a more reliable and useful tool(helmfile), that attracts more users, repeat. In that sense moving the project to either CNCF or Helm is beneficial.

Also, I think both projects has their own governance and tooling, which may help Helmfile's development - additional velocity.

A potential benefit of Helm over CNCF is possibility to work more closely with the entire Helm project for increased velocity, like adding E2E tests with Helmfile to Helm. A little more velocity added.

Raising the bar while helping other projects

My goal for Helmfile is making it super easy to deploy complex apps everywhere. Whatever is okay as long as the goal is achieved.

I have no desire to make Helmfile the only "winner" in this area. But I DO like someone in the world provides a great alternative to Helmfile if it becomes outdated and unmaintained someday.

I was attracted and have been maintaining Helmfile because the declarative spec for complex apps on top of helm and k8s seemed both practical and effective path towards the goal. Helmfile is great. But you'll see many interesting issues still open to be addressed. And the Helm use-cases explored by Helmfile are not very reusable at the moment by other projects.

On the other hand, I'm not feeling very happy about a bunch of tools, projects, vendors, services reinventing what's already done with Helm(packaging and basic release management) and Helmfile.

By moving the project to Helm, I'm hoping that we can collaborate more closely making Helm reusable (as a go library, for example) for easier consumption by projects like Helmfile, while making Helmfile itself a reference implementation of declarative app deplyoment tool that integrates nicely with Helm and feature-rich, resolving the interesting issues. Both efforts will eventually be inherited to a bunch of tools/projects/etc, that contributes to the goal.

I believe all these things can "technically" be achieved without moving the project, as (I think) Helmfile is already well maintained.

But the reality is we're a small team with no vendor behind it, very limited resources.

So I got to think about paying forward while we're still alive. That is to gain more velocity and communication to produce the momentum to keep the project going further, by moving the project under a umbrella.

Q: helmfile under Helm org / CNCF? #758

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