Daniel Warner wrote:
On 4/27/06, Jonathan Revusky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Dakota Jack wrote:
Doesn't this kind of talk sound goofy to you all? Isn't this reference to
the Apache Way sort of like a secret handshake and a silly hat?
It's all that, yes, but it's also not very honest, I'd say.
You see, the various scripture on the so-called "Apache Way" claims that
the ASF is run as a "meritocracy". What you see here is that the Struts
committers, after years of not achieving much, have invited in the
Webwork people with the intention of relabelling Webwork as Struts
Action 2 (when the existing Struts codebase is Struts Action 1). They
tacitly accept that the Webwork people ran the better project
technically, did the better work.
Well, once you accept that the other people did the better work, and you
have a meritocracy, then those other people, who have more merit, they
run the show.
The logic of this looks unassailble to me.
That's because you don't understand what you're talking about.
<sigh>
The
"meritocracy" idea at Apache is not about who does the work best.
It's just about who does the work. You do the work, you make
decisions.
<LOL>
You're joking, aren't you, Daniel? You're saying this is a "meritocracy"
in which you gain merit by doing work, but the quality of the work
doesn't matter?
OMG... I think maybe you're serious...
Well, that's just ridiculous, isn't it???? C'mon...
So, by what basic principle does the existing Struts PMC remain in
control of the project when they accept that the other people did better
work?
The only principle I see is the principle of incumbency or tenure.
That's a problem with your vision. There are plenty of reasons:
1) it's more about doing the work than doing the work "better".
No further comment.
2) SAF 2/WebWork is still in incubation. It's not even actually part
of Struts yet.
<sigh>
The "incubator" is just ASF pseudoreality. It doesn't correspond to
anything real. It makes no sense in this context. An actual incubator is
something you use to hatch eggs, or sometimes it refers to a kind of
environment that prematurely born babies are put in, because they could
not survive in the outside world yet.
The living entity that you incubate is not even an infant, it is
something in an embryonic state. Talking about how Webwork is still in
"incubation" does not reflect anything real, because Webwork is not an
unborn baby or even an infant. It is the moral equivalent of an adult, a
peer of the Struts project and other projects in its space.
This whole business of mature projects like Webwork being "incubated" is
just yet another striking example of the kind of bizarre use of words
that is resorted to when people talk about this so-called "Apache Way".
The "incubator" is like the "meritocracy". Even though the term is being
used as a kind of analogy, it does such violence to the normal meaning
of the English word that it's hard to even have a sensible conversation
about it.
3) The Struts PMC currently oversees Shale, Tiles, and SAF 1. WebWork
is not the only project here.
Until recently, SAF 1 was simply what was called "Struts". The status of
the Struts developers is based on the existence of that codebase.
My point was that, when they accept that Webwork is simply better, as
evidenced by calling it SAF 2, when Struts itself is SAF 1, this means
that the Webwork people did superior work.
People who did inferior work overseeing or managing the people who did
the better work, does not, prima facie, correspond to the basic logic
and structure of what anybody would call a meritocracy.
When people who did inferior work remain the managers of a project (and
ostensibly manage the people who did the better work) and this is by
virtue of incumbency or tenure, you don't have a meritocracy.
And all you have is a strawman. Pay attention to how things actually
are run around here.
I've been watching.
The PMC doesn't "manage" other committers.
Maybe they don't. However, I think the 'M' in PMC stands for
"management". But okay, the PMC doesn't actually do any managing, the
incubator doesn't do anything that anybody sensible would call
"incubating". The "merit" in the meritocracy has nothing to do with the
quality of anybody's work...
Fine, be my guest....
Really, when people accuse one of not understanding the "Apache Way", it
may be a kind of compliment. Frankly, I would be automatically quite
suspicious of anybody who asserts that they really understand all this
stuff. Now, okay, the projects that want to get branded as Apache
projects, the people involved have to demonstrate that they "get" this
Apache Way, but that's more like having to agree with some lunatics
because it's the easier path.
"Yeah, I get it, I really dig the Apache Way. Cripes, I don't know how
we actually developed all this code we developed outside ASF when we
didn't even have the Apache Way, though somehow we did. But now I see
the error of our ways. Yessah, I see the light."
"Praise be the Lawd! Hallelujah!"
In
practice, any committer's -1 is as meaningful as a PMC members. In
fact, if a contributor who is not a committer has something to say
about the code they've contributed, then the PMC will respect that
too. In fact, i'm fairly sure these principles are actually codified
somewhere in the "Apache scriptures". Them that do the work make the
decisions. That's a meritocracy, if you ask me.
No comment...
Oh, and i seem to recall reading once in a Jakarta discussion that the
ideal situation to the ASF is if all committers for a project are on
the PMC that oversees the project. Does that sound like it has
anything to do with who does better work? hmm.
I dunno, but it doesn't have anything to do with what is happening in
Struts, because in Struts, not all the committers are in the PMC...
So, actually, seriously applying the principles outlined about
meritocracy would necessarily imply an extreme shake-up in the Struts
project. However, in a typically ass backwards way, the "Apache Way"
stuff is being used as a rhetorical instrument to quell dissent --
"don't rock the boat". As another example of ass backwards rhetoric, in
his "This has gone too far" post, Don Brown implies that the reason for
a lack of forward progress is the presence of that discussion. But that
is 180ยบ away. That and other such discussions came about precisely
because of the lack of forward progress. The causality is in completely
the other direction.
Of course, it's clear why there's an attempt to shut down any discussion
that casts doubt on the way in which certain people are club members and
others are not. It has nothing to do with any "Apache Way". It can't be
openly discussed because, in reality, the incumbent managers of the
project do not have a leg to stand on. If they accepted the basic logic
of a meritocracy, Don and Ted and the rest would have to just resign and
let new people in.
If they accepted your personally expedient definition of a
meritocracy, then maybe.
I'm sorry, Daniel, you are a very confused individual. I am most
certainly not the one promulgating a "personally expedient definition of
meritocracy"....
But Apache doesn't care what Jonathan
Revusky thinks, because Jonathan Revusky doesn't do a lick of work for
the ASF community (much like me).
No, that's a false symmetry. I don't work within ASF, but I contribute
to the overall space. The FreeMarker template engine is a core
dependency in Webwork, which will eventually be SAF 2. Many people also
use SAF 1 in conjunction with FreeMarker.
I am making political comments of a certain nature about a space in
which I have made significant contributions. This is, I think, quite
different from your situation, Daniel.
It is you and i who have no legs to
stand on here. Don and Ted do tons of work, and therefore have all
the legs they need and more. Just pay attention to this list for a
week and that will be obvious.
Well, they and the others on the Struts PMC are in a position where they
have to answer certain questions regarding the lack of technical
progress on Struts 1.x IMO. That they do a lot of work themselves is
almost completely beside the point. An incompetent manager typically
will end up having to do a lot more work than a competent one. The
competent one manages to get other people involved and delegates work to
them, where the incompetent one ends up having to do everything himself.
Don and Ted may do all kinds of work, but Struts development stagnated.
Maybe they could have structured things better to get other people
involved who would carry things forward.
But anyway, even if they've put in a herculean effort, things must be
judged by the objective results. The objective results in the case of
Struts 1.x are really quite poor. And that is where the basic logic and
structure of meritocracy really would kick in -- that is, if this really
was being run as a meritocracy....
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
