Conor MacNeill wrote: > > I guess I don't have the full context here. When Roy says, > "these projects aren't working", I have to ask to what he > is referring. How and for whom are these projects not > working? Is this coming from the project committers, from > the PMC itself, from users?
This may help decode the statement: Project=Jakarta. SubProject or CodeBase=jakarta-ant. "Whoa Bessie" and "[MY_OPINION] Tomcat 3.x" threads in the Ant and Tomcat mailing lists were indications of deeper problems. At the time of Roy's statement, it was not clear how these two issues were going to be resolved. > In the end I guess we are going to need to understand the role > of the PMC. When the guidelines say the PMC "is responsible > for setting overall project direction", what does that really > mean in practice? How does it do carry out that role? Remember, again, the term project in this context means Jakarta. A bit of history. Apache existed before there was an ASF or PMCs. These came later. While they carry specific legal obligations, in my opinion, one must always remember why they were created. The are mere artifacts, required by the external society in which this community is immersed. The sole reason for their existence is to foster these communities. The answers that Brian and Roy gave in the PMC meeting indicated to me that they deeply understand this. Guiding principles include pushing down decisions whever possible, and the ownership of the name and direction of a subproject is to be determined by the expressed wishes of a majority of committers. As the new chairman, I plan to make the PMC simultaneously more visible and less obtrusive. You will see more discussions held out in the open on the general mailing list instead of in private on the PMC mailing lists. And more focus on issues such as the ones that Peter Donald raised in his recent contribution to this thread - in essense what do we (Jakarta) want to be when we grow up? The tangible results will be in the acquisition of new code bases and perhaps some culling of existing ones. Hopefully this helps. - Sam Ruby
