I think a lot of us have been talking past each other on the various lists, and so I thought I would try and summarize the situation as I understand it.
In the beginning, the Foundation was created to sponsor one or more open source projects. Each project was to be managed by a Project Management Committee. Each PMC is overseen by a board officer. The PMC is generally made up of the senior Committers to the project. Each PMC is to have a Chair, and the Chair is to be a Member of the Foundation. The Chair is an administrative officer and has the authority to take decisive action when necessary. The Jakarta PMC was created as an umbrella for nascent Java products. Today, we might call it an incubator. The original idea was that the Jakarta subprojects would one day grown into Apache Projects. But the Jakarta community grew so quickly and so well that we have lost sight of the original objective. As it stands, the Jakarta PMC is filling the role of a board and each subproject's Committers are acting as a PMC. This is probably a good idea for young groups still learning The Way. But many of the Jakarta subprojects are all-grown-up now. Like any good parent, the Jakarta PMC should start encouraging the mature subprojects to leave the nest. This will mean that the nine Board officers will be the contact for more Projects. But each of these Projects will have its own Chair, and that Chair will be a Member of the Foundation too. The other members of the Committee will be the senior Committers to the Project, and hopefully the Project's officer and Chair will recruit more Foundation Members from each Project. More importantly, the Project's PMC will have both the knowledge and the authority to deal with things like IP issues. Today, Jakarta has Committers with the knowledge of problems, but without the authority to take decisive action. Conversely, we have a PMC with the authority to take action, but without the knowledge to apply that authority with good conscious. Jakarta is no longer a place of "little things". We sponsor several important products and continue to attract others. The people who created these products and their communities should be encouraged to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Apache giants, like httpd and PHP. The Foundation's Board may need to undergo some refactoring to deal with handling more Projects. But, given everything else we have accomplished, I believe this is yet-another achievable goal. It's been said that a PMC is not a website and mailing list. This is true. But it is also true that a virtual community *is* a website and mailing list. As Jakarta subprojects become Apache Projects, it is likely that some PMCs may wish to keep the Project hosted at Jakarta, or at least linked through its home page. This would serve the interests of the Community quite well, since the Jakarta products really do work well together. For that, both the Jakarta PMC and its legion of Committers are to be commended. -Ted.
