I partially agree with Dirk's opinion. A very large PMC where people don't feel a direct need to participate is wrong.
That's the reason I think 'active participants who volunteer for PMC' is the right solution. If someone doesn't feel 'active' in jakarta or doesn't have the time or wish to act as a PMC member - he should be 'emeritus' or shouldn't be an active pmc member. If someone is active in jakarta he probably has all the reasons to be active in the PMC as well - because most issues will affect him. A license problem in a project that you use is a license problem for your project too. And the motivation to solve this is pretty strong. The process should be as objective as possible and bottom-up driven - the number doesn't matter that much as long as everyone is motivated and affected. If the people in PMC are only a subset - it is very likely the 'hierarchy' issues will affect us. People might feel their membership in the PMC gives them extra power on day-to-day project activities. Or we may have extra politics on the selection. Costin On Mon, 2002-11-04 at 09:51, Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote: > > > On Mon, 4 Nov 2002, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote: > > > Can you tell me what's wrong with a PMC which is almost silent, is > > composed by committers and manages just one codebase? sounds like an > > ideal situation for a PMC. > > >From that perspective nothing. Assuming that all is well... and the > silence does not mask a certain sort of inertia. > > However bear in mind that HTTP is small, has very easy and almost > 'objective' external requirements in the form of RFCs and had a relatively > small code base. Even the rewrite of 1.3 to 2.0 to address some fairly > well known issues is/was relatively simple compared to some of the major > engineering and dust being through around elsewhere. > > Now if this would be all - no worries. However I personally think that the > transition from that one HTTP crowd to one for HTTP, one for APR, etc, etc > was already showing that something is a bit amiss in the scaling; even > though the group of peopple is nearly overlapping; long term goal, feature > creep in APR, versioning issues between APR/HTTP and even getting release > notes out with some sort of coordination with php/perl treading-aint-work > warnings, required a fair amount of noise in order to get the coordination > they required. > > I cannot help to think that a much smaller group of people across those > projects whould have done better than the current cabal keeping things on > track simply by being a smaller focal point who know that they cannot > dodge the issue. > > However it is not here where I see the major issues exposed right now - > but when scaling up and over to: > > > > It is the jakarta/xml ones which worry me; as they are so much bigger and > > > deal with some much more code; a lot of which does not have a nice RFC or > > > clear set of requirements to easily compare options or provide guidance. > > > > Yes, many agree with you in this vision and I think Sam's proposal goes > > in the direction of creating an evolutionary escape path or, at least, a > > way to have spread the word about things for those who won't make it > > here on [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Right. > > > Moreover, I don't think a PMC with a hundred of members will behave any > > worse than a PMC with just a few of them. > > And I do think it is; as a PMC of a hundred members will never act quicker > or more focused/quick as a group of 5-10 people recruited out of those 100 > who have a task (say investigate a license issue) and know that there are > a 100 people looking at them to get it done. > > Now having said that; perhaps we need to cycle those 5-10 people much more > ofter; as I agree something is amiss. But I think making them a 100 is not > the right track - and that is where I see the main flaw. > > And I also think that too large a cabal will simply create 'chair's whose > job is much bigger than a volunteer can handle. It is that task I'd like > to split among 5-10 people. As ultimately the board will continue to chase > chairs to get things done. And it is easier for a chair to prod a few > people nearby than to galvanize the populus as a whole for the sort > of boring tasks asked. > > > I really don't think that it can be worse than we have today, so +1 from me. > > Aye - as I said - short term it is our best option - I think; and if I > where a jakarta-head I'd certainly give it a +0 or +0.5. > > Dw > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >
