Thanks Yaniv for your comments. - After the release of 0.2.0 the community became very quiet. I think > that at this point in the life of the project it is natural, as we all > doing this in our free time and the release was a major effort that all > of > us (after talking to members in the community) had to compensate for in > our > day jobs and families. > With that said, we shouldn't have gone so quiet. I think we can all > agree this is not acceptable for so long (if at all). >
Not sure I agree: it is not natural for projects in the Incubator to be quiet. It does happen to projects that are getting obsolete/irrelevant, often after many years as TLPs. The release usually *increases* activity around the project as new users come, ask questions, start contributing, etc. On the other hand, totally fine for people to go quiet. The problem isn't around anybody going quiet, but the fact of nobody new arriving. Is there any evidence of any usage of the release? Anybody hitting any problem? Any lack of documentation? Any bugfixes? That's the core of the problem. > - It is very critical at this point to grow the community. Going back to > my first point, as long as we are such a small community, efforts like > releasing a version will set us back, and the last release is a good > example for that danger. > Not sure I agree: releases usually pick up the activity, pick up new users, as new features now make the project more attractive. I don't think I've ever seen an argument where "releasing a version sets us back". Especially the *first* one. - Grow the community. BTW I think this is one reason we should consider > staying an Apache project, I think that with the release, we should also > shift some focus to growing the community. This is an issue I see other > projects struggling with, this includes TLPs such as Apache Arrow (in a > recent thread on their dev list) and I don't think there is one answer > on > how to do it, and I spent some time on other lists to see if they have > solutions. I think we can do many things to fix this, and it's more of a > trial and error process for most projects. Things we can (and should > start > doing immediately) includes doing more public presentations (and I have > to > give a shout-out @Nadav Har Tzvi <nadavhart...@gmail.com> that > presented > in two conferences recently), write blog posts, and we should all invest > time in doing so. But one thing we also need to do is actively looking > for > more contributors. If anyone here has someone they think is a good fit, > let's try to get them onboard. > Outreach (blogs, talks, etc.) can help, but they help you *scale*. I think the project hasn't demonstrated early user fit -- and trying to scale before establishing that often doesn't yield results. For example, if you were to throw Amaterasu in front of 1000 people, how many would join the community? If only a few, it is probably a bad idea to do it. (I worry it is less than a few.) The problem is likely with the user fit, and can be solved only by user development -- most of which often happens before scaling, before building the community, and before joining the Incubator. It is really, really, really hard to build the community before early user fit. I think that the next few months are more about staying in the incubating > or not, it is do-or-die for Amaterasu. We need to fix the situation so I > wouldn't rush in this situation to consider retiring quite yet. > I'm totally fine with leaving things as-is for a few more months. But, I don't think it is realistic to expect changes to the degree necessary to graduate. As a result, I think you can use *your time* better. * * * I'm really sorry to be the messenger of bad news. I don't want to paint Amaterasu (or your work) in any bad way. I do want you and the project to be most successful as possible. Please note that I don't gain anything by driving this conversation. In fact, I lose a lot. Time is a precious resource of everyone -- and I'd like to make sure that the time *you* have for the project is spent in a way that is likely to yield results, not trying to achieve various ASF goals that may not achievable. (If this is not obvious now, I trust that over time direct feedback and tough conversations will be appreciated, instead of letting you waste time for something unrealistic -- which is what most people in my shoes would do.)
