Any comments? Anyone? Option 1: start a vote to retire the podling and move the project into your own repository. Option 2: keep things as-is for a few months and re-assess.
I'd say Option 2 requires a minimum of 3 people explicitly saying that they want to continue trying and contributing. On Sun, Sep 23, 2018 at 8:13 PM Davor Bonaci <da...@apache.org> wrote: > 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.) >
