On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 4:12 PM David Nalley <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 3:25 PM Sam Ruby <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Resending with the correct subject line. Please respond to this > > thread, not the previous one. > > > > - Sam Ruby > > > > On Tue, Jun 18, 2019 at 3:20 PM Sam Ruby <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > We've had a number of discussions on a number of lists. This email is > > > part one of three of my attempts to untangle the discussions. > > > > > > Early indications are that the committee is interested in proposing a > > > pilot Outreachy program (disagree? comment on this thread: [1]), and > > > that the board will require that the initial pilot be limited to > > > projects that support the ASF's mission and are not competitive products > > > in their own right. So things like Gump and Whimsy and Infrastructure > > > and ComDev and Labs and perhaps Incubator. (disagree? comment on this > > > thread [2]). Another potential constraint is to limit the budget > > > approval to the amount of targeted donations received. > > > > > > Does the committee view those constraints as workable? And if so, does > > > the committee have ideas on projects. > > > > > > One project proposed in whimsy incubator support for developing and > > > reviewing incubator reports (modeled loosely as an open to all > > > committers version of the board agenda tool). Does the committee view > > > this as a reasonable project given the constraints described above? > > > > > > Are there other proposals? > > > > > People are free to ignore what I have to say, particularly since I'm > unlikely to be doing the work. > > I think that starting with projects is making an assumption that we > aren't quite ready to make. I'd argue that our primary constraint > today isn't money, approval, interns, or projects, but mentors; and > that encouraging potential mentors to stand up we can then identify > potential projects. Yes, there may be artificial constraints whereby > we say that Whimsy is an appropriate project while Tomcat isn't, and > that's fine, but without a suitable mentor, Whimsy isn't feasible > either.
We have a number of chicken and egg problems that need to be resolved here. But to make things simple: if the board approves this and I can't find any other mentor, I would be interested subject to my being able to shuffle some of my workload around. I've expressed my preference for Shane and/or Matt to take this on (Shane has a fair amount of experience with the whimsy codebase has indicated that he is interested in mentoring new ASF women members so perhaps it is not a huge stretch to being open to mentoring new women committers? Matt has experience with outreachy and interest in the whimsy code base). If either of them take this on, I would be glad to support them. I suspect that it is premature to ask either of them to make a commitment as it is entirely unclear what (if anything) the board will accept in this area. - Sam Ruby
