Mark, First of all it is me who should be blamed. I didn't realize it is necessary to inform such kind of activity to the whole community.
It was good will to evangelize both Dubbo and the Apache way to the university students in China. Thought these students in fact are now interns in Alibaba, we do hope they could bring the experience on Dubbo and Apache open source back to their classmates when they finishes internship. In fact, as the mentor of these interns, we gave the speech to them on why it is so important to run a open source project in Apache way, and how easy they can involve in one open source project, in this case, certainly it is Dubbo. Our further plan is to organize wider activity to cover more university students, not only limited to Alibaba's interns, something similar like google's summer of code. We believe this practice helps to promote both Dubbo and Apache foundation in China, and we plan to do it. Unfortunately, it is regret that we ourselves forgot to run this project in the Apache way, and there is no excuse. We will bear in mind to forecast any plan and initial the discussion in the community at the first time. We still need time to get used to this principle. We will try our best to stick to it but pls. alarm us when you observe something goes wrong, as you always do. ps, this activity for the interns will last for the next two weeks. Your sincerely, -Ian. On Thu, Aug 16, 2018 at 7:17 PM Mark Thomas <[email protected]> wrote: > On 15/08/18 14:09, Jerrick Zhu wrote: > > Hi, mark > > > > Sorry for disturbing all of you. > > No need to apologise. The additional traffic wasn't, and isn't, a concern. > > My concern was that it appeared that there was some sort of organisation > going on that the project wasn't aware of. > > A secondary concern was that multiple teams seemed to be writing PRs for > the same issue. > > > This is an activity for students to participate in open source project, > > it's held by department named BaiJi, Alibaba. They came us and asked us > > If by us, you mean "the Alibaba employees who work on Dubbo" then that > request should have been redirected to the Dubbo community - which means > the dev@ mailing list. > > If by us, you mean "the Dubbo community" then I don't recall seeing that > request on this list. > > My concern here is that folks appear to have mixed up their "employee" > hat and their "Apache committer" hat. It is easy to do and so is > something to keep in mind. A good general rule is that whenever you find > yourself discussing anything related to the project at work (or anywhere > that isn't the project mailing lists), ask yourself "Why isn't this on > the dev@ list?". In my experience it is nearly always the case that the > conversation needs to move to the mailing list. > > To provide some examples: > > I am employed by Pivotal and Pivotal employs the committers on the > Spring Boot project which embeds Apache Tomcat. From time to time I > receive a work e-mail, slack message or similar along the lines of "We > think we have found a bug in Tomcat. Can you look at it?". My response > is invariably "Sure. Please create an issue in the Tomcat issue tracker > and I'll take a look." > > I also receive direct email from Tomcat users asking for help with an > issue they are having. This happens often enough that I have a e-mail > template for the reply that directs them to ask their question on the > users@ mailing list. > > > to > > provide some simple issues that students can fully engage OS project, and > > we agreed. We also wants more guys to join Dubbo, to contribute. > > Please be aware that some people read "guys" as referring exclusively to > men. I recommend that you try to use a more inclusive term. I tend to > use "folks". "people" usually works as an alternative as well. > > I do think this is an excellent way to increase interest in Dubbo and > expand the community. Please don't take anything I am saying as > discouragement of this effort. I am fully supportive of it. > > > Now we have noticed that the PRs came together and generate so many > emails, > > which had disturbed you. We will consider other more effective ways, such > > as one team fix issues separated from each other. > > It bears repeating. The volume of email was not a concern. It was the > appearance of some sort of organisation of project effort going on that > the project community was not aware of. That rings alarms bells for me > in my role as a mentor. > > Regarding separating issues between teams, there are pros and cons of > multiple teams trying to fix the same issue. The work might be > duplicated but, equally, they might learn from the different approaches > that the other teams took. I don't have a view one way or the other. All > I suggest (and this is more for the people managing the students) is > that the issue is thought about to ensure that the students get the best > possible experience. > > > Do you guys have any other suggestions? > > More of a comment than a suggestion. Given the volume of activity on the > notifications@ list, the activity on dev@ seems rather low. I'd expect > to see more discussion, more commentary, more planning given the > activity levels. It is possible that this discussion, commentary and > planning just isn't happening but I do find myself wondering if it is > happening off-list. If that is the case, it *really* needs to start > moving on to dev@ list. > > Cheers, > > Mark >
