On 9/15/16, 12:34 AM, "Christofer Dutz" <christofer.d...@c-ware.de> wrote:
>Just to add my 50ct to this discussion. > > >Justin did bring up the issue. He even brought it when we were first >discussing starting a release. The discussion sort of dried out without a >resolution, then when it came to the release, he mentioned it again. But >again no action was taken. So I too see a complaint about PMCs coming up >with such stuff in the last minute as not valid. > > >ASF is community over code, but the one thing the ASF deals with is >protecting us as developers as well as our users from licensing issues. >It's this extra protection and care that distinguishes Apache releases >from the typical Github projects. This is why in every bank or insurance >company I was working in, there never was a discussion about using ASF >software, if it's not ASF however you have to jump quite a lot of >obstacles in order to use a library. I remember quite some rounds with >legal and quality assurance people. > > >The ASF has earned that trust because we have people in our communities >that care about this sort of stuff. Having some legal caretaker is one of >the coolest thing a project can have, cause it lets us coding-monkeys do >what we like to do and we can somehow be lazy and trust that someone is >taking care of this. I hate legal stuff. To me it's just getting in my >way ... sort of as others think working on build-, code-quality or >writing documentation should be done by others. > > >We have a pretty heterogenous community. I know I'm definitely the >build-monkey, Justin's the legal-monkey, we have a lot of code-monkeys. >Why not use the specialities of each other instead of complaining about >it? I know I have to work on my side about not ranting about >code-quality, for example, but I'm trying ... hope you guys didn't notice >any recent rants from my side ;-) That's exactly it, Chris. We do appreciate Justin helping make sure that the big-ticket items regarding licensing are in order, and we appreciate you trying to improve code-quality, but if your "itch" is a higher priority to you than to others, you have to choose the right words and time to encourage the community to change. Looks like you are wise enough not to try to get us to stop and resolve code-quality issues just before the release. But, code quality is more objective in that there are tools that say you got it right or not, and you can scratch that itch yourself without impacting others. This isn't true for many licensing issues. The answer isn't always clear, and often the message feels more like Justin is telling someone else to do the work instead proposing "hey, I think we should apply this patch to this file". And again, we have to consider community energy and time vs the ASF's reputation. For all of these recent issues agh we did not resolve, pushing their resolution off to the next release will not harm the ASF's reputation but has a good chance of helping build the community. > > >If we hadn't let the discussion about Justin's findings die when he >brought it up and had resolved the problem instead, the problem would >have been solved. So how about us addressing the issues Justin has and in >case of a "I think this way, you think that way", let's involve legal and >have these things settled once and for all? > This is a puzzle I still haven't solved. Folks like Justin, who are spread across multiple ASF projects and have limited time, may not be able to keep the discussion going in a timely fashion. If you look at the recent issues, I generally respond to Justin's comments, then the clock starts ticking. How long should we wait for his response? Silence often means consent. I think it is better for the community for us to wait a little bit, but I can see when Justin is active on other Incubator issues so I know he isn't off-the-grid, so then we should just keep on going. Then the question becomes: when Justin does return to the discussion and is not satisfied but it is now late in the game, what is the best way for him to respond? If it were me, I would say "hey, I'm still not happy with this, so let's revisit in the next release" and not vote at all, but it is true that he is certainly free to keep voting -1 on our releases. -Alex
