Aaron Mulder wrote:
Dims,
Please don't imply that the PMC chair has sent an at-all useful
message.
Perhaps -- and evidently -- not useful to you, but it appears
that others have caught on.
(Why is the PMC different today than 4 weeks ago? I don't know --
you have made the first announcement of this just today. What's the
message?)
'Why': because it was evident that some of the PMC members
were experiencing serious conflicts of interest, and it
appeared that they were being resolved to the project's
detriment.
'The message': No particular message; their project responsibilities
shouldn't have to complete unfavourably with their work or
personal desires, and now don't.
You in your e-mail right here have said what you though went wrong
and how you think it could be corrected in the future. One of my
biggest complaints with the board and the PMC chair is that they have
done neither.
Untrue. There were extended discussions in the PMC. You
voluntarily resigned from the PMC, and wouldn't reconsider
even when I explicitly asked you. That you have thereby
deprived yourself of a source of information and excluded
yourself from some project-related meta-discussions is a
condition you have chosen. To more directly address
your remark: just because you are unaware of a fact does not
make it nonexistent.
In conversation with the PMC chair I practically begged him to tell
me I had done something wrong WRT the JavaOne meeting and what should
be done differently next time. He declined.
Let me quote some of the exchanges, interspersed from the
back-and-forth thread:
=======
Aaron wrote:
What's the point of posting the invitation to the dev list?
I responded:
I asked you to post the invitation because there is some confusion
about it, and seeing the actual message would clear that up.
Aaron wrote:
I'm especially confused by the implication that any development has
been done in private. What development is that?
I responded:
That's part of the confusion surrounding the invitation.
Aaron wrote:
On whose part?
I responded:
Primarily on the part of people who heard about it but weren't
included even though they're on the project, and others who heard
about it who *aren't* on the project.
Aaron wrote:
Also, who has accused who of intimidation and how?
I responded:
People who feel intimidated don't speak up about it until/unless they
feel comfortable. It's not for me to reveal their information; they
can do so themselves on the dev list. If they feel comfortable doing
so.
Aaron wrote:
And why is there concern over a gathering of friends at a conference?
I responded:
Because there are concerns that it was rather more than that. For
one thing, you don't typically get corporate sponsors for 'gatherings
of friends.' And people charged with oversight of an open project
have to be sensitive to what they do that relates to the project.
Aaron wrote:
It should be pretty clear from the invitation there was no secret
development nor intimidation of non-invited project members.
[*** Note that it certainly couldn't be clear, one way or the other,
to anyone who hadn't *seen* the invitation; hence the desire to
make it available to people so they could draw their own
conclusions from it about any concerns they might have had.]
I responded:
The Monday meeting and the development model change are separate
issues. The 'intimidation' aspect has nothing to do with the
invitation. The 'secret development' aspect comes in when some
committers are invited to participate and others are deliberately
excluded.
Aaron wrote:
Further, since you have not shared any specific concerns regarding
intimidation or secret development with me, I'm going to assume there
are none that are pertinent to me. Not trying to be a jerk here, but
no wrongdoing has been pointed out to me, so my plan is to not lose
sleep over what didn't happen.
I responded:
That's cool.
[*** Note that this is an unsatisfactory end to this issue;
I said I wasn't going to name names, and Aaron said he was
going to regard that as meaning he wasn't involved. Not
necessarily a valid conclusion to draw.]
=======
I asked him to provide concrete examples of behavior of any kind that
he thought needed to be changed. He declined. I think the message
you provided below "If I had known about the meeting I would have
done this... What Apache projects usually do is this... All it
would have taken was this..." was extremely useful. Please, please
encourage the PMC chair to take this approach in the future.
That approach has been taken, but you seem unwilling to
acknowledge it. The message is: Apache Geronimo is a
collaborative effort. Committers are peers. Cliques
are inappropriate, as are significant changes made
unilaterally and without community input.
Is that message sufficiently clear?
--
#ken P-|}
Ken Coar, Sanagendamgagwedweinini http://Ken.Coar.Org/
Author, developer, opinionist http://Apache-Server.Com/
"Millennium hand and shrimp!"
