This is a fantastic thread; great to clarify if there are doubts and
great opportunity to learn how various projects at Apache operate. We
can definitely put this up in the wiki.
Q. Do the terms of http://www.apache.org/dev/pmc.html forbid projects
from discussing "nominees for project, project committee or Foundation
membership" in public?
Not according to Ant, WebServices, Cocoon, Tapestry, Tomcat, and a
handful of other Apache projects that discuss and vote on committers
on dev@ and have been doing so with ASF Board knowledge for years. It
seems that particular section is more about giving projects a list of
things that are OK to be discussed privately as many projects have had
a problems being too closed and discussing too many things on private
lists that should not be there.
We're likely the first project to take it to the level of "project
committee", but hopefully not the last :)
Q. Whose votes count?
Apache requires a minimum of three +1 PMC votes which have legal
significance to Apache as a corporation. That said, all votes from
the community are significant to the project and decision making and
any -1 is cause for pause and discussion. We frequently encourage and
welcome votes from anyone in the community regardless of status.
Q. Voting on people: Is it hard to vote -1 in public / Can someone get
their feelings hurt ?
Yes and yes. Voting in public requires greater care and sensitivity
on behalf of everyone; the vote proposer, the voters, and the votee.
Prior to voting the proposer should create several opportunities for
feedback, hopefully positive and constructive. Community members with
concerns should get involved early and actively mentor potential
committers, taking opportunities for feedback as queues to get
involved, encourage, and work through areas where they see said person
needs more help. The contributor should actively solicit and welcome
all help and feedback and encouragement and feel welcome to give it in
return. Do not rush; all parties (proposer, voters, and votee) have
work to do in grooming contributors, etc., and that work takes time.
Votes that result in one or more -1s should not be seen as a failure
of any one individual and instead be seen as an opportunity for all
parties (proposer, voters, and votee) to make improvements, be more
active, and give the process more time.
Ok, so I *think* that's all the open topics. If it isn't missing
anything major and generally captures the ideas of the group, I'll
throw it into the wiki and people can go in and make any wording
tweaks they like as well as any other cleanup. I'll give it a while
for lazy consensus before doing so.
-David
On Jul 12, 2009, at 9:03 AM, Jeff Genender wrote:
Changing the topic, so the vote is not polluted by this discussion.
David J, thanks for your response, and I am also very interested in
David B's response. I am certainly not trying to stir the pot (so
to speak), just concrete clarification which I think needs to be on
the OpenEJB wiki. This question had come up before on the mailing
lists and it seems nebulous as to the rules for the project.
Comments in-line below...
On Jul 11, 2009, at 3:10 PM, David Jencks wrote:
On Jul 11, 2009, at 4:38 AM, Jeff Genender wrote:
David,
Voting as a committer, Jon certainly gets my +1 to be a PMC
individual. But this vote seems strange whereby committers are
voting on PMC membership.
Can you be a bit more specific on the voting of people into the
PMC? OpenEJB seems to have a different set of rules and it would
be good to clarify the position... perhaps on the wiki somewhere?
Most PMC's vote for entry to PMC. Here I see a vote on dev and
there has not been clarification as to who gets to vote and
whether it be private/public, so its a bit confusing to me.
According to this link, it has a set of rules as to how things are
done:
http://www.apache.org/dev/pmc.html
It is clear it says the PMC should be the ones to privately
discuss and vote on nominees for project, project committee, etc.
How do you propose to handle sensitive topics like discussion of a
committer out in the open? 99/100 times the discussion and vote
will be clean, but that 1/100 time where -1s and heavy sensitive
discussion ensues, bad feelings can become a issue.
I read that as saying that as little as possible should be on the
private list and that some possible allowed topics are XYZ but that
if the project wants to discuss them in public it is free to do so.
We certainly run a risk of bad feelings if acrimonious debate
erupts over someones PMC membership. Personally I feel that the
openejb community is so amazingly open and friendly that the risks
are negligible.
I read the part about little as possible (and something I heavily
agree with). But I am not convinced completely that it says that if
you want to discuss the *private* matters in public to feel free to
do so. Perhaps the policy is confusing.... I read it like this:
"Policies
--------
Terms in this section as used as per RFC 2119"
RFC 2119 defines "SHALL" as :
"1. MUST This word, or the terms "REQUIRED" or "SHALL", mean that
the definition is an absolute requirement of the specification."
The PMC document goes on to say:
"All Project Management Committees SHALL restrict their
communication on private mailing lists to issues that cannot be
discussed in public such as:
* nominees for project, project committee or Foundation membership"
I think the potential confusion lies heavily at the bottom of the
document which states:
"Where Should Project Business Be Discussed?
Read the *policy*."
and it ends with:
"Some projects use the main development list for discussing these
matters. Others have a dedicated list (traditionally general) for
the discussion of pmc and project-wide topics which do not need to
be confidential."
So it seems it is most certainly confusing (The SHALL (must) as
policy and you must follow the policy, then ending with "do whatever
you want"). However, the clarifying part, IMHO, states "for the
discussion of PMC and project-wide topics which do not need to be
confidential".
What is "confidential"? I read confidential means "discussion of
candidates for committership and PMC". But maybe that is just me
and I really don't know ;-)
I am really bringing this up because, just like you, I have very
serious doubts anyone brought up for committer/PMC would be -1'd,
but it can still be a sensitive topic since being open will quash
anybody's ability to be open/honest about someone due to possible
hurt feelings (although I believe your using the adjective of
"acrimonious" is a bit strong since bitterness is not a requirement
for wanting to discuss contribution openly without retribution). I
guess its a risk a project can take, but its nice to know it as
project policy, and hopefully written somewhere. I personally would
like to know the rules since it clearly departs from the norm at
Apache.
clearing up whose votes count for pmc membership might be good
though :-)
+1!!! ;-)
Jeff
thanks
david jencks
Do you have thoughts on how this will be handled as well as a good
clarification for OpenEJB's rules regarding voting, etc that seem
to move itself away from the way things are normally done at Apache?
Thanks in advance for the clarification,
Jeff
On Jul 10, 2009, at 7:28 PM, David Blevins wrote:
Per the "Adding Jon to the PMC" discussion:
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/openejb-dev/200907.mbox/%[email protected]%3e
Here's the vote for adding Jonathan Gallimore to the PMC so he
can assist in providing legal oversight for the project in
general, but more specifically the Eclipse plugin which needs
more oversight.
Vote will be open for at least 72 hours -- likely far beyond that
as we tend to be a 4-5 days kind of group :)
Here's my +1
--
David
