some remarks on "what a sub-project is?" taken from my experience working on this exact topic for https://projects.apache.org/
first: see facts at https://projects.apache.org/projects.html?pmc for a complete list of projects (as documented by PMCs, then there are a lot of software that is not described) grouped by PMCs. I came to the conclusion that this is a question of semantic around "project" term, with 2 competing visions at ASF: - either you talk of TLPs + sub-projects - or you talk about committees + projects After trying both visions for https://projects.apache.org/ , which started on the "TLP + sub-projects" vision because TLP is pretty much used by all of us, I finally preferred "committees + projects" since it avoided the question of classifying projects in Top Level Projects and sub-projects, with the bad impression it puts on "sub"-ones, and the fact that in some committees, there is no project that is more "top" or "sub": see Commons or Logging. But for some committees, there is really a main project and other projects are more like extensions or plugin: see Ant or Velocity IMHO, talking about committees and projects is the best way to avoid bad passion that comes from "TLPs + sub-projects" vision. With that terms, your question of "merging 2 TLPs" becomes "merging 2 committees, ie their communities, and putting 2 projects under the management of this merged committee": IMHO, the description is more verbose but the debate is less passionated and focused on the main question = is this really the same community, then that should be managed by one committee only? I don't have any opinion on Kafka and Samza case: I just hope these explanations will help for the discussion. Regards, Hervé Le dimanche 12 juillet 2015 22:37:55 Jay Kreps a écrit : > Hey board members, > > There is a longish thread on the Apache Samza mailing list on the > relationship between Kafka and Samza and whether they wouldn't make a lot > more sense as a single project. This raised some questions I was hoping to > get advice on. > > Discussion thread (warning: super long, I attempt to summarize relevant > bits below): > http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/samza-dev/201507.mbox/%3CCABYbY7d_-> > jcxj7fizsjuebjedgbep33flyx3nrozt0yeox9...@mail.gmail.com%3E > > Anyhow, some people thought "Apache has lot's of sub-projects, that would > be a graceful way to step in the right direction". At that point others > popped up and said, "sub-projects are discouraged by the board". > > I'm not sure if we understand technically what a subproject is, but I think > it means a second repo/committership under the same PMC. > > A few questions: > - Is that what a sub-project is? > - Are they discouraged? If so, why? > - Assuming it makes sense in this case what is the process for making one? > - Putting aside sub-projects as a mechanism what are examples where > communities merged successfully? We were pointed towards Lucene/SOLR. Are > there others? > > Relevant background info: > - Samza depends on Kafka, but not vice versa > - There is some overlap in committers but not extensive (3/11 Samza > committers are also Kafka committers) > > Thanks for the advice! > > -Jay
