Last one for the day.

Everyone, as I said clearly, I was "not alluding to anything fishy in 
practice", I was describing how things go wrong in such an environment. Sandy's 
email lays down some of these problems.

Assigning a JIRA in other projects is not a reservation. It is a clear 
intention of working on design or code.

You don't need a new convention of signaling. In almost all other projects, it 
is assigning tickets - that's how it is used.

+Vinod

On Apr 22, 2015, at 2:37 PM, Patrick Wendell <pwend...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sandy - I definitely agree with that. We should have a convention of
> signaling someone intends to work - for instance by commenting on the
> JIRA and we should document this on the contribution guide. The nice
> thing about having that convention is that multiple people can say
> they are going to work on something, whereas only one person can be
> given the assignee slot on a JIRA.
> 
> 
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 2:33 PM, Nicholas Chammas
> <nicholas.cham...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> To repeat what Patrick said (literally):
>> 
>> If an issue is "assigned" to person X, but some other person Y submits
>> a great patch for it, I think we have some obligation to Spark users
>> and to the community to merge the better patch. So the idea of
>> reserving the right to add a feature, it just seems overall off to me.
>> 
>> No-one in the Spark community dictates who gets to do work. When an issue is
>> assigned to someone in JIRA, it's either because a) they did the work and
>> the issue is now resolved, or b) they are signaling to others that they are
>> working on it.
>> 
>> In the case of b), nothing stops other people from working on the issue and
>> it's quite normal for other people to complete issues that were technically
>> assigned to someone else. There is no land grabbing or stalling. Anyone who
>> has contributed to Spark for any amount of time knows this.
>> 
>> Vinod,
>> 
>> I want to take this opportunity to call out the approach to communication
>> you took here.
>> 
>> As a random contributor to Spark and active participant on this list, my
>> reaction when I read your email was this:
>> 
>> You do not know how the Spark community actually works.
>> You read a thread that contains some trigger phrases.
>> You wrote a lengthy response as a knee-jerk reaction.
>> 
>> I'm not trying to mock, but I want to be direct and honest about how you
>> came off in this thread to me and probably many others.
>> 
>> Why not ask questions first--many questions? Why not make doubly sure that
>> you understand the situation correctly before responding?
>> 
>> In many ways this is much like filing a bug report. "I'm seeing this. It
>> seems wrong to me. Is this expected?" I think we all know from experience
>> that this kind of bug report is polite and will likely lead to a productive
>> discussion. On the other hand: "You're returning a -1 here? This is
>> obviously wrong! And, boy, lemme tell you how wrong you are!!!" No-one likes
>> to deal with bug reports like this. More importantly, they get in the way of
>> fixing the actual problem, if there is one.
>> 
>> This is not about the Apache Way or not. It's about basic etiquette and
>> effective communication.
>> 
>> I understand that there are legitimate potential concerns here, and it's
>> important that, as an Apache project, Spark work according to Apache
>> principles. But when some person who has never participated on this list
>> pops up out of nowhere with a lengthy lecture on the Apache Way and whatnot,
>> I have to say that that is not an effective way to communicate. Pretty much
>> the same thing happened with Greg Stein on an earlier thread some months ago
>> about designating maintainers for components.
>> 
>> The concerns are legitimate, I'm sure, and we want to keep Spark in line
>> with the Apache Way. And certainly, there have been many times when a
>> project veered off course and needed to corrected.
>> 
>> But when we want to make things right, I hope we can do it in a way that
>> respectfully and tactfully engages the community. These "lectures delivered
>> from above" -- which is how they come off -- are not helpful.
>> 
>> Nick
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 4:31 PM Ganelin, Ilya <ilya.gane...@capitalone.com>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> As a contributor, I¹ve never felt shut out from the Spark community, nor
>>> have I seen any examples of territorial behavior. A few times I¹ve
>>> expressed interest in more challenging work and the response I received
>>> was generally ³go ahead and give it a shot, just understand that this is
>>> sensitive code so we may end up modifying the PR substantially.² Honestly,
>>> that seems fine, and in general, I think it¹s completely fair to go with
>>> the PR model - e.g. If a JIRA has an open PR then it¹s an active effort,
>>> otherwise it¹s fair game unless otherwise stated. At the end of the day,
>>> it¹s about moving the project forward and the only way to do that is to
>>> have actual code in the pipes -speculation and intent don¹t really help,
>>> and there¹s nothing preventing an interested party from submitting a PR
>>> against an issue.
>>> 
>>> Thank you,
>>> Ilya Ganelin
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 4/22/15, 1:25 PM, "Mark Hamstra" <m...@clearstorydata.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Agreed.  The Spark project and community that Vinod describes do not
>>>> resemble the ones with which I am familiar.
>>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Patrick Wendell <pwend...@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Hi Vinod,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks for you thoughts - However, I do not agree with your sentiment
>>>>> and implications. Spark is broadly quite an inclusive project and we
>>>>> spend a lot of effort culturally to help make newcomers feel welcome.
>>>>> 
>>>>> - Patrick
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 1:11 PM, Vinod Kumar Vavilapalli
>>>>> <vino...@hortonworks.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Actually what this community got away with is pretty much an
>>>>> anti-pattern compared to every other Apache project I have seen. And
>>>>> may I
>>>>> say in a not so Apache way.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Waiting for a committer to assign a patch to someone leaves it as a
>>>>> privilege to a committer. Not alluding to anything fishy in practice,
>>>>> but
>>>>> this also leaves a lot of open ground for self-interest. Committers
>>>>> defining notions of good fit / level of experience do not work, highly
>>>>> subjective and lead to group control.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> In terms of semantics, here is what most other projects (dare I say
>>>>> every Apache project?) that I have seen do
>>>>>> - A new contributor comes in who is not yet added to the JIRA
>>>>> project.
>>>>> He/she requests one of the project's JIRA admins to add him/her.
>>>>>> - After that, he or she is free to assign tickets to themselves.
>>>>>> - What this means
>>>>>>    -- Assigning a ticket to oneself is a signal to the rest of the
>>>>> community that he/she is actively working on the said patch.
>>>>>>    -- If multiple contributors want to work on the same patch, it
>>>>> needs
>>>>> to resolved amicably through open communication. On JIRA, or on mailing
>>>>> lists. Not by the whim of a committer.
>>>>>> - Common issues
>>>>>>    -- Land grabbing: Other contributors can nudge him/her in case of
>>>>> inactivity and take them over. Again, amicably instead of a committer
>>>>> making subjective decisions.
>>>>>>    -- Progress stalling: One contributor assigns the ticket to
>>>>> himself/herself is actively debating but with no real code/docs
>>>>> contribution or with any real intention of making progress. Here
>>>>> workable,
>>>>> reviewable code for review usually wins.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Assigning patches is not a privilege. Contributors at Apache are a
>>>>> bunch
>>>>> of volunteers, the PMC should let volunteers contribute as they see
>>>>> fit. We
>>>>> do not assign work at Apache.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> +Vinod
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Apr 22, 2015, at 12:32 PM, Patrick Wendell <pwend...@gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> One over arching issue is that it's pretty unclear what "Assigned to
>>>>>>> X" in JIAR means from a process perspective. Personally I actually
>>>>>>> feel it's better for this to be more historical - i.e. who ended up
>>>>>>> submitting a patch for this feature that was merged - rather than
>>>>>>> creating an exclusive reservation for a particular user to work on
>>>>>>> something.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> If an issue is "assigned" to person X, but some other person Y
>>>>> submits
>>>>>>> a great patch for it, I think we have some obligation to Spark users
>>>>>>> and to the community to merge the better patch. So the idea of
>>>>>>> reserving the right to add a feature, it just seems overall off to
>>>>> me.
>>>>>>> IMO, its fine if multiple people want to submit competing patches
>>>>>>> for
>>>>>>> something, provided everyone comments on JIRA saying they are
>>>>>>> intending to submit a patch, and everyone understands there is
>>>>>>> duplicate effort. So commenting with an intention to submit a patch,
>>>>>>> IMO seems like the healthiest workflow since it is non exclusive.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> To me the main benefit of "assigning" something ahead of time is if
>>>>>>> you have a committer that really wants to see someone specific work
>>>>> on
>>>>>>> a patch, it just acts as a strong signal that there is someone
>>>>>>> endorsed to work on that patch. That doesn't mean no one else can
>>>>>>> submit a patch, but it is IMO more of a warning that there may be
>>>>>>> existing work which is likely to be high quality, to avoid
>>>>>>> duplicated
>>>>>>> effort.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> When it was really easy to assign features to themselves, I saw a
>>>>>>> lot
>>>>>>> of anti-patterns in the community that seemed unhealthy,
>>>>> specifically:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> - It was really unclear what it means semantically if someone is
>>>>>>> assigned to a JIRA.
>>>>>>> - People assign JIRA's to themselves that aren't a good fit, given
>>>>> the
>>>>>>> authors level of experience.
>>>>>>> - People expect if they assign JIRA's to themselves that others
>>>>>>> won't
>>>>>>> submit patches, and become upset if they do.
>>>>>>> - People are discouraged from working on a patch because someone
>>>>>>> else
>>>>>>> was officially assigned.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> - Patrick
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 11:13 AM, Sean Owen <so...@cloudera.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> Anecdotally, there are a number of people asking to set the
>>>>>>>> Assignee
>>>>>>>> field. This is currently restricted to Committers in JIRA. I know
>>>>> the
>>>>>>>> logic was to prevent people from Assigning a JIRA and then leaving
>>>>> it;
>>>>>>>> it also matters a bit for questions of "credit".
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Still I wonder if it's best to just let people go ahead and set it,
>>>>> as
>>>>>>>> the lesser "evil". People can already do a lot like resolve JIRAs
>>>>> and
>>>>>>>> set shepherd and critical priority and all that.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I think the intent was to let "Developers" set this, but maybe due
>>>>> to
>>>>>>>> an error, that's not how the current JIRA permission is
>>>>>>>> implemented.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> I ask because I'm about to ping INFRA to update our scheme.
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> 
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>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
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>>>>> 
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