----- Original Message ----
> From: C. Michael Pilato <cmpil...@collab.net>
> To: Mark Phippard <markp...@gmail.com>
> Cc: Subversion Development <dev@subversion.apache.org>
> Sent: Thu, January 28, 2010 10:56:19 AM
> Subject: Re: NOW can we remove the yellow warning on the website?
>
> Mark Phippard wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 10:51 AM, C. Michael Pilato
> wrote:
> >> I'd really like to move on from this website task. Yes, there are still
> >> some TODO items on the pages. But are we ready to call our URL space
> >> stable
> >> enough to allow folks to link to the pages?
> >
> > It is not the end of the world if we want to change a URL. It is not
> > like people cannot adjust. I say just remove it. Of the current
> > pages, the only one I am not sure of is the "Developer Resources". It
> > kind of seems like that page is not going anywhere and is probably
> > redundant with the "Documentation" page.
>
> Yeah... I was actually leaning towards removing it. The only catch is that
> we were talking about putting up some nightly-generated C API and JavaHL
> docs, and some of the Apache folks were fussy about making sure that when
> pointing to "not-officially-released" documentation, we do so only from a
> "developers-only" portion of the website. Not sure how much of that is
> policy versus personal opinion, though.
Policy at the ASF is simply a touch-point for conversation. Nobody except
me goes running around trying to "enforce" it, people will just complain
if what you're doing doesn't meet their expecations. How you manage the
social noise is up to you.
The ASF policy around releases is there to make the legal umbrella available
to projects. That is the only policy that is basically set in stone (even our
legal policies are negotiable at times). In that policy we try to draw an
imaginary line between small-scale distributions "intended for developers"
and wide-scale distributions (aka releases) intended for everyone. The purpose
of that line is to limit organizational liability in the case that someone
pushes infringing code to an ASF server. Early public access means it's
possible
to catch something like that *before* it winds up in a release, in which case
we'll try to argue that the organization isn't on the hook for distributing
infringing code- as the intention of developer distributions is for people to
participate in development, not for depriving an aggrieved IP holder of a
potential sale. Once the infringing code has been released however, that sort
of argument does not apply. It is here that the legal umbrella of the org
kicks in to protect the developers from a suit over released code.
So people at Apache take the "developer distribution" stuff at Apache to
extremes,
but any reasonable decision the Subversion team comes up with that respects
what the org is trying to accomplish is fine. I hope I've done a reasonable
job of explaining the overall goals above.
