It has been 1 year since VCL graduated to a top level project. I
thought it would be a good idea to start a thread to discuss the
current state of the project and our plans and goals for the next
year. Please reply with any additional thoughts you may have.
I think the project and community are doing fairly well. The good
news is that we have completed 4 releases - 2.3, 2.3.1, 2.3.2, &
2.2.2. Traffic on the user list has been steady with questions being
answered skillfully by more and more people. It also appears as
though several new institutions are evaluating or implementing VCL
based on questions asked by new people on the user list.
The not so good news is that development involvement has not
increased. Our mentors stressed this during incubation and we made a
concerted effort to encourage people to contribute with the goal of
adding new committers to the project. This needs to continue. The
project's lack of growth is beginning to come to the attention of the
ASF Board of Directors. As chair, I act as the interface between this
project and the board. One duty involves submitting a board report
every 3 months. The board members review the reports prior to their
monthly meeting and approve each project's report by adding their
initials and comments. The following is the approval section for our
report from this month's board agenda:
AW. Apache VCL Project [Andy Kurth / Greg]
See Attachment AW
[ VCL.
approved: cm, sr, jj, bd, rf, bp, sc, dc
comments:
cm: When was the last PMC or committer addition?
]
("cm" is Chris Mattmann. See: http://apache.org/foundation/board/)
I don't think there is any need to panic at the current time but this
should serve as a wake up call. Our drive to attract development
involvement didn't end when the the project graduated. If anything,
attracting people and gaining committers should become easier. There
are more people demonstrating their knowledge of VCL by responding to
questions on the lists and submitting very thoughtful Jira issues than
there was a year ago. We need to continue to encourage this and reach
out to people who may be committer candidates.
I would like to set a goal of adding at least 3 new committers and 1
PMC member over the next year. Does this seem reasonable?
Another area where there is room for improvement is the amount of
traffic on the dev list discussing development topics. This is one of
the most important aspects of "the Apache way". Anything you are
working on, especially if it is a major change or new feature, has to
be discussed on the dev list. The topic should be brought up before
you begin development in order to allow others in the community a
chance to share their thoughts and to volunteer to help. Throughout
development, updates should be provided to the dev list. This can be
tedious and may go against how you have done things in the past but
everything needs to be discussed openly. I am guilty of not doing
this very well myself and will make an effort to post more regularly.
I kindly ask others to make a dutiful effort to make sure you involve
the dev list in the things you are working on.
Please reply if you agree, disagree, or have any additional comments to add.
Thank You,
Andy
