Chris, I couldn't agree more with the sentiments - thank you for expressing them in such a lucid manner.
There is one nit I'd like to point out though: On May 10, 2013, at 1:34 PM, Chris Douglas wrote: > On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 11:14 PM, Konstantin Shvachko > <[email protected]> wrote: >> Not everybody who is voting now provided context in the discussion thread. >> You did. And I am sorry I did not understand it. > > I'll try to be clearer. > > It's unnecessary for you to ask permission to roll a release > containing (or omitting) the features you want. This vote is redundant > with the release vote; it's an unnecessary formalism in our bylaws. If > you want to release 2.0.5 with the features you want and assemble > other community members to help stabilize it in a 2.0.x series... > great. Do that. This is the nit. In the ASF, the RM *does not* have the power to choose bits and pieces of code from SVN. He can remove bits from SVN - only by veto'ing the changes. Roy was very clear on this on this very list: http://s.apache.org/Gt9 I'll quote directly from him - >> The only thing the RM has authority over is the building of a source >> package, based on the contents of our subversion, that can then be >> put up for vote. They can decide what snapshot to tag for a build. >> They can decide not to build anything at all. They can also do all sorts >> of organizational support, advocacy, pleading, or whatever in order to >> encourage the rest of the project committers to apply changes, vote >> for things under issue, etc. >> >> They do not have the right to pick and select whatever variation >> of the product they might like to build, short of vetoing (with a >> valid reason) any changes that they as a PMC member believe do not >> belong on the branch. Likewise, the RM cannot include in the build >> any change that has been vetoed by others, and their build cannot >> be released if it contains any such changes that have been vetoed >> since it was built. The RM has the right to kill their own build >> if they learn something during the release process that they think, >> for whatever reason, causes the build to be unreleasable. Furthermore, this vote is, essentially, against the rules on the ASF since it's trying to block changes into a specific branch (i.e. branch-2). Again, quoting Roy from the same email: >> Any committer can commit wherever they have been given permission >> to commit by the PMC. Generally, they do so collaboratively. >> I've never encountered a situation in my own projects which developers >> were committing at cross-purposes, even when they disagree on content, >> though I've seen commit wars elsewhere. We'd expect the PMC >> to step in if they did. ---- In all, Konstantin - can you please stop this vote? As I have repeatedly pleaded with you - please work with developers working on the issues you seem set against (HDFS-347, Snapshots, Windows support) and come to a *consensus*. That is the only way to reach the goals you desire. You are welcome to veto/revert any of the changes from all of Apache Hadoop subversion with a valid technical reason. > Again, we don't- we can't- assign work by voting. This is a poll, and a > feckless one. I'll repeat, this vote doesn't make any sense (regardless of the artistic words in our bylaws which need to change/go). This is more of a populistic poll which tries to sway people with horror stories of instability, non-convergence of hadoop-2 to a stable state etc. etc. IAC, this vote is against the norms of the ASF, please end this. thanks, Arun
