On Nov 28, 2012, at 1:48 PM, Benson Margulies wrote: > TLPs do, sometimes, retire. Some of them have retired precisely > because all the contributors disappeared due to seismic events at > work. The board has been observed to keep a TLP alive really to the > last possible moment -- the point where there were less than three > people to vote on a release. > > This does not entirely reply to your point; how much viability should > the board want to see before establishing a TLP? I write, 'the board', > since a IPMC votes are _recommendations_ to the board. > > After last year's discussions about the incubator, we decided that it > was better to err a bit on the optimistic side and graduate some small > projects, rather than retiring them or keeping them in the incubator > forever. In a year or two, depending on how some of them do, we may > learn something from this that will cause us to change our view and > try something else. > > Subjective? Yup. The alternative isn't attractive; a strict adherence > to some objective criteria can also end up with the wrong answer.
There is another alternative, which is do away with the criteria altogether. If we have shepherds to monitor the all too human mentors, should we not also have reapers, to monitor TLPs? I'm all for being on the optimistic side and graduate small projects but, sometimes, I feel it's done because we don't wish to face uncomfortable facts. Ultimately what value does the ASF Imprimatur have? As I mentioned before, it doesn't mean that project is diverse and vibrant since there are many times we let projects "prematurely" slip in. So, effectively, anyone coming in to evaluate a project in the ASF still has to do their own sleuthing to estimate if it's a fledgling project that may or may not pan out, a fully active and diverse project, or a project that has waned and waiting for a reaper to come. Virtually, with regards to the ASF Imprimatur, the criteria of diversity and vibrancy has been watered down if not nullified. Regards, Alan --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
