I suppose that as chair I ought to be heard from here. I've been off for
Passover for a bit.

In my view, the IPMC manifests two problems. I'd like to label them as
'operational' and 'decision-making'. This thread is about decision-making,
but with some people seeing using terms like 'disfunctional', I think it's
important to keep 'function' in context.

Operationally, we 'started' 1.3 years ago with an acute problem of
under-supervised and/or 'malingering' podlings. Under Jukka's leadership,
we made a series of incremental changes that have considerably improved the
situation. On the other hand, the recent influx of many new podlings
worries me, because 'improved' is not the same as 'fixed'. And I'm not
entirely sure that 'fixed' is possible. I'd like to see us find more
incremental changes that help further, and I'd like them to scale via some
mechanism other than my own personal time. I see this as a reason to put
more thought into shepherds and champions. But I don't see this situation
as 'disfunctional'.

On the decision-making front, recent phenomena have demonstrated to me that
this group is not succeeding in applying consensus process to decision
making. I could write five paragraphs on what that process is and what it
requires, but I'm not inclined to. I support the proposal here to apply
majority rules to IPMC membership. When consensus process fails here, we
have endless email threads. Many of us find these stressful,
time-consuming, and disheartening.

Under the proposal at hand, we'd still DISCUSS, and I'd hope that we would
all try to be thoughtful and constructive and look for ways to agree.
However, after a certain amount of discussion, there would be a vote, and
that would be that.

If this 'works' -- if people here find that it strikes a good balance
between seeking consensus and limiting time and stress, we're good.

It might not work. Or it might 'work', but some might feel that this large,
diffuse, group, operating by majority rules is either inconsistent with
Apache policy or a bad example for the podlings. In which case someone
might want to dust off the proposals from 1.3 years ago that offered more
or less radical alternatives. I'm personally not ready to go there yet.











On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 7:03 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz <bdelacre...@apache.org
> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 11:44 AM, Justin Mclean <justinmcl...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > ...As an aside it seems (and please correct me if I'm mistaken) in order
> to become
> > a IPMC member you first need to be an Apache member (see bottom of
> [1])...
>
> you don't - Apache members can become IPMC members just by asking, but
> others can also be elected as incubator PMC members. We do have some
> such mentors currently.
>
> -Bertrand
>
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