On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 7:42 AM, Benson Margulies <bimargul...@gmail.com> wrote: > As I see it, the incubator as we have it is a mechanism for coping > with the lack of mentor commitment. As Ross often writes, it's easy to > say that Mentors *should* make this commitment, but mentors are > volunteers, and things happen. Upayavira wonders if Mentor 'harvest > glory' and then wander away. I think it's more likely that they do the > best they can, given the constraints of their lives. > > If three members showed up and were willing to state the necessary > level of commitment to a new project to be a TLP, sure, let them be a > TLP instantly. But if that's the standard for starting a new project > at Apache, I predict that we'll start very few new projects.
The only commitment necessary is to take *care* of the project. The ASF has no specific demand about velocity of a project. As long as somebody is caring for it, then we let the community continue. I have no problem with three Members starting arbitrary projects. > This leads me to a question back to Greg: what do you want to do if a > new project has troubles: a Mentor has a kid, or a new job, or > whatever? Shut it down? I'd suspect that you'd hope to recruit a > replacement, but that's a messy procedure for the board to be stuck > with. Not the Board's problem. The project is responsible for finding a replacement, in order to continue, in order to get out of "probation" status (or, "podling" status, or whatever). > I end up thinking that this looks like a _reductio_ argument that > leads back to the IPMC. Nope. The IPMC was created to properly handle incoming projects, in terms of community and IP. At the time, "all" podlings were sponsored by an existing TLP. We've jettisoned umbrellas, so now "all" podlings have no particular sponsor. But. The concept was "sponsoring TLP provides manpower to help the podling". No sponsor? No manpower. Oops. That's where we are today. > How about the following more incremental experiment: we do what > Upayavira says: we set a higher bar for mentors at podling start time. > We ask them to make a public statement of commitment that for some > period of time (six months) they commit to thinking of themselves _as > a PMC_, not just as some sort of diffuse advisors or coaches. Eh? We don't expect this kind of commitment from *anybody*. I have never said "if you want to join the Subversion PMC, then you MUST make a public declaration of a six month commitment." Upayavira talked about *ability* .. not *commitment*. > I expect > that this will make it harder to start podlings, and I think that this > constraint would reflect reality. Such a group could then graduate as > soon as it picked up a few more PMC members and did a release. If we > stick to this, maybe the IPMC will wither away, or just shrink to a > smaller group. I think that this experiment comes before Greg's, as we > should see if anyone will make this claim, and whether they live up to > it, before we launch such a group into the exosphere of pure board > supervision. Ultimately, this might mean that we retire the word > 'mentor' and replace it with, well, 'PMC member'. "before Greg's"? Why? If I want to be really antagonistic, I might point out that the decision is the Board's :-) (and I might suggest to podlings out there: hey, why not... petition the Board to try a new approach; can't hurt; worst is they'll say "no"; but you better have lots of Members handy) Cheers, -g --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
