On Dec 17, 2003, at 10:19 PM, Andrew C. Oliver wrote:
The reason everything is quiet here is all decisions are being made on private lists now.
---------------- | Don't feed | | the trolls | ---------------- | | | ------\|/--------
I must admit that that was my first reaction too, but observing the net effect of this email, good discussions are happening on [EMAIL PROTECTED] because of it. Nothing in what I am about to say hasn't been said before, but hopefully pulling it all together will help people put the puzzle pieces together.
A few general comments:
* The assertion that decisions are being made on private lists is laughable. The Jakarta bylaws are woefully out of date, as they were based on a different era where there was a ruling few who were responsible for wide oversight. Mostly what has been discussed on the PMC mailing list is the process by which we decide the process to change the bylaws. Exciting stuff, trust me. And for those who are interested, decisions such as the one by log4j to become a project were made on the log4j mailing lists, as they should be.
* The end goal is one where people feel empowered to make decisions. Not empowered in the '80s management buzzword sense, but empowered in terms of "don't look to the pmc to make decisions for you". Truth be told, the simplest way to achieve this is to place everybody who might potentially be affected by a decision on the PMC. So, we are embarking on exactly that direction. Incrementally.
* This direction has implications. If person x is on the Jakarta PMC, and codebase y is managed by Jakarta, then person x has a say over such matters as any releases of codebase y. If this doesn't make sense, the solution is to put codebase y into a separate PMC.
* There will always be discussions in private, particularly when they involve people issues. A sister project recently had an issue dealing with a person voted down to become a commmitter, and this had a negative impact not only on that individual but on the community. This project has since decided that all committer votes are to be done in private. While Jakarta hasn't yet had such an experience, it is worth noting that it is impossible to keep a secret when there are dozens of members on the PMC, but it is possible to keep such discussions out of Google searches and web archives.
- Sam Ruby
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