More reading (shall I say required reading?). Benson does a good job of explaining some of the concepts around consensus and why we also should be primarily using mailing lists: https://blogs.apache.org/comdev/entry/how_apache_projects_use_consensus
-Grant On May 5, 2011, at 10:10 AM, Grant Ingersoll wrote: > > I'd like to throw out another idea: > > I think we should standardize on rotating the PMC Chair every year. I think > to date, there have been two Chairs: Doug and me. Back when Doug left, no > one wanted to do it (both Hoss and I said we would if no one else wanted to) > and so I took it on. For the most part, it's a thankless task of herding > cats (albeit low volume, thankfully), despite the important sounding name > that marketing types love. I would like us to share the burden across the > PMC by rotating it on an annual basis. Many other ASF projects do exactly > this and I think it removes any political pressure. Have I sold it enough? > ;-) Besides, I just know others are dying to file board reports on a > quarterly basis! > > More inline below... > > On May 5, 2011, at 8:27 AM, Michael McCandless wrote: > >> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 6:40 PM, Grant Ingersoll <gsing...@apache.org> wrote: >>> 2. I think we need to prioritize getting patch contributors more feedback >>> sooner. I think some of this can be automated much like what Hadoop has >>> done. This should help identify new committers sooner and encourage them >>> to keep contributing. >> >> Big +1. We should be using automation everywhere we can. >> >> But, really, we (as all projects do) need more devs. Growing the >> community should be job #1 of all committers. > > Agreed, but this dovetails w/ the use of IRC. I realize live collab is nice, > but it discourages those who aren't "in the know" about the channel being > used from ever contributing. Say, for instance, I'm interested in DWPT > (DocWriterPerThread), how am I supposed to know that at 8 am EDT on May 5th > (made up example), three of the committers are going to be talking about it > on IRC? If there is email about it, then I can participate. Nothing we do > is so important that it can't wait a few hours or a day, besides the fact, > that email is damn near instantaneous these days anyway. > > Also, keep in mind that until about a year ago, most everything was done on > the mailing list and I think we progressed just fine. Since then, dev@ has > almost completely dried up in terms of discussions (factoring out JIRA mails > which have picked up -- which is good) and the large majority of discussion > takes place on IRC. I agree, however, we should have the IRC discussion on > another thread. > >> >> >>> So, what other ideas do people have? I'll leave this thread open for a >>> week or so and then add what we think are good things to >>> https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/lucene/board-reports/2011/special-board-report-may.txt >>> The board meeting is on May 19th. I plan on attending. >> >> How about also "PMC members will be more proactive in tackling issues >> that erode the community? I think this would start with a thread on >> general@. We need to get in the habit of discussing even tiny >> elephants as soon as they appear, somehow. > > Yeah, I agree. The hard part for me, is I often feel like people on the > outside make big deals about this stuff and don't get that even having the > discussion is a very healthy sign. Besides the fact, that no one likes > confrontation and uncomfortable topics. We also, I think, are all tired of > endless debates that go on and on w/ no resolution. It's one of the big > downsides (and, of course, upsides) to consensus based open source as opposed > to the dictatorial approach. > >> >> Here's an example: "Is Lucid abusing their too-strong influence over >> Lucene/Solr"? It's a great question, and I personally feel the answer >> today is "no", but nevertheless we should be able to discuss it and >> similar could-be-controversial topics. > > I hopefully would agree we are good stewards of the fact that we employ a > good number of committers (but not nearly all the active ones), but I know > some disagree. I do, however, think that the recent spat shows that we at > Lucid are still free to speak our minds when it comes to open source, as > clearly not all Lucid employees agree on the issue and were pretty outspoken > about it. I firmly believe we baked this into the company from Day 1 and I > consider it one of our best strengths, but of course, most can't see that > from the outside. Does that mean we are perfect? Of course not, but I think > we try to follow the ASF guidelines and show up as individuals. I also know > we work pretty hard to mind the ASF TM policy, etc. (just ask our marketing > folks how much I remind them.) I think we all realize that there would be no > such thing as Lucid if it weren't for the ASF and for Lucene/Solr, so why > would we want to hurt that? > > The fact is, every single committer here and a good number of contributors > are paid to work on Lucene all day, (most) every day or have some other > financial stake (i.e. via a book, consulting biz, etc.) Any of us could be > accused of only acting in our own financial interest. At the end of the day, > I like to think that instead, the cool thing is we all have a great > opportunity to have our financial interests aligned with a great project that > we like to work on. > > For the record, we have pretty diverse PMC and committer base. As I said in > our Dec. 2010 Board Report, we are comprised of: > "[a] total to 17 PMC members from 12 different > companies, spanning the globe. The flagship Lucene/Solr > has 26 total committers from 20 different companies, again > spanning the globe." > > The only one that has changed since then is Robert has joined Lucid. Now, > one can argue that some of those members from other companies are not active, > but that isn't Lucid's fault. ASF development has always been about those > who do the work and we do a fair amount of that. Those who are not active, > should, ideally, leave on their own by stating they wish to go Emeritus. > Beyond that, we have a pretty standard policy that inactive people are > removed after 1 year of no activity. That has been the case since I joined > Lucene way back when and I think makes sense. > > > >
