-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 About 24 hours remain on this vote, so I figure it's time for a reminder and for me to kick in my opinion. I've done some reading, and followed the discussion and here's where I stand on the issue.
The benefits, as they appear to me consist of hosting infrastructure; guidance and support from an established organization that we, at least to some extent, are trying to emulate; legal support; and increased marketing weight via the Apache name. None of these are negligible, and the legal support is nearly enough, on its own, to sway my vote in favor of applying. However, I'm seeing a significant downside to each of the other aspects, and in the end, those are decisive to me. Our current hosting, is insufficient to our needs as a growing project, and is currently funded via the generosity of a single person. That is something that should change sooner, rather than later. The ASF offers, as part of what is provided to incubator projects, hosting for distributions, bug tracking and wiki, as well as our primary site. However, it appears that in order to take advantage of this, the URLs of all of our content would have to change, the mailing lists would move, and wiki editing would be severely restricted. Potentially, submitting patches would also require much more oversight. Additionally, we would not be able to host the -extras repository and bug-tracking on ASF's servers. Not only would this hinder coordination between portions of this project, but would seem to further build a wall between "core" and "extras". We also would likely end up facing many of the same issues in finding hosting for -extras in the long run. The legal support is, in my mind, the most valuable aspect of what the ASF offers. In our current state, if someone decided to take an SCO like tack and claimed that our code was stolen, and had the resources to pursue it, it would take very little time to undo the work that we have done. This, of course, is alarmist, worst-case-scenario thinking, but as we grow, the ownership of our code and its protection will become increasingly important. The value of having people who know how to provide that protection is huge. Additionally, as the cost of running servers and organizing activities, promotions, and events mounts, having a formal structure in place for accepting, tracking and spending donations becomes more vital as well. Regardless of the outcome of this vote, this is something I think requires serious attention in the very near future. The support of the Apache community is something that I think would be valuable, but I'm not convinced that it's something we can't be part of in other ways that allow us more independence. We already have contacts within that community, and I think that we could benefit from more two-way conversation with them. Hopefully members of that community will help us answer questions about the meritocracy model as they come up regardless of our status as an incubator project or otherwise. Finally there is the idea of increased support just from the Apache name and the marketing that they already have in place. At this stage in our development, I don't think we need that kind of push yet, but with the goal of becoming a TLP, when we reach the stage of a 1.0 release, it could be very valuable. However, attaching the Apache name to Habari, doesn't benefit us significantly outside the developer community, I suspect. Those who are familiar with Apache as the server may find it confusing (and automatically assume that Habari will only run on Apache), and those who are not familiar with Apache won't perceive any additional value from that name. I think may of the things the ASF has to offer an incubator project, and later a TLP are significant and valuable. But I'm not convinced that the costs outweigh the benefits at this stage. However, I think this discussion has pointed out some important areas that we need to examine as we move forward. Long story short, I'm voting -1. - -- Sean T. Evans -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAknuAScACgkQmQpMBUWJpduBaACg020nFaq0IHtAw1RMh7DAvDoc 2gMAniYgUcM5cOVsmQ/laVENoyVHlRhy =55O2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/habari-users -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
