On Nov 3, 2010, at 3:36 PM, Digy wrote: > > > PS: While we were happily living under "incubator", PMC forced us to become > a graduate project. Although nothing has changed since than(Lucene.Net's > life goes that way since years), now PMC says, "you should return back to > incubator or find another place". I think it's insulting. I lost my itch. >
I'm sorry you feel that way. It's not meant to be insulting and I highly doubt that is why you stopped contributing. The move back to the Incubator is solely for Lucene.NET's good and the tone of your email exactly underscores why the community should be on it's own under it's own PMC. Your comment also underscores, however, important points about what the ASF is and is not. No one forced you to graduate, but as you can no doubt guess by the name "Incubator" is is meant to allow a project to mature, it is not a home for life. .NET was in the Incubator for a _long_ time. Way longer than most projects. Chickens don't stay in their eggs forever, they hatch and become adults. It's the same for Podlings. At the time, it appeared the community was ready to graduate, so you graduated. Now, it seems the community has regressed because no one has stepped up to contribute. None of the committers have been active for a good long time. The ASF isn't interested in keeping projects around that are suffering from bit rot and as a PMC we're tired of being the nag to tell the community to fill out Board reports, etc. Furthermore, the PMC is saying go back to the Incubator if you want to stay at the ASF so that you can get some new blood without having to go through the normal committer election process and so that .NET can be owned by people who care about .NET. That is a _good_ thing for .NET. You should want that and you are a prime candidate to be on that PMC and have a say in how the project operates. I suppose your other path is to somehow convince a few people to start contributing real patches and then somehow convince the PMC that these new contributors are capable committers as well as address all the other issues stated at the beginning of this thread and then go to the Board and ask to be a TLP. This latter approach will likely take a good 3-6 months. The Incubator approach means you could have new committers helping do real work in a matter of weeks, if not less if you are sufficiently motivated. -Grant
