On 7/12/2011 10:03 AM, Simon Phipps wrote:
On 12 Jul 2011, at 13:32, Kai Ahrens wrote:
Of course it makes a difference to ask our users instead of asking
some deeply involved people on this list, having very subjective
interests in one or the other direction.
And in the end, the user rules, not any marketing speech.
While that sounds good, I'm not sure it's the Apache way and I'd
welcome a comment from one of the mentors.
S.
The Apache Way is for the PPMC to hold a [VOTE] to decide.
In an established and healthy project community, typically the results
of a general discussion on a dev@ list are mirrored by the official
[VOTE] of a PMC on some issue. However Apache OOo is still a pretty new
podling, so I think the ways that we do things are not as obvious or
clear-cut to all participants.
One key point is that the PPMC makes the final decisions on things like
releases - and project names (within Apache rules, however). One
concept that will be important to understand with this quickly growing
dev@ community is the difference between binding votes and non-binding
votes. Typically, only (P)PMC members have binding votes on major
issues; all other votes are non-binding. In healthy community, the
(P)PMC certainly listens to it's dev@ (and user@) communities, but the
(P)PMC makes the final decisions for the project.
So while we certainly need to understand that users are important -
because if no-one uses our software, it's not of much value! - I'd
change around Kai's statement to say that it's the project's active
community that rules here at Apache. And that's a crucial thing for
this community to understand.
- Shane
