A general comment on mailing list policy at Apache:
On 8/6/2011 4:30 PM, Rob Weir wrote:
On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 6:08 AM, Terry Ellison<[email protected]> wrote:
On 05/08/11 08:10, eric b wrote:
Le 5 août 11 à 03:12, Pedro Giffuni a écrit :
...snip...
Historically and (possibly with some tweaks) going forward, the people who
make the policy decision on the forums are the people who contribute to
them. In a 100% community run effort, IFAIK, this is the only formula that
will work.
Indeed! This is meritocracy, part of the Apache Way where the
contributors on some part of a project get recognized for their actual
contributions to the project over time, and are elected as committers
(or PPMC members, or are granted moderating rights in a wiki/forum).
There is obviously a lot of work ahead in terms of migrating this
existing community to Apache infrastructure and policies.
...snip...
In most Apache projects the user support is done on a user mailing
list. That is how most projects undertake their responsibilities to
engage with their users. I think we've agreed that because of the
traffic and number of users we have, that a user forum is the better
mechanism for doing support. But I think that this support is still a
project responsibility. That is why we are discussing on a project
mailing list how we will use Apache hardware to host these forum.
Another saying of the Apache Way is: "if it didn't happen on the list,
it didn't happen". My feeling is that decisions about the project
(code, doc, strategy, whatever) will need to continue to be made on
mailing lists like ooo-dev@, in the Apache tradition.
Given OOo's large number of end-users, I agree with keeping the forums
for actual user support running. I.e. for end-users who can't or
otherwise wouldn't ask on list, we should definitely keep the forums to
be able to provide answers to their end user questions.
A key community issue for moderators/committers will be how to get any
information back to the core project team, here on the lists. I.e. if a
whole bunch of users have issues with the newest language pack for
Apache OOo Foo module, the forum moderators will need to take those
comments back to the ooo-dev@ or appropriate list - or help open JIRAs -
so the project can address the issues.
...snip...
Policy issues are discussed here and it is the consensus here that sets
policy. So for example we had a long debate on whether to support
LibreOffice when the Oracle view seemed to us to be hostile to this. Our
strong consensus was that in reality there is one OOo community, and so it
made sense to do so.
I am concerned with any private list that is not managed by the PPMC,
like ooo-private or ooo-secruity. This is especially true while we
are a podling. Mentors and IPMC members should be able to monitor our
progress as a podling. Having 10+ private discussion groups hinders
that.
Is there any reason why sensitive matters cannot just be discussed in
ooo-private? Or alternatively, for security vulnerability-related
issues, in ooo-security (which is also private)?
Indeed, any private mailing lists need to be hosted on apache
infrastructure and need to allow oversight by PPMC members and ASF
Members[1]. A key Apache policy is that all mailing lists across the
ASF allow ASF Members to read or subscribe. The *only* exceptions are
ones dealing with root@ or private board personnel/legal matters.
If the forum admins will be making policy decisions, either on product
matters or how the forums are run, the PPMC needs to be involved and
approving them.
- Shane
[1] http://www.apache.org/foundation/members.html
