On 9/6/2011 9:39 AM, Rob Weir wrote:
On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 9:32 AM, Joe Schaefer<[email protected]> wrote:
It's called delegation Rob, and it's done all the
time within the ASF. The PPMC can delegate ALL
management/oversight aspects to whomever is on
the PPMC that is also involved with the forums.
So long as 1 person on the PPMC is watching over
the activity, and anything noteworthy gets passed
along to the board via PPMC reports, it's a perfectly
humane way of conducting yourselves.
So we can delegate selection of approval of committers to a single
PPMC member? Really?
Er, no, and where did you come up with that idea?
There are way too many miscommunications happening here. I don't see
how you get to voting in new committers from someone on the PPMC having
oversight of how the forums work.
The fundamental point is that the board, through it's PMCs (not PPMCs,
by the way), has oversight over the content that our projects produce
and present to the public. This is important for a number of reasons,
including legal (ensuring we have the right to publish the content,
ensuring we or our users aren't exposed to excess legal risks in using
the content), brand (people have certain expectations of Apache
software), and community (ensuring that our communities know the base
rules for behavior).
This does not in any way mean that everyone needs to be a committer nor
on the (P)PMC! Are the forums producing significant code or structured
documentation that we intend to put in releases directly? If no, then
there's no real need to be a committer.
Yes, having a single community with a healthy and overall meritocracy is
a best practice. But some level of work outside of this - especially in
the user support side - I could see working under the PMC, but not being
committers. I could see Admins/Moderators hopefully signing iCLAs in
the future.
This is a different question than most Apache projects, both because the
level of work in non-technical end-user support for OOo that's not in
any other Apache project, but also because of the fundamental
differences in how much of the end-user support work vs. in terms of
traditional Apache user support. It's not clear to me even now how much
specific work from the forums does (and, more importantly could!) come
back to the project itself.
But I certainly know it's getting hard to find a common ground without
being a little nicer to each other.
- Shane
-Rob
________________________________
From: Rob Weir<[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, September 6, 2011 9:27 AM
Subject: Re: [RT] Create a second incubator podling - the ooo forums
On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 9:13 AM, Joe Schaefer<[email protected]> wrote:
Up until a few days ago I thought we had one.
Move the forums over to the ASF, give the PPMC
and ASF members the full ability (upon request)
to oversee allcommunications within the forums,
and life goeson. I see no need for the Volunteers
to join the PPMC or anything like that, just keep
doing whatever you're doing and keep the PPMC abreast
of anything report-worthy when they need to report
to the board. If the Volunteers want to incorporate
some Apache-style voting processes into their ops,
go for it!
And if I wanted to create a group called the "Calc developer
volunteers", could we join the project, with the understanding the
rest of the project would leave us alone? We would vote in our own
committers, etc,. independently of the normal PMC process. We would
conduct our business on restricted-access mailing lists, not visible
to the public. But on request we'd allow PMC members to join these
lists.
Ignore for a second the IP implications. That is really a red
herring. The point is meritocracy, decision making and PMC oversight.
Think of similar analogies with non-release aspects of the project,
like web site design, documentation, wikis, etc.
Where else does Apache have a meritocracy embedded in a project that
does not commune with the PMC? In an ideal world, where everything
just worked, and there were never any disagreements or disputes, then
this might work. But in that world we wouldn't need a PMC or an ASF
Board either. In any case, we don't live in such a world.
It is bizarre, but I hear people advocating for community
fragmentation in the name of community unity. Having two parallel
meritocracies within the same project is fragmentation. I don't see
how we can call it anything else.
-Rob
________________________________
From: Rory O'Farrell<[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, September 6, 2011 9:08 AM
Subject: Re: [RT] Create a second incubator podling - the ooo forums
On Tue, 6 Sep 2011 05:49:09 -0700 (PDT)
Joe Schaefer<[email protected]> wrote:
<snip>
So to answer your questions, yes it certainly could be done
within the Apache structure. No it probably cannot be done
to host stuff here on behalf of some third party.
Thanks, that is helpful in clarifying options.
So to be hosted on Apache one would need to find some mechanism whereby a forum
would fit into Apache; by your earlier post you do not think there is such a
mechanism. Might Apache be prepared to modify (by extension) their structures to
accomodate these? This becomes a problem for the legal draughtsmen, of course. The
old rule of £minimal change" ought apply.
I'm not asking for a change, just exploring the possibility of one.
--
Rory O'Farrell<[email protected]>
