On 2/26/06, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I am new to the ASF so I apologize for my ignorance, but how is the PMC > our core customer? Who is the PMC you are talking about?
The best starting point to learn more about the ASF, and Project Management Commitees (PMCs), is * http://apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html The ASF sprang from the Apache HTTPD project. Because HTTPD had become a high-profile product, the original "Core Group" wanted to shield themselves from personal liability. The Core Group also wanted to share the "Apache Way" with other development teams. Raymond's "The Cathedral and Bazaar" paints one picture of open source development ( "benevolent maintainer"). The Apache Way paints another (meritocracy). * http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ Apache HTTPD came about because Brian Behlendorf needed a scalable web server to meet the high-volume needs of a new website his company was building. He had some patches to the NCSA web server, and he knew some other engineers working for other companies that also had some patches. This initial group began trading patches over email, and ultimately created the first Apache server. But, the "core group" was not doing all this to fill a need in the "marketplace". They were filling their own need for a better web server. Not for someone else's benefit, but for the benefit of the core group who were developing the server. We eat our own dog food because we are the dogs. The "prime directive" of an ASF project is not to simply create software for lurkers to download. We are creating software for our own use -- the use of the committers -- and sharing that software with the general public. Why do we share? Why do we support users? Why do we add some features we might not use ourselves? Why do we do all of our development in public? We share our work with the general public so that we can attract, interview, and train new committers -- both to expand our core groups and to replace members of our core groups that go off to do other things. Another reason we share is to proselytize "meritocratic development" as an alternative to the "benevolent maintainer" model. They say the proof of a pudding is in its taste. From an ASF perspective, the proof of a community is in its ability to attract new contributors. Not new lurkers that simply download the software and go on their way, but new contributors who help us create an even better product. The cornerstone of meritocracy is the belief that we can build a better product working together than any one of us could create on our own. > but in any case my only > goal is to provide quality blogging software. personally, my motives > are inspired by blogs.sun.com, but not limited to or entirely controlled > by blogs.sun.com. In a volunteer project, motives are very important. A commercial team is motivated by a paycheck. But what motivates developers working for a non-profit organization with no paid staff? Most of us are motivated by the need to use the software at work (where we do get a paycheck). But, we don't want projects controlled by short-term commercial interests. We want projects controlled by the people who actually write the code. People like Dave, and Allen, and Avil, and Matt, and Henri, and Elias, and Lance. We want the decisions to be made by engineers, not by marketing departments. We want the lunatics to be in charge of the asylum Because our focus in on the volunteers, not the employers, we don't consider "blogs.sun.com" to be the actual customer. Sites like "blogs.sun.com" are simply places where some of our volunteer-customers deploy the product we create and maintain. Since the volunteers do the work, in our eyes, the volunteers earn the merit. If the volunteers are clever enough to get paid while they do the work, that's great, but that's between the committers and their employers. If a volunteer changes employers, the volunteer is still a committer (and the former employer is still *not* a committer). -Ted.
