Re: Style of community building
On Wednesday 29 September 2004 06:38, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote: snip content=appreciated / If you believed in the technology, the brand should not care. I think this is probably the best advice I have gotten all week. Seriously! And when asked *expliticly* to address our concerns about community-style, you just look the other way. Until this day, I have not been interested in history, there is no point at pointing fingers and place blame. I have a long list of people (myself, Stephen, you Stefano, and *many* others) who have their fair share of blame in the Avalon 'disaster'. Don't point fingers at others without pointing at your own nose first, is my motto. Tell me: what would *you* do in my shoes? Well, that is a highly hypothetical question, isn't it? I am not the master creator of communities, who take pride in stepping away when he thinks he is an obstacle to the community, yet steps back in and with 'determination' sets 'half paralyzed' projects back on track. YOU are really good at it, so what would I know of what to do in this situation? I am a simple man, who likes to chitchat over a beer in an Irish Pub, or as a poor man's substitute for airtickets, ICQ, and would probably spend more time with people at a social level, accepting that all are not equal and not expecting big changes from them, than re-iteration of rhetoric. Even people I don't like can teach me something positive. And often people I don't like at first (like my wife) can be much more genuine than first impression, or what is expressed in fruitless debates and flamefests. What would I do? Perhaps provide some better guidance of how to make things better and less critique of what's wrong? But then I again, I am not in your shoes, and most likely never will be. Cheers Niclas -- +--//---+ / http://www.bali.ac/ / http://niclas.hedhman.org / +--//---+ - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Style of community building
On 29 Sep 2004, at 00:38, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote: the Lenya people went thru hell and back with the incubator, also accepting policies that were continously changing, demonstrating lots of patience and will to collaborate, they hang on, even when it was frustrating and *I* was pissed at the incubator PMC for not saying the same thing the same week. They had big customers, they risked their assets in the event of a 'death sentence' (a real one) and they made several big mistakes that forced the mentors to get in and say look, one other thing like this and you are out. They learned, they stimulated a community, which is now diverse, friendly and healthy from all possible senses and even ego attachments to some of the architectural issues were diluted in the process and there is no more sign of that. Result, a long time after that, they graduated. They *earned it*. The hard way, now they are trusted peers. To put things in perspective: I was one of the folks giving them hard times at regular occasions. I also became a de-facto Mentor during their Incubation process. I'm a member of their TLP PMC now - upon their own request. And in terms of bias, my company happens to be releasing a somehow competing open source CMS framework in the next few weeks. So what we have now is a bunch of people who are willing to collaborate, even if personal or business interests differ, for the good of the community. Yes, we had times where people grew increasingly weary over all the fuzz ASF was requiring from them. But we choose to leave these times behind and look into the future instead. Lenya will probably have outlived the longest incubation process ever, and I think everyone learned from it. Looking at your replies, I still have difficulties to understand your real intentions and real feelings towards the ASF processes and participants. I see a great care about your technology, of which I'm a happy user, which however somehow is dwarfed by your nits about ASF community practices and people - yet you seem to be very eager to provide Metro with the ASF brand. However, please don't forget that the foundation is growing at ever accelerating rates, with 1K of committers so far, close to 200 separate source repositories, close to 30 TLPs - yet you encounter the same policy-suggesting people everywhere. That means patience of people can grow thin quickly if they need to make exceptions for new projects with new policies - which unfortunately is the result of our current size. It is not in the interest of the foundation to provide said brand to a project which doesn't like to fit in somehow, which doesn't respect what we have achieved so far, and which doesn't respect its (inter-)project peers and senior participants of Apache, and feels cornered at the same time, _even_ if that project has a compelling technical vision. I'm not saying you or other Metro folks have intentions to follow or stay on a collision course any longer, I'm just trying to point you out what the logical consequences are when someone wants to join a group. One should give and take with consideration and balance. /Steven -- Steven Noelshttp://outerthought.org/ Outerthought - Open Source Java XMLAn Orixo Member Read my weblog athttp://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/ stevenn at outerthought.orgstevenn at apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Style of community building
On Wednesday 29 September 2004 17:55, Steven Noels wrote: snip content=good material / One should give and take with consideration and balance. Noted and Agreed. AND respectfully wished this would be true in all directions. I have also lately been made aware of actions that I do not comprehend, and will politely refrain from any further public debate in the ASF political arena. I am probably just another idiot. Please, ignore me, I have caused too much aggrevation, and withstood too much humiliation, for/from this community, so I ashamefully withdraw back under my rock and get on with better things in life, like getting a great product through the door... Cheers Niclas Hedhman - - - - - If you shout loud enough, noone will hear you. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Style of community building
On 29 Sep 2004, at 12:19, Niclas Hedhman wrote: On Wednesday 29 September 2004 17:55, Steven Noels wrote: snip content=good material / One should give and take with consideration and balance. Noted and Agreed. AND respectfully wished this would be true in all directions. I'm confident that people still have positive energy left for a productive and future-looking debate resolution of this matter. I'm also confident that suggesting this is _not_ the case isn't helping you nor us. Speak freely without doublespeak and anyone gets to be heard. Heck, the changed tone of this thread even convinced myself that I still had some patience to look for a resolution. If you shout loud enough, noone will hear you. *grin* Please keep in mind that going silent now will require your peers to speak up or else people will move along - nothing here (anymore). /Steven -- Steven Noelshttp://outerthought.org/ Outerthought - Open Source Java XMLAn Orixo Member Read my weblog athttp://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/ stevenn at outerthought.orgstevenn at apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Style of community building
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Niclas Hedhman wrote: On Wednesday 29 September 2004 06:38, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote: And when asked *expliticly* to address our concerns about community-style, you just look the other way. Until this day, I have not been interested in history, there is no point at pointing fingers and place blame. I have a long list of people (myself, Stephen, you Stefano, and *many* others) who have their fair share of blame in the Avalon 'disaster'. Don't point fingers at others without pointing at your own nose first, is my motto. the cases are not parallel. the fact that someone has behaved incorrectly does not provide licence for others to do so as well. the 'he did it first' defence does not wash. the cases are not parallel. in this case, stefano is not *just* a peer; he is also someone to whom the projects and individuals are answerable, as a member and director of the foundation. perhaps there was insufficient context in stefano's remark; i myself am not sure precisely to what he is referring. however, your response did not address his remark either way. 'not been interested in history': have you never heard that 'those who will not learn from history are condemned to repeat it' ? how are lessons to be learnt is not from examining past situations and their resolutions? - -- #kenP-)} Ken Coar, Sanagendamgagwedweinini http://Ken.Coar.Org/ Author, developer, opinionist http://Apache-Server.Com/ Millennium hand and shrimp! -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iQCVAwUBQVqZu5rNPMCpn3XdAQGCNgP+PZU4aFa6cbnXzHeybwd1XDlskpUbUvD3 d7tORRb4tgRb2fJOjaYSvMrHfEXXn675wmT3vRgQ4LzXfKAbjJfUhurgFy4Y7K3u EXFXp4qUAvrq1QwfHxv/b+kInHgP/zu5IWaVZy+z5EWEXnpqc1RrzR0qL7v5NywK 1CHBXmKRILo= =GhQn -END PGP SIGNATURE- - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Style of community building
-Original Message- From: Rodent of Unusual Size [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 29 September 2004 13:17 To: community@apache.org Subject: Re: Style of community building snip ... how are lessons to be learnt is not from examining past situations and their resolutions? Have a few thoughts I put together which examine the past situation as part of my reply to a public post from Stefano over on the dev mailing list. Seems to me that there maybe something in it that is relevant to the subject of community building (or at least some of the aspect of social and group rules that play into community evolution). http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=avalon-devm=109645485530289w=4 Stephen. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Style of community building
Niclas Hedhman wrote: On Tuesday 28 September 2004 09:30, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote: If you want to change my mind, that's how you start: tell me what is the benefit for the ASF in promoting this style of community building, despite its long-term history of social energy waste, frustration and contract instability. In all due respect, IMHO this thread was never meant to be about community style building. Initially I brought up an issue of knowing the playing field to a more explicit extent, and secondary about level of transparency. OK, new thread. If you want to change my mind, you also need to start at the same place as Stefano indicated. - Sam Ruby - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Style of community building
-Original Message- From: Sam Ruby [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 8:28 AM To: community@apache.org Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Style of community building Niclas Hedhman wrote: Rightly or wrongly so, the tone of competition in Avalon was set well before the emergence of Merlin. That was bad. So now the train was moving, and noone pulled the breaks, not any individual, not the PMC, not the PMC Chair, not the community, not the Board - noone. That was also bad. I can't fix the past, but... Sam reaches for brakes. Sam grasps brakes. Sam pulls. :) All clever remarks aside, I think Niclas's response was well put. There is probably a lot that the foundation can learn from the mistakes in Avalon. I tried to summarize some of them the other day [1]. In terms of style of community building I think part of the issue at hand were instances when developers felt technical issues were paramount to community health. Usually this results in a fork and in the case of Avalon, it should have. But instead we were either overly optimistic and wanted to work things out or overly territorial and didn't want to break things up. Thus one of the 'markers' or 'safety values' which Niclas is talking about is a mechanism which allows communities and code to successfully branch and fork when necessary rather than be forced to play in the same sandbox until everyone learns his or her lesson to work well with others. The Incubator is one such mechanism. I believe it is quite appropriate to point these resources out and educate PMC's and developers on how to manage such situations. jaaron [1] http://www.jadetower.org/muses/archives/000146.html - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Style of community building
Niclas Hedhman wrote: On Tuesday 28 September 2004 20:27, Sam Ruby wrote: Niclas Hedhman wrote: Rightly or wrongly so, the tone of competition in Avalon was set well before the emergence of Merlin. That was bad. So now the train was moving, and noone pulled the breaks, not any individual, not the PMC, not the PMC Chair, not the community, not the Board - noone. That was also bad. I can't fix the past, but... Sam reaches for brakes. Sam grasps brakes. Sam pulls. That (whatever the pull symbolizes) should have been done 18-24 months ago :o) Agreed. Hindsight is easy, and I am not sure whether your intention is to punish parts (not all) of those who made it happen, plus some people who hasn't been involved (for instance commercial users). The intent is not to punish anyone, at all. For example, how are commercial users damaged in any way by the way the ASF choses to organize its work into projects? This is not meant to be a rhetorical question, I am genuinely curious. Did my suggestion reach you at all, or is it considered, what Ken refers to as, a hand wave ? Since you asked, I'll share my perception. Warning: it might not be what you expect. When someone points out that Ken has erred, he investigates the root cause, shares it, and takes full responsibility for the error. In this case, somebody pointed out an instance where somebody has erred, and I interpreted the response as sure I erred, but everybody else did too, and here is some other irrelevant consideration. I consider those portions of the message to be hand waves. We can discuss other things if you like, but until there is a proposal which adequately covers the technical and community aspects, you won't have this director's vote. - Sam Ruby - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Style of community building
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 J Aaron Farr wrote: | -Original Message- From: Sam Ruby | [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 8:28 | AM To: community@apache.org Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: | Style of community building | | Niclas Hedhman wrote: | | Rightly or wrongly so, the tone of competition in Avalon was | set well | | before | | the emergence of Merlin. That was bad. So now the train was | moving, and | | noone | | pulled the breaks, not any individual, not the PMC, not the PMC | Chair, | | not | | the community, not the Board - noone. That was also bad. | | I can't fix the past, but... | | Sam reaches for brakes. | | Sam grasps brakes. | | Sam pulls. | | | :) | | All clever remarks aside, I think Niclas's response was well put. | There is probably a lot that the foundation can learn from the | mistakes in Avalon. I tried to summarize some of them the other | day [1]. | | In terms of style of community building I think part of the issue | at hand were instances when developers felt technical issues were | paramount to community health. Usually this results in a fork and | in the case of Avalon, it should have. But instead we were either | overly optimistic and wanted to work things out or overly | territorial and didn't want to break things up. | | Thus one of the 'markers' or 'safety values' which Niclas is | talking about is a mechanism which allows communities and code to | successfully branch and fork when necessary rather than be forced | to play in the same sandbox until everyone learns his or her lesson | to work well with others. The Incubator is one such mechanism. I | believe it is quite appropriate to point these resources out and | educate PMC's and developers on how to manage such situations. | James Duncan Davidson's Apache Rules for revolutionaries document, from year 2k, has always been what I felt the unofficial policy (i.e. rough consensus amongst members regarding those conflicts. http://incubator.apache.org/learn/rules-for-revolutionaries.html I don't know the details of the conflict discussed here, but this document looks like a very good risk management strategy for any technical conflict. And it does not look like the rules there have been respected. Regards Santiago | jaaron | | [1] http://www.jadetower.org/muses/archives/000146.html | | - | To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For | additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFBWX+PZAeG2a2/nhoRAq8tAKDntdOlFazoOIcZz3U07nbFUSvc2gCfSYIu eNIRCaXBXfKrjG+jnDG++rk= =X7cC -END PGP SIGNATURE- - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Style of community building
Niclas Hedhman wrote: On Tuesday 28 September 2004 22:08, Sam Ruby wrote: Hindsight is easy, and I am not sure whether your intention is to punish parts (not all) of those who made it happen, plus some people who hasn't been involved (for instance commercial users). The intent is not to punish anyone, at all. For example, how are commercial users damaged in any way by the way the ASF choses to organize its work into projects? This is not meant to be a rhetorical question, I am genuinely curious. I will give you one particular example, as I personally feel somewhat responsible for dragging him into this mess. One of the most active users with Merlin is Andreas Oberhack, who works with financial institutions. He have just secured the first phase of a massive undertaking for a German bank. According to him, persuading the technical IT department of the downsides of J2EE and the really positive sides of Merlin in large and complex applications. However, the management in banks are generally very conservative about outside products in general and OSS in particular. He spent the majority of selling Merlin on the notions of the liberal ASL, the long-lived community behind it, access to the sources, and the usual arguments in favour of OSS and particularly BSD-styled products. How much that management based their decision on the solidity of the ASF is uncertain, but hate to envision that Andreas would loose any additional phases of work, or worse mis-representing the ASF and its longevity of products and be held liable, over this. I am not saying it will happen if we move Metro elsewhere, just the thought makes me at unease. I hope that puts things in a perspective. long-lived community is the key phrase. I started Gump. Gump has essentially been completely rewritten since I last made any major contribution to it. Yet the community remains. And the interfaces (in the form of data definitions, in this case) are stable. Successful communities outlast their leaders. In any case, this does not answer the question as to how the lack of a top level project for Metro would damage a commercial user. Did my suggestion reach you at all, or is it considered, what Ken refers to as, a hand wave ? When someone points out that Ken has erred, he investigates the root cause, shares it, and takes full responsibility for the error. Some miscommunication must have occurred. :o) I wasn't asking about Ken, just used a term he has used to dismiss statements from me previously. Hand wave == Nothing to take note of. Instead, I suggested that we learn from the Avalon experience, and try to establish a mechanism that safe guard all projects in the ASF from it happening elsewhere in the future. I spoke of Markers indicating something is not right, and Safety Valves (Aaron, not values) to steer things back on track, long before we issue ... severe reservations of ... being part of I will note that the key portion of my reply has been elided, and that another discussion has been inserted. People who know me will attest to the fact that I can be annoyingly patient and persistant. We can discuss other things if you like, but until there is a proposal which adequately covers the technical and community aspects, you won't have this director's vote. - Sam Ruby - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Style of community building
On Tuesday 28 September 2004 23:18, Sam Ruby wrote: long-lived community is the key phrase. yes. Successful communities outlast their leaders. Agree. In any case, this does not answer the question as to how the lack of a top level project for Metro would damage a commercial user. IMHO, 1. Metro doesn't belong any more in Avalon than Cocoon belongs in Tomcat. 2. The described 'worst-case' scenario, makes me not inclined to take Merlin away from the ASF. from that follows a set of options, a. A TLP. b. The Incubator. c. Another project/federation. a. is what we have opted for as the most preferred scenario from our perspective. b. is in the group considered a death sentence. Be that an overstatement, some users are indicating it to be a signal of the negative kind. c. we are unable to see that the technology fits naturally within any other project, but I am all ears if there is an opinion towards this. Cheers Niclas P.S. Thanks for your patience. -- +--//---+ / http://www.bali.ac/ / http://niclas.hedhman.org / +--//---+ - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Style of community building
On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Niclas Hedhman wrote: On Tuesday 28 September 2004 23:18, Sam Ruby wrote: In any case, this does not answer the question as to how the lack of a top level project for Metro would damage a commercial user. IMHO, 1. Metro doesn't belong any more in Avalon than Cocoon belongs in Tomcat. 2. The described 'worst-case' scenario, makes me not inclined to take Merlin away from the ASF. from that follows a set of options, a. A TLP. b. The Incubator. c. Another project/federation. a. is what we have opted for as the most preferred scenario from our perspective. b. is in the group considered a death sentence. Be that an overstatement, some users are indicating it to be a signal of the negative kind. c. we are unable to see that the technology fits naturally within any other project, but I am all ears if there is an opinion towards this. The incubator should not be considered a death sentence. It is only such for projects which will die anyway. The death of an incubated project is less negative for PR, etc. than the death of a TLP. The incubator defines a process for a new project to get approval to become a TLP. If you believe Metro will be a successful project, moving it quickly through the incubator should not be difficult. -- Dave Brondsema : [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.brondsema.net : personal http://www.splike.com : programming http://csx.calvin.edu : student org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Style of community building
2. The described 'worst-case' scenario, makes me not inclined to take Merlin away from the ASF. Are you hinting at the bank story? Hm. Quite frankly, I think people are being oversold on the size of the Merlin community ATM, and individual cases are being extrapolated into broad tendencies. We use Merlin in a project of ours, BTW. The code and vision are good. If the license terms stay the same, we wouldn't care too much about whether Merlin is an Apache project or not. I must honestly say I've been personally considering to offer you guys a Subversion repository if you really don't want to go to Sourceforge. from that follows a set of options, a. A TLP. b. The Incubator. c. Another project/federation. a. is what we have opted for as the most preferred scenario from our perspective. For better or for worse, creating TLPs to fulfill personal desires isn't the business of the ASF. I see the Metro TLP request as a way to steer around the actual problems, and I also see the value of being part of the Apache family being less appreciated than it should. Whether you like this or not, the foundation isn't only about simple implementation or interpretation of rules - it's primarily about people. If people start evaluating rules as to check whether there's a way to still settle their own private agendas, something rotten is going on. b. is in the group considered a death sentence. Be that an overstatement, some users are indicating it to be a signal of the negative kind. Being a member of the Incubator PMC, this obviously hits some nerves with me. Any ASF project, at any time, should have no issues at all with passing the simple criteria that were established in order to be able to enter the foundation. Saying incubation would mean a death sentence for Metro means you already know about severe issues with these criteria. Or you suspect that we are biased in judging Metro along these criteria. If that would be the case, I'm really sure that everyone on the Incubation PMC is mature enough to abstain if he feels too biased. c. we are unable to see that the technology fits naturally within any other project, but I am all ears if there is an opinion towards this. An confrontational but well-wishing advise from me would be to take Metro out of Apache for 6 to 12 months, and re-approach Apache as a fresh project with no murky past after that. /Steven -- Steven Noelshttp://outerthought.org/ Outerthought - Open Source Java XMLAn Orixo Member Read my weblog athttp://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/ stevenn at outerthought.orgstevenn at apache.org - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
