Re: Formalize Committer Proposal and Application Procedure

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On Fri, Aug 04, 2017 at 12:42:12AM -0700, Henri Yandell wrote:
> I worry that it creates a high barrier to entry.

+1 from my side to that worry.


Isabel

MXNet project web page

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Hi,

I'm currently in the process of creating a slide deck and wanted to use the
mxnet logo as part of that presentation.

So I want ahead and opened

http://mxnet.incubator.apache.org

I found a directory listing including a test directory. Is that expected?

Clicking on the "test" directory opened something that looked a whole lot like a
lovely project page, except it didn't include the standard Apache incubator
branding disclaimer for podlings:

http://incubator.apache.org/guides/branding.html#disclaimers


I checked the Github Repo of the project, the Logo there still includes dmlc as
org and outside of the news list doesn't include any reference to the project
being Apache mxnet (incubating).

Thinking that maybe ppl are working on a new site/logo already I checked the
issue tracker. All I found was a discussion that seems to have subsided 2.5
months ago: https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/issues/6103

So here I am wondering which logo to include :)

Isabel

Re: Formalize Committer Proposal and Application Procedure

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 12:31:23PM -0700, Bhavin Thaker wrote:
> The criteria should look not only at Quantity but at the Quality of work as
> well.

Just as one additional data point:

http://community.apache.org/newcommitter.html is the Apache Community 
Development Project's guidelines.

For other tasks than coding see also here:
http://community.apache.org/committers/#assisting-with-project-management-and-marketing


https://community.apache.org/apache-way/apache-project-maturity-model.html#community
 for more on
the maturity model's take on community.


One thing to keep in mind: All successful OSS projects I came across at some
point had to deal with topics that were very far away from writing actual code.
In your committer guidelines you can make a conscious choice to explicitly
mention that those tasks will be rewarded as well - which in turn might lead to
people who won't necessarily contribute code (either due to legal constraints or
simply lack of interest or skills) to take these tasks up for you.

I remember seeing discussions on whether to turn non-coding-contributors into
committers recently, but my search-foo has left me, I don't find the thread in
question anymore :/

Isabel



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Re: Formalize Committer Proposal and Application Procedure

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On Fri, Aug 04, 2017 at 12:27:16PM +0100, Chiyuan Zhang wrote:
> Suppose we lower the standard or completely remove the formal standard for
> committers, then we could probably be able to get more committers from the
> first type. But that might not necessarily be good to us

Can you elaborate your reasoning here? (I'm not implying that I agree or
disagree with you, I just want to understand where this fear is coming
from.)


> having people that could either contribute relatively important components
> or provide longer term commitment to the project. But on the other hand,
> having a standard for committers do not (I hope) discourage the first type
> of contributors to contribute PRs.

Let me tell you a little campfire story: Back in the old days of Mahout we
implicitly had a relatively high bar for becoming a committer. People thought
that in order to become committer they would have to contribute substantial
patches, often full new algorithm implementations.

What the project really needed were a lot of work polishing, optimising,
cleaning, making easier to use, documenting etc.

Due to the perception of requiring substantial contributions to get the
reward of becoming committer however we never received much of the latter.


Lesson learnt for me: The way you setup your reward systems greatly
influences which kind of help your project will receive.


Isabel

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Re: MXNet website redesign

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Hi,

First of all, great to read there are people with interest and time to update 
the website.


Am 12. September 2017 19:00:21 MESZ schrieb Seb Kiureghian :
>The pPMC would like to update the website.

This wording is worrying to me. It sounds like a decision was made out of sight 
of the public project community, that is out of sight of dev@

The only way to grow your community and make it possible for outsiders is to 
have  conversations leading up to decisions like these here on dev@. Maybe I 
missed those, happy for any pointers.


Isabel




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Re: Note on when to Delete GitHub Comments

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 4. Dezember 2017 01:08:37 MEZ schrieb Hen :
>Basically a reminder that it should be a PMC decision, or if needing to
>move quickly a decision of the PMC Chair (mentors while a podling).

Remember that for provenance reasons all communication on github is mirrored on 
Apache servers in its own mailing list so you don't need to be afraid you loose 
information by accidentally clicking some delete button.

That's important to remember in particular if someone accidentally disclosed 
sensitive information e.g. as part of some bug report.

See here for more on that: http://apache.org/foundation/public-archives.html

See here for mailing list archives including your own (click through to a 
specific list to get to the search interface, you can search all the way 
through the entire history of the foundation's communication, powered by 
ponymail): 
https://lists.apache.org

If you'd like to improve ponymail, your patches are welcome. See here:
https://ponymail.incubator.apache.org


Isabel

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Re: AWS contributing ONNX-MXNet

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 16. November 2017 23:04:05 MEZ schrieb "Lupesko, Hagay" :
>Today AWS announced contributing ONNX-MXNet,


Just for clarification: this package is going to be/ intended to be contributed 
where to? Or do you mean "published under a free and open source license"?

Isabel

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Meet senior Apache ppl next Monday in Berlin

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Hi,

Just a quick heads-up: we'll have several senior Apache ppl in Berlin on 
November 20th for http://fossbackstage.de

The location is two UBahn stops east of the Amazon offices. The event is free 
as in free beer. While I will pick up printed batches in an hour you can still 
sign up and show up on Monday.

You don't need to be a committer to be there. While the talks should be 
interesting to devs with an interest in the wider scope of open source, this an 
awesome opportunity for TPM/SDM people to connect with other Apache projects - 
something that typically has turned out beneficial long term. Also through 
talks and hallway conversations you'll get a deep dive into how Apache ticks. 


Isabel

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Re: About Becoming a Committer

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Hi,

I would like to share some inspiration:

https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/success-at-apache-jfdi-the

I do believe in pulling people in quickly, in giving them responsibility early, 
on rewarding contributions in a timely manner.

Apache was born out of a collaboration of people using a web server that was 
abandoned because they depended on it for their daily work. The mechanisms 
build into the ASF are based on the assumption that contributors work on 
projects based on their individual needs. On an on and off schedule - as time 
permits. Requiring to work full time on a project to show sufficient commitment 
doesn't allow for very many people to become committed to mxnet. It doesn't 
allow for the project to survive times where there is no sponsoring entity.

People asking to have people desisions in public to me points to serious 
problems in the project.

Isabel



Am 13. Juni 2018 07:54:41 MESZ schrieb Pedro Larroy 
:
>* I personally don't like the idea that comittership status is decided
>in a
>closed mail list. This is not the transparency level that I would
>expect in
>an open source project. I'm happy to receive feedback from others that
>might be opposed to my application for committer to know what things
>could
>be improved to get there. I have been doing a plethora of contributions
>to
>the project over a year including ARM support, Android and CI,
>obviously
>some of this work together with my team at Amazon (@lebeg,
>@KellenSunderland, @marcoabreu). I don't have visibility on how much
>longer
>one has to wait, or what needs to be improved to get there.
>
>* My team is on-call for CI / CD which is also sponsored by us. To fix
>problems promptly we would need write permissions to the repository.
>This
>would normal in any other project, be open source or corporate. I think
>it's not effective to be on-call when you can't submit critical fixes
>and
>wait days for a CR. Basically I think everyone responsible or involved
>in
>CI should have access rights. As you know, testing our project is a
>challenging task for reasons discussed before.
>
>Please comitters and mentors, provide a solution that allows us to work
>more effectively and move the project forward faster, as is vital to
>make
>it easier to contribute so we can attract more users.
>
>Pedro.
>
>On Tue, Jun 12, 2018 at 10:31 AM Yasser Zamani
>
>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 6/9/2018 12:45 AM, Sheng Zha wrote:
>> > There have been a couple of offline inquiries from contributors
>about
>> > becoming a committer. From those inquiries, it seems that there’s
>> confusion
>> > in our community about how to become a committer, so I’d like to
>take
>> this
>> > opportunity to clarify.
>> >
>> > The guideline about becoming a committer can be found at
>> >
>https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Becoming+a+Committer.
>>
>> I think that page at above link is great but the problem is new
>visitors
>> cannot find it quickly then they ask privately from you. I myself was
>> looking for it at mxnet.incubator.apache.org, so clicked on
>> "Community->Contribute", the I read all page then I saw a link to
>wiki
>> on page i.e. "MXNet Confluence Wiki: Development" where I guessed I
>> might find something in wiki so clicked that. Then I saw "Becoming a
>> Committer" in left side wiki's menu.
>>
>> I think we'll get fewer private inquiries on this if we add a direct
>> link about it at
>> https://mxnet.incubator.apache.org/community/contribute.html
>>
>> Regards.
>>

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Re: About Becoming a Committer

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

As an aside: if you want to learn more on the background of Apache, or free and 
open source in general join us at Http://fossbackstage.de in Berlin in walking 
distance from U2 stop Eberswalder Str.
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Re: ICLA?

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Hi,

I'm not Hen, but:

https://www.apache.org/dev/new-committers-guide.html#icla-required-before-account-creation

https://www.apache.org/dev/new-committers-guide.html#cla

Everyone who has an Apache.org address, that is every committer, has to sign 
this. The documents are tracked centrally in SVN.


On how to become a committer see here:

https://www.apache.org/foundation/getinvolved.html#become-a-committer


For contributers see also:

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-infrastructure-dev/201112.mbox/%3ca603ffce-623b-43e9-87f8-39baa51c7...@gbiv.com%3E


Isabel

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Re: Module maintainers proposal

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 9. Januar 2018 18:25:50 MEZ schrieb Mu Li :
>We should encourage to contract a specific contributor for issues and
>PRs.

My head translates "encourage to contact specific contributor" into "encourage 
to contact specific contributors inbox". This translated version is what I 
would highly discourage.

See the disclaimer here for reasons behind that:

https://home.apache.org/~hossman/#private_q


Isabel
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Re: Module maintainers proposal

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Another two side notes:

Even if there are maintainers, if for instance there's a security issue in 
module X the entire PMC will be held accountable for fixing it. So for instance 
the maintainer being offline is no excuse for not taking care of it. "That's 
not my issue" is not a valid answer.

Even if there are maintainers this still means other committers continue to 
have a say in reviewing that modules code even if they aren't maintainers.

Also make sure that what you write into the maintainer docs reflects reality 
and keep things updated. Otherwise you risk things falling through the cracks.

Think twice or more about establishing anything that could encourage people to 
get in touch with maintainers directly instead of talking with the project as a 
whole via its mailing lists (and issues/ PRs mapped to mailing lists). Getting 
rid of project content from your inbox is incredibly hard once you want to be 
less involved with the project. From a projects perspective extracting 
knowledge hidden in private inboxes is neigh impossible after the fact. (I have 
been burnt with the above more than once, happy to share the story of anyone is 
interested in listening.)

Stepping down from my soap box,
Isabel 

Am 9. Januar 2018 09:05:50 MEZ schrieb Sebastian :
>One side note on the language used here: there are no "owners" of 
>packages in Apache projects, the community owns the code as a whole.
>You 
>probably meant maintainer instead of owner.
>
>Best,
>Sebastian
>
>On 09.01.2018 08:24, YiZhi Liu wrote:
>> +1 for adding @CodingCat (Nan Zhu) as owner of Scala package.
>> 
>> 2018-01-08 21:58 GMT-08:00 Mu Li :
>> 
>>> It has been a while for discussing having maintainers for individual
>>> modules. A maintainer for a module will be the main person who
>reviews and
>>> approves PRs contributed to that module.
>>>
>>> Currently, some maintainers are listed in the file CODEOWNERS
>>> :
>>>
>>> # Owners of Apache MXNet
>>> # Global owners
>>> *@apache/mxnet-committers
>>> # Owners of language bindings
>>> R-package/*@thirdwing
>>> scala-package/*@javelinjs
>>> perl-package/*@sergeykolychev
>>> # CMake owners
>>> CMakeLists.txt@cjolivier01
>>> cmake/*@cjolivier01
>>>
>>> However, this list is incomplete. This document proposes how to
>partition
>>> mxnet codes into modules and put tentative maintainers for each
>module.
>>>
>>> - I tried to select the activate contributor who contributed
>most to the
>>> module, not the new contributor who is going to work for it. But
>I may
>>> be
>>> outdated.
>>> - Code review is not easy. So maintainers may need help at the
>>> beginning.
>>> - Eric (@piiswrong) did most PR reviews, so I didn't put his
>name on
>>> every module.
>>>
>>> Any suggestion is welcome.
>>> FrontendPYTHON: @szha
>>>
>>> python/
>>>
>>> R: @thirdwing @hetong007
>>>
>>> R-package/
>>>
>>> SCALA: @CodingCat @javelinjs
>>>
>>> scala-package/
>>>
>>> PERL@sergeykolychev
>>>
>>> perl-package/
>>>
>>> C++?
>>>
>>> cpp-package/
>>>
>>> MATLAB: DEPRECATE IT?
>>>
>>> matlab/
>>>
>>> AMALGAMATION: DEPRECATE IT?
>>>
>>> amalgamation/
>>>
>>> Backend@reminisce @eric-haibin-lin
>>>
>>> include/
>>> src/
>>>
>>> Build@cjolivier01
>>>
>>> docker/
>>> docker_multiarch/
>>> make/
>>> Makefile
>>> cmake/
>>> CMakeLists.txt
>>> setup-utils/
>>> prepare_mkl.sh
>>>
>>> Test@marcoabreu
>>>
>>> tests/
>>> Jenkinsfile
>>>
>>> Doc & Website@kevinthesun
>>>
>>> docs/
>>>
>>> ExamplesNot sure, since we have a lot of contributors here. We
>probably
>>> need to remove low quality examples and assign one maintainer for
>each of
>>> the rest.
>>>
>>> example/
>>>
>>> ToolsNot sure as well, since we have a bunch of things there.
>Probably need
>>> to the same thing as examples
>>>
>>> tools/
>>> plugin/
>>>
>>> AppendixLines of codes added into each folder on the last two
>months:
>>> Lines of codes added into example/
>>> Lines of codes added into src/
>>>
>> 
>> 
>> 

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Re: Module maintainers proposal

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Hi,



Am 16. Januar 2018 01:40:48 MEZ schrieb Steffen Rochel 
:
># Anybody can add themselves or a team as additional contributors
># to get notified about changes in a specific package.
># See https://help.github.com/articles/about-teams how to setup teams.
>
>Hope we can adopt this approach.

Once you run with that approach: As to my knowledge you are the first project 
at Apache using the code owners function, it would be great if you could track 
its usage and impact on your community in coming incubator/ board reports.

When first mentioning it, make sure though to either point ppl to this thread 
or explain its intended use to avoid running into a second wave of warnings 
about things discussed here already.

Isabel

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Re: Module maintainers proposal

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 15. Januar 2018 04:59:19 MEZ schrieb Chris Olivier :
>+1 for the line: # Anybody can add themselves

+1 to this line, maybe add that the project intends to use to codeowner 
function as a notification mechanism.

This can be very handy also for new committers trying to focus on one code area.

However I'm a bit surprised finding this line, as else thread I read that the 
intention is for codeowners to get more say in when a pr gets merged than other 
committers. Can someone elaborate on how that is supposed to play together with 
any committer being able to add themselves?

Also did people check the commits mailing list? For typical Apache projects 
this is where code changes get copied. (Much like typically issue tracker 
changes get copied to issues@).


Isabel


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Re: MXNet virtual hangout 2018-August-1 8am and 5pm PDT

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On Thu, Aug 02, 2018 at 03:29:48PM -0700, Steffen Rochel wrote:
> I would like to thank all attendees, especially Ming Zhang for the deep
> dive in the challenges he is facing.
> Please see hangout notes at
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Aug+1st.+2018+-+5pm+PDT+session

Thanks for the write-up. There's some really nice points in there.


Isabel

Re: MXNet Berlin Office Hours

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 2. August 2018 20:33:44 MESZ schrieb Ivan Serdyuk 
:
>I have a single global question: I am looking for a global plan for
>covering MXNet, for developer meetups.

Can you elaborate what you mean by global plan for covering mxnet for developer 
meetups?


> There are various APIs, for
>various
>languages. So I guess i might come up with diff. backend communities
>(in my
>home country - Ukraine).

Again would you mind sharing what you mean with diff backend communities?

Isabel

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Re: Separate repo for MXNet infrastructure

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 1. August 2018 09:36:24 MESZ schrieb Yuelin Zhang 
:
>My concern is where should my code be finally merged. This bot is not a
>part of MXNet framework but it serves MXNet community. For now, a good
>option is to have a separate repo for infrastructure.

As this would be something that serves the mxnet project, my advise would be to 
make sure it ends up in a location that is controlled by the Apache mxnet PMC, 
in a location that is mirrored back to ASF resources.

Isabel

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Re: Help with understanding docs

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 8. August 2018 21:34:47 MESZ schrieb Tianqi Chen :
>As far as I understand, these are packages that are build on top of
>gluon
>and runs on MXNet,

Going through the hosted subdomains that seems not quite correct (or the 
content hosted is not entirely correct):

"Welcome to the MxNet discussion forum." Is what I get as a greeting navigating 
to discuss.mxnet.io

"This site faciliates data sharing for the MXNet project" is what I get 
navigating to data.mxnet.io

https://gluon-nlp.mxnet.io/ looks like something you describe. Not sure who 
exactly is behind it in a legal sense (maybe this helps with understanding 
where my confusion/worry I coming from for it: 
https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/success-at-apache-the-apache1 )

https://zh.mxnet.io ... From what little I understand this looks like some 
Apache mxnet blog in Chinese?

Plus the docs on gluon/mxnet hosted there.


>I personally feel it is great to see ecosystem build and content on top
>of
>what we are building

Same here: ecosystem building on top and around clearly is great. 

What I find confusing is the mixture of content (mxnet specific, gluon 
specific, both) which makes it hard for me as a user to discern which is which.

What I find confusing as well is that at least some of the content looks like 
it might be official project content (it's even linked to from official project 
docs), except it seems like it's not controlled by the project?

Isabel

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Re: Help with understanding docs

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On Wed, Aug 08, 2018 at 02:39:22PM -0700, Mu Li wrote:
> > Going through the hosted subdomains that seems not quite correct (or the
> > content hosted is not entirely correct):
> >
> > "Welcome to the MxNet discussion forum." Is what I get as a greeting
> > navigating to discuss.mxnet.io

Am I right with assuming that this is pending evaluation wrt. to capability to
attract new committers and if found useful, something that likely the PMC as a
whole would want control over?


> "This site faciliates data sharing for the MXNet project" is what I get
> > navigating to data.mxnet.io
> 
> This site is deprecated (created before mxnet went to apache), we still
> kept it alive because some old codes may need data from it.

ACK.


> > https://gluon-nlp.mxnet.io/ looks like something you describe. Not sure
> > who exactly is behind it in a legal sense (maybe this helps with
> > understanding where my confusion/worry I coming from for it:
> > https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/success-at-apache-the-apache1 )
> >
> gluon-nlp and gluon-cv are two packaged based on gluon. It's still on early
> developing, we are considering to either donote them to apache or merge
> into mxnet when they are in a more mature sitation. At the same time, we
> are consualting lawyers for the trademark issue, e.g. if gluon is a
> trade-mark owned by Apache.

Meh for the legal hurdles. As for my personal opinion: While a lot of projects
come to Apache through the incubator, I find it easier if projects are pulled
in rather earlier than later.

Especially if you are thinking about merging that into mxnet it sounds like it
would make an aweful lot of sense to keep the Apache mxnet project in the loop
early on.


> > https://zh.mxnet.io ... From what little I understand this looks like
> > some Apache mxnet blog in Chinese?
> >
> > It's a placeholder for the Chinese translated mxnet documents. Currently
> it's just a simple index page.

I know that at least httpd has their docs hosted on their main web page in
multiple languages. Translating docs can be a very low barrier entry for new
contributors. Instead of hosting that on an external site, I think it would
make sense to pull that into the main docs.


> > What I find confusing as well is that at least some of the content looks
> > like it might be official project content (it's even linked to from
> > official project docs), except it seems like it's not controlled by the
> > project?

<- is that assumption correct?


Isabel

Help with understanding docs

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Hi,

I had a bit of time recently to walk through some of the getting started docs. 
First time setup of mxnet is really well described and worked seamlessly.

Next step was going through some getting started examples - the straight dope 
docs linked from the mxnet setup page were useful for that.

There are a couple questions though that were confusing to me:

The docs are called Gluon Straight Dope, but hosted under: 
https://gluon.mxnet.io 

Doing a whois without any further deep checking for mxnet.io the entry revealed 
a German GmbH as owner? 

That caught my curiosity so I dug a little deeper: 

The site seems to also host what looks like mxnet models, directing users 
towards m...@cs.cmu.edu for more information (http://data.mxnet.io/).

It also seems to host the mxnet user discuss forum: Http://discuss.mxnet.io

As well as a mxnet blog in Chinese: Http://zh.mxnet.io

And the docs for another project: https://gluon-nlp.mxnet.io/

Now I'm left puzzled as to what of the content on the site is specific to 
mxnet, how much of the content is vital to the project (after all mxnet docs 
link to it very prominently) and how much influence the Apache mxnet PMC has on 
these resources.

On first sight it looks like a leftover that hasn't made the migration to asf 
infra yet, but I couldn't find a ticket related to that, so not sure if that 
guess is accurate. I'd appreciate someone explain the story and resolve my 
confusion.


Isabel




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Re: Help with understanding docs

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 8. August 2018 21:17:44 MESZ schrieb Mu Li :
>MXNet's website is http://mxnet.incubator.apache.org/. I own mxnet.io,
>which was mxnet's main site before, but now we are using its subdomains
>to
>host various packages in the mxnet ecosystem.

I'm still confused: There's what looks like content vital to the project owned 
and controlled privately by one project member? Is the intention to move that 
stuff over to mxnet.incubator or to keep it where it is?

Isabel

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Re: Request for feedback: proposal for MXNet SDK Office hours

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On 18/07/18 23:30, Mu Li wrote:

A minor suggestion: rename MXNet SDK to AWS MXNet SDK or Amazon MXNet SDK.


What exactly is the Amazon MXNet SDK? What is the AWS MXNet SDK?

Your suggestion triggered my question because:

https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/#products


Isabel

Re: [Discussion] Separating PMC and Committership

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 10. Oktober 2018 04:31:49 MESZ schrieb Chris Olivier :
>is it convenient to define the difference and the rights and privileges
>of
>each? write access, private list, voting and veto power, etc?

+1 - also, likely it would make sense to also list the responsibilities of each.

Isabel

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Re: [Discussion] Separating PMC and Committership

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 10. Oktober 2018 11:04:30 MESZ schrieb kellen sunderland 
:
> My
>impression is there's a high degree of knowledge and experience
>required to
>make strategic design decisions on the project. 
 
This statement indicates a certain understanding of what a PMC actually does. 
As a first step, would everyone please state their perspective on what their 
understanding of what the role committer, PMC member and PMC chair actually 
are? I really want to make sure we are talking about the same things here.

Isabel


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Re: Maturity Model and Graduation

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On 28/09/18 11:27, kellen sunderland wrote:

I'd love to see some more
sustained contribution from other open source communities to help us out in
this area


That's not exactly the model I have seen to work. What I have seen works 
really well at other projects is pulling users in as committers in a 
scratch your own itch kind of way. For that to work you need to make it 
clear what contributions you need, you need to make time to coach people 
to become developers, you need to make your users accustomed to the way 
you work as early as possible. It also helps to ask users for 
contributions and offer mentoring help from your side along the way.


I know that this is tedious work that needs a lot of motivating people, 
mentoring people, explaining to people, however it makes for a 
sustainable community of people that do the work out of self interest.


http://blog.isabel-drost.de/posts/open-development-and-inner-source-for-fun-and-profit.html


Isabel

Re: [Discussion] Separating PMC and Committership

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 10. Oktober 2018 16:16:47 MESZ schrieb sandeep krishnamurthy 
:
>However, like others suggested, success of this whole effort will be
>based
>on defining clear responsibility of PMC, committers and path for the
>community to be part of committers and PMC.

PMC member and chair are ASF defined roles. Some getting started docs:

http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#pmc

So to make my previous ask more explicit: Before discussing pros and cons of 
splitting roles I think it would make sense for everyone to either share their 
understanding of what those roles are or research the terms and share their 
resulting understanding. From the discussion so far to me it looks like this 
could be a helpful exercise to avoid confusion.

Isabel

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Re: [Discussion] Separating PMC and Committership

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On 2018/10/10 09:04:30, kellen sunderland  wrote: 
> When it comes to responsibilities one high-level suggestion I'd make is
> that core members retain decision making abilities for the 'big' decisions
> where experience is required. 

Written from the PMC point of view:

Every individual member of the PMC is held accountable for the project to 
report quarterly, to comply with legal standards, to comply with brand 
management policies, follow press standards, address security vulnerabilities, 
to conduct business on public mailing lists, grow the community, to limit the 
use of private mailing lists. All of these account-abilities come without 
discretionary power over your peers who are working as individuals on mxnet. 
PMC members do have binding votes on releases. They do have binding votes for 
adding new committers and new PMC members. While in incubation there's quite a 
bit of help from mentors for all of the above, as soon as you leave incubation 
those are the main responsibilities of PMC members. (For those who want to dig 
deeper: http://www.apache.org/dev/pmc.html )

Notice how little all of these tasks have to do with coding decisions. Or to 
quote the link I sent earlier:

"The role of the PMC from a Foundation perspective is oversight. The main role 
of the PMC is not code and not coding - but to ensure that all legal issues are 
addressed, that procedure is followed, and that each and every release is the 
product of the community as a whole. That is key to our litigation protection 
mechanisms."

The tl;dr; version that I (half jokingly) tell people: "You don't want to 
become a PMC member - it gives you access to yet another mailing list to follow 
and it adds a whole lot of new responsibilities."

Coming from that perspective, several of the arguments I have seen exchanged so 
far wrt. to splitting the roles to me read like you have an understanding of 
those roles that is different from the above.


I hope the above helps,
Isabel

Re: MXNet wins Infoworld award for best open source software for machine learning!

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2018 at 08:32:53AM -0400, Steffen Rochel wrote:
> Congratulation to all contributors to the project, well deserved!
> https://www.infoworld.com/article/3308398/machine-learning/the-best-open-source-software-for-machine-learning.html#slide9
> 
> 
> Let's consider the recognition as motivation to increase our effort.

Congratulations!


Isabel

Re: Questions about MXNet Incubation

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 17. Januar 2019 00:26:04 MEZ schrieb Bob Paulin :
>> *What are the benefits of graduation for the project and our end
>users?*
>This is one of those: "It's more about the Journey than the end
>destination."  Projects that complete incubation have demonstrated that
>they meet a certain bar.  And while that by no means guarantee eternal
>success it does mean that you have met the ASF standard for exit which
>is not easy.  It means that going forward a report will be submitted to
>the board describing how your project is doing that end users will be
>able to read.  This is beyond "How many stars or downloads per month"
>type of stats that let your user community know you're not going away
>anytime soon.  One of the criticisms I often hear of the ASF is that
>projects just don't die (usually around some project that they believe
>is old or should be deprecated).   To me this is a feature since as
>long
>as people care about the project it can live as long as it wants.

That's a nice summary of what the goal of having an incubator is. Something I 
personally would love to know is what other projects having gone through the 
process think of it's benefits and drawbacks, what really was it that changed 
on their journey through the incubator and into being a tlp.

Carin (or anyone else really), with the 20th anniversary of the ASF coming up - 
would you mind starting a thread on the topic over at dev@community and reach 
out to other projects (both recently graduated and well established and 
popular) and look for some answers to the question? Would be great if others on 
this list could help with gathering that information...

Isabel


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Re: Questions about MXNet Incubation

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 18. Januar 2019 16:38:14 MEZ schrieb Carin Meier :
>Thanks Bob and Isabel for the feedback and answers :)
>
>Isabel, I took your suggestion and started a thread on dev@community :
>
>https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/b59ac198363bd5691cf2a8ef524643e6838c6ea2b679a0ba97d12d17@%3Cdev.community.apache.org%3E

Thanks for that. Now I'm seriously hoping that people will answer...


Isabel

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Re: Proposal for a recurrent architecture meeting and long term direction

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 08:03:42PM +0100, Pedro Larroy wrote:
> If you wish to join the monthly architecture meeting today, please
> join the hangout below:
> 
> https://hangouts.google.com/call/ZXXqJ0ZL5m_dcHOVIeTcAEEE

Likely I've missed the mail - can you point me to the summary of the above
meeting?


Isabel

Re: Proposal for a recurrent architecture meeting and long term direction

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 19. Januar 2019 16:35:58 MEZ schrieb Pedro Larroy 
:
> We talked with Timur about graphcore accelerators, and
>seems other people also missed the meeting

Meetings like this always should be optional, what's more important: It must be 
possible to follow the project from subscribing to its mailing lists only.


>For next meeting I will send an agenda of topics to discuss in advance.

That seems like a good idea to motivate ppl to participate.

What's more important though is bringing discussions back here on list so 
everyone can participate (at the very minimum, potential decisions have to be 
brought back here. It helps with building transparency, community and 
ultimately trust to also pro actively bring a brief summary of other 
discussions here).

Isabel

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Re: Weekly Berlin User Group

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Hi,


On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 01:47:59PM +0100, Chance Bair wrote:
> This is a friendly reminder that the weekly Berlin User Group will be held
> today at 6pm-7pm (CEST) / 9am-10am (PST). More info here:
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Apache+MXNet+%28Incubating%29+User+Groups+recurring+meetings

I'd love to get a sneak peek at the content discussed at these meetings. Would
be great to see you sharing what was discussed yesterday evening here for the
benefit of everyone who could not attend.


Isabel
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Re: Weekly Berlin User Group

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2019 at 09:47:07AM +0100, Chance Bair wrote:
> Unfortunately, we did not have any attendance at the user group yesterday.

Oh, that's sad :/


> Since the my team handles the CI system, usually the content is geared
> towards fixing/reproducing test failures from PRs.  We always invite anyone
> to dial into these weekly user groups with any topic for discussion!

Maybe it would help attendance if people understood what they can gain from
attending - would be great if you could share what was discussed at those
meetings going forward here on dev@ to raise awareness of the usefulness of
that meetup. This would be a benefit also for folks reading here but in the
wrong timezone to attend your meetup in person/ dialed in.

Isabel


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Re: Reminder: MXNet Berlin User Group

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On Tue, Apr 02, 2019 at 01:50:40PM +0200, Chance Bair wrote:
> This is a friendly reminder that MXNet Berlin User Group will be held today
> at 6pm-7pm (CEST) / 9am-10am (PST). More info here:
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Apache+MXNet+%28Incubating%29+User+Groups+recurring+meetings

Same question as last week: Would you please share more information on how the
event turned out in terms of attendees, topics etc.?


Isabel

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Re: Reminder: MXNet Berlin User Group

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 4. April 2019 13:29:28 MESZ schrieb Chance Bair :
>Again, there were no attendees.

Is that a pattern, or was that just the case for the past two events?

If the former, maybe we could brainstorm here what could be done to make the 
offer more attractive?


Isabel

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Re: [DISCUSS] Rebrand Gluon to MXNet imperative or something MXNet.

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 28. März 2019 21:53:16 MEZ schrieb Mu Li :
>
>The reason why we call it GluonCV instead of MXNetCV is because MXNet
>is a
>trademark owned by Apache, while Gluon doesn't have this issue.

Who's the "we" in that sentence?

If it doesn't belong to Apache, who owns the Gluon trademark? 

Isabel


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Re: [DISCUSS] Rebrand Gluon to MXNet imperative or something MXNet.

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 28. März 2019 21:53:16 MEZ schrieb Mu Li :
>
>The reason why we call it GluonCV instead of MXNetCV is because MXNet
>is a
>trademark owned by Apache, while Gluon doesn't have this issue.

Who's the "we" in that sentence?

If it doesn't belong to Apache, who owns the Gluon trademark? 

Isabel


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Re: [DISCUSS] Rebrand Gluon to MXNet imperative or something MXNet.

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

I'm a bit confused. Can you point me to the source files that make up Gluon? 
Are they part of Apache MxNet?

Isabel


Am 23. März 2019 00:01:56 MEZ schrieb Pedro Larroy 
:
>Hi dev@
>
>We heard feedback from users that the Gluon name is confusing. Some of
>them don't even know it's MXNet and it's unclear the relationship with
>MXNet
>
>Would it make sense to rebrand Gluon to just MXNet or MXNet
>imperative? Diluting brands and names is never a good idea.
>
>There's also gluonhq which is related to JavaFX which adds to the
>confusion, search engine friendliness is not high as well.
>
>Pedro.

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Re: [DISCUSS] Rebrand Gluon to MXNet imperative or something MXNet.

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 23. März 2019 02:28:54 MEZ schrieb Tianqi Chen :
>> Today there is a big initiative to publicize MXNet.
>
>
>It would be great such initiative can be(and should be) brought to
>dev@..

+1 also this could have the side effect of others watching stepping up and 
helping.

On a related note, are you aware of the Apache media training that might be 
helpful here.

Isabel


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Re: Call for Ideas and Approaches to Community Building

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 2. März 2019 15:13:23 MEZ schrieb Carin Meier :
>I wanted to kickoff a discussion about community building. There was an
>excellent blog post from the Apache Beam Community on this
>https://blogs.apache.org/comdev/entry/an-approach-to-community-building

Needless to say I really love that blog post.

Other than that there are a couple of question you might ask yourself as a 
community:

How easy is it to patriciate as an outsider, how much communication is 
happening outside of dev@?

How explicit are you about how inclusive you want to be? See also 
https://youtu.be/LgB1s3buccI

How explicit are you about where you need help (including and beyond coding)?

How explicit are you with downstream users that some of the inner workings of 
Apache projects are build around a scratch your own itch casual contributions 
that ideally should be rewarded the same way as full-time contributions 
(https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/success-at-apache-for-love )?

I think you want to enable as many ppl as possible - typically only ten percent 
of your users turn into contributor, of those only ten percent trend to be 
repeat contributors... at least in my experience.

Just some ideas,
Isabel
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Re: Call for Ideas and Approaches to Community Building

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 6. März 2019 18:36:36 MEZ schrieb Aaron Markham :
>Having more creatives in the open source community, not just MXNet,
>would
>be great for diversity.

.oO(And something that would be appreciated even at the foundation level...)

Is there anything else that people can think of where help might be needed? 
Anything else where getting involved or following the project could be made 
easier?


Isabel (who seriously hates auto correct on Android, see "corrections" in my 
last mail, sorry for those misspellings)

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Re: Embedded World 2019 Robotics Demo

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Hi,

Sounds interesting. Can you share more on what you are showing and what role 
mxnet plays?

Also, who's that "we" behind "our booth"?


Have fun in Nürnberg,
Isabel

Am 27. Februar 2019 11:38:57 MEZ schrieb Anton Chernov :
>Dear MXNet Community,
>
>If you happens to be at the Embedded World exhibition in Nürnberg drop
>by
>our booth at the Qt stand in hall 4 to see a MXNet robotics demo.
>
>Looking forward to see you!
>
>Best
>Anton

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Re: Embedded World 2019 Robotics Demo

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Hi,

First of all thank you for the summary, that sounds awesome. Would be great to 
hear more stories like this shared here - for the stories that can be shared.


Am 28. Februar 2019 08:03:38 MEZ schrieb Thomas DELTEIL 
:
>To answer your question Isabel, this project was a joint cooperation
>between a few MXNet team members at AWS, including Anton, Pavel and
>myself
>and some employees at the QT (the C++ library) company, in their
>industrial
>automation department.

Thanks for the information - just names of those individuals who deserve credit 
would have been more than enough. Any chance to draw any of those who preferred 
to remain unnamed here into the project*? 

Isabel


* I guess I'm old school but in my experience giving credit publicly is a great 
way to increase contributor motivation. Sorry for soundings like your notorious 
volunteer/ casual contributor recruiter ;)
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Re: Call for Ideas and Approaches to Community Building

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 17. März 2019 22:15:15 MEZ schrieb Lin Yuan :
>Thanks for joining in the mxnet project and your very thoughtful
>discussion. We do have virtual hangout/meetups. Please refer to
>https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MXNET/Meetups+and+Hangouts

Would it help to have summaries of its discussions copied here?

Zack, what would have helped you find that meetup?

>I also strongly agree with your 4). I think we should have a clear
>roadmap
>on our wiki page and/or github repo.

Looking forward to discussions on what should be on there and why on the mxnet 
lists. Maybe going over that list would be something you could do each time 
you're shipping a release?


Isabel

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Re: Call for Ideas and Approaches to Community Building

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2019 at 10:03:57PM -0800, Steffen Rochel wrote:
> I agree with Tianqi on "One approach toward building a more diverse
> community is to acknowledge the fact that we want to encourage interactions
> in the Apache way beyond our physical cycle." However, I disagree with his
> suggestion regarding "One principle to toward that is to encourage PMC
> members only nominate committers from other organizations" for the
> following reasons: [...]

I spent quite some time digging remembering that a similar topic had been
discussed somewhere at the ASF at some point in time with many whys, pros and
cons towards contributor employer diversity - finally found a long and winding
thread there:

https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/7a7412316ddbe1d43f5fb3d3703ea25a6b26e56de602e27e175785c0@1337815698@%3Cgeneral.incubator.apache.org%3E


There is one answer in there from Roy Fielding which has a similar story to the
one that you are describing, Steffen. My main takeaway of what was discussed
back then: "Diversity is only a warning sign that means we need to check for
decisions made in our forums and advise accordingly."

The questions I personally tend to ask myself: How easy is it to follow the
project from just subscribing to it's mailing lists (remember the "if it didn't
happen on the mailing list, it didn't happen"), get active, get involved, be
treated as a fellow project member and be voted in as committer and PMC member.

For a more condensed text on the topic of "ASF projects are made of individuals"
you might also want to check out the ASF guidelines over there:
https://www.confluent.io/apache-engineering-guidelines/
https://www.confluent.io/apache-guidelines

Related material was published at ApacheCon :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFNE0IpKOxU

There's also lovely content that was recently produced over at dev@community:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/183nXPAxpJymQBOYOt1FnFaahRcQskIvOyIvHRC6UAnE/edit#slide=id.g4a86a2ca5a_0_69


Isabel

Re: MXNet Berlin User Group

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 9. April 2019 17:56:21 MESZ schrieb Jose Luis Contreras Santos 
:
>This is a friendly reminder that the MXNet Berlin User Group will be
>held
>today, starting in a few minutes at 6pm-7pm (CEST) / 9am-10am (PST).

Would you mind providing a brief summary of the user group here? How many ppl 
attended, what were the most interesting topics discussed?

Going forward, please make sure to post this summary here. It may help others 
understand why the meetup would be interesting to attend. It may also help 
understand what downstream users and contributors would like to see in the 
meetup, whether or not a pre defined agenda would make sense, which frequency 
works best for people, whether or not the offer is needed at all.

Isabel


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Re: Does internal quality matters to users?

[Isabel Drost-Fromm]

Am 31. Mai 2019 14:13:30 MESZ schrieb Pedro Larroy 
:
> I think Martin does a very good job explaining why
>refactoring,
>reducing developer frustration and internal improvement is a crucial
>productivity multiplier which includes lower cost to ship features,
>less
>bugs and time spent debugging.

There's one aspect that's special for open source projects: if a project wants 
to survive long term, it should make it easy for people to get started working 
on the project. In my experience, refactoring and cleanup play an important 
role in that. So thanks also for making recruiting of new contributers better.

Isabel
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