On Jul 1, 2011, at 11:11 PM, Ross Gardler wrote: > > This is not Eclipse or OW2, this is the ASF. We have a mission of > producing software for the public good, that is a different mission to > other organisations and thus the approach is different. What people > have learned elsewhere are not necessarily going to work here.
Indeed, so you talking about "best practices" were mostly a trick to pass your opinion as a general rule. > If the community does not believe that the mentors are taking you in > the right direction then seek advice from the IPMC, that's what they > are there for. > > There seems to be a confusion about what is/is not being stated here. > There are three questions that I can see: > > 1) are ASF contributors are volunteers in the eyes of the project > 2) how does Stanbol give credit to companies who pay the salaries of > those volunteers > 3) does Stanbol allow links without nofollow > > Let me state my own opinion on each of these (I stress the word > opinion here, although some of my words and those of Bertrands have > been taken as instruction or direction. This is not our intention > unless we state explicitly that an item is non-negotiable). Decision > making in the ASF is a consensus building approach. To build consensus > we listen to the opinions of those who wish to state one and then make > our decisions. > > So on each of the above questions: > > 1) It is fundamental to The Apache way that everyone is an individual. Once again, you're playing with words. "Individual" doesn't equate with "volunteer". Then who do you mean "everyone" ? > This part *is* written in stone. See, for example, "Individuals > compose the ASF" on http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html From this document "create an independent legal entity to which companies and individuals can donate resources and be assured that those resources will be used for the public benefit" -> So now companies *can* donate resources to the ASF after all ? I thought that "employers do not fund the project." (quoting you from your July 1, 2011 11:43:58 AM GMT+02:00 message). > or th About the ASF in any press release which starts "Established in > 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees..." e.g. > https://blogs.apache.org/conferences/entry/apachecon_2011_announces_open_source Also wrong, according to Bertrand, the ASF has a certain numbers of employees (3 if I'm not mistaken). > 2) Stanbol can give credit to companies and others who employ or > otherwise pay for volunteer time here. No no no. Not everyone is a volunteer. Companies (and the EC) pay for some people who work on the project, who are employees of these companies. They are not "volunteers". > 3) I feel that nofollow is an important part of best practice here in > the ASF. A link from an Apache site is of considerable value and > therefore carefully managed. As I wrote a few minutes ago, no, it's not of "considerable value". A link from the home page of the Apache would be of "tremendous value" (PR = 9), a link from the sponsors page of "considerable value" (PR = 8), a link from the credit page of a given Apache project of "noticeable" value. > It is possible that this is not formal policy, Then don't claim it's a rule. It's not. > it might be that this is a case of a practice that has become > so prevalent that nobody has ever made it formal policy. I've simply > never needed to find out whether it is even allowed. The projects I'm > involved with have always decided to require nofollow. The key > arguments I hear ime and again are a) sponsors are not allowed follow > links Yes they are, above the bronze level, as was stated several times now. So stop writing things that are obviously wrong. > b) a link from an ASF site is valuable and, as a charity > producing software for the public good, we cannot benefit one > company/member/committer/group/individual more than any other So ? Did I ask for anything like this ? > c) a > link from the ASF is valuable and giving them to one "class" of > contributor but not another creates unnecessary community tension. Did I ask for this ? > Each of these arguments can be read about in the various mailing list > discussions I linked to You didn't. You linked to search engine results, that didn't seem relevant to the discussion upon first inspection. And again, a mailing list discussion is not a policy unless there has been a formal decision to make it into one. > The Stanbol project community makes its own decisions on most things. Indeed, though that's not what you have been implying time and time again in your various messages (first, by saying that there are "best practices" that have to be followed, then by saying that the decision belongs to another mailing list). > There are a few items that are foundational policy (such as everyone > is represents themselves not their employer, see > http://community.apache.org/projectIndependence.html, and the legal > due diligence process on code and releases, see > http://www.apache.org/dev/release.html). Here in the Incubator we > provide mentors to advise the community on how to best become a > sustainable Apache project. > > So, moving forwards, the community needs to decide what it wants to > do. is one of the solutions mentioned in 2) above satisfactory? If so > is the community satisfied with the advice of its mentors that > nofollow is a bad idea? Unsubstantiated advice, I may add. S. -- Stefane Fermigier, Founder and Chairman, Nuxeo Open Source, Java EE based, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) http://www.nuxeo.com/ - +33 1 40 33 79 87 - http://twitter.com/sfermigier Join the Nuxeo Group on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/groups?gid=43314 New Nuxeo release: http://nuxeo.com/dm54 "There's no such thing as can't. You always have a choice."
