I'd like to get some discussion going on what we want to do for graduating to an Apache TLP.
The attempt back in November raised issues about diversity and since then it feels like we've just been waiting around hoping diversity would improve. We were unlikely then and we are almost there, would it help to have a target to aim for so we can be a bit more proactive? How about trying again at the April or May board meeting which would give us a two or three full months from now? Having a few months would give us some time to work on turning some of the contributors we already have into committers and to get other committers added to the PPMC, but a few months is also near enough to keep us focused. If we're seen to be working on this it may also encourage some of the contributors we have to be more active and so easier to make committers. There's a lot i think the project could do to encourage others to participate, here's a few things I can think of - We have a lot of downloads and real users, we need to try to get more of these people engaged and contributing, things that may help are: - better documentation, whats there is a bit sparse and our website has started to fall behind and there's quite a few extensions with no or out dated documentation - more publicity about what each new Tuscany release can do, we have lots of new stuff in 1.1 but the only place we say that is in the release notes. The Tuscany blog is a little neglected these days - post to user list as each bit of new function is completed to try to engage users and to show them their comments can make a real difference to what gets in the next release - more timely action on JIRAs, we're getting quite a back log, if we're quick to look at JIRAs it might encourage users to help debug and provide patches Once a user does start contributing I think there are things we could do better on the the dev list to make it easier and to encourage participation: - just generally improve the ML traffic which is at an all time low, if we the active developers don't discuss much then new contributors likely wont either - one reason ML traffic could be down is that discussion is going on off-list instead, is there? Is it really necessary? Lets make a real effort to keep all discussion on the dev list. - more timely replies in discussions. if someone replies to a thread often it ends up with people waiting for a follow-up reply, if that follow-up takes ages to come the discussion can stall and people loose interest and move on to something else. - we may need to provide more active help to contributors when they make suggestions, not just ask if they'd implement it but at least provide lots of detail about how they could do it or even step up and help code even if we may not think its the most useful thing What do others think, would any of those things help? Any other suggestions that could help improve our diversity? Does aiming for the April board meet sound ok or too soon or too far? ...ant
