The challenge with this process is Apache claims to be about "building communities", but you do not have great tools to do that. A number of apache projects are propped up by some for profit company who just pays people to work on that thing all the time.
I asked for 3 months (normal reporting cycle) to re-evaluate and have a legit chance at re-bootstrapping. I go to write up the report (which are now suddenly due every month that no one discussed with me). The report due July 4th a US holiday. I go to write the report find a convo in the incubator about how people want to close up the podling because they can not even wait to see if I actually get the report in or not. Meanwhile the project had this "shepard" who never signed off a report and his first interaction with the ML was to vote on shutting down the podling. Great job "building communities". On Thu, Jul 5, 2018 at 12:50 PM, Josh Elser <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey Ed, > > I think taking Gossip back to Github is the right decision. The Incubator > is designed to support, long-running, low-activity projects like you > outline. The regular reports on progress become a time-sink because there > isn't the expected level of volume or participants. > > The incubator works well when there is an established community of folks > who are active. Like you say, this otherwise becomes a burden on you (the > sole contributor, best as I can see), taking your time away from actually > producing software. > > +1 from me > > On 7/5/18 9:18 AM, Edward Capriolo wrote: > >> All, >> >> It was a sizable effort moving everything Gossip into the incubator. Thank >> you all for your help along the way. Recently activity has slowed down, >> much of this falls on me. >> >> My opinion is gossip would be much better off moving back to github and be >> independently hosted (by me or someone else) I believe for the following >> reasons: >> >> Infrastructure: >> >> AAA >> I forgot my password and when I clicked the "FORGOT MY PASSWORD" link I >> got >> back a PGP email. No instructions in the email, lol city. I had to google >> around ASFs site to try to figure out what to do. Try googling 'pgp lost >> password' on apache's docs and figuring out what you need to do. >> >> Releases: >> The release process for most Java projects using maven 'mvn release:clean >> && mvn release:prepare && mvn release:perform". Hosting is free and sign >> up >> takes less then a day. Apache incubator wants to see releases as a sign of >> health, yet the release process is involved. We have to do the maven >> steps, >> generate an email with the checksums of all critical files, post a vote on >> the incubator list, release the artifacts to central, and copy them to an >> svn directory. >> >> That is a vote across 2 mailing lists. and all the maven steps, and other >> manual steps, and that does not even count getting the website changed. >> For >> me what is a 5 minute thing turns into a days long process. The net result >> is we have features in trunk not in the release because doing a release is >> just a drag. No one is even half interested in taking on this process and >> I >> only did it because it is the only way. >> >> Community: >> Apache incubator is about building communities. >> Mailing list >> The mailing list is fairly opaque to me. I am sure there is some way to >> figure out what the subscriber base is but I don't know it. >> >> Jira >> Jira is great tool but the implementation slows people down. New users >> have >> to sign up, and they are unable to assign themselves tickets until I >> navigate into JIRA and add them to a group. With open source and >> attracting >> contributors it helps to be able to strike while the iron is hot. Having >> users confused as to weather they can start on a task does not help with >> that. >> >> GIT >> Apache has git but not github is only a mirror. When I have to merge >> peoples stuff I have to do it by hand with git commands. (No squash and >> merge button) >> >> Updating the site: >> Another series of obscure svn commands, making simple things hard, (much >> like the release process) >> >> Reports >> I get an 4-5 emails at different rates titled "Incubator Report Due" at >> different rates. Only one of them is for this project. We were never great >> with reports. Almost all the info in the report could be automatically >> generated. We missed a report, we got placed onto a report now do every >> month category. >> >> The last one was due yesterday, sorry I was enjoying a hotdog at a bbq, I >> went to fill it out today and, saw yet another email chain on the >> incubator >> list about how Gossip should leave apache. The report is just another huge >> time suck, the time I spend doing it I could be doing an hour of code >> review. >> >> Even though some things are in the incubator 7 years, and some apache TLPs >> have no activity Gossip out of the incubator seems to be a constant thing >> for some.... >> >> So lets get out of here. >> >>
