On Apr 18, 2005, at 12:59 PM, Cliff Schmidt wrote:
On 4/18/05, Rodent of Unusual Size <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Brian Behlendorf wrote:
Wouldn't "how can we increase the number of new developers on Derby while
still in incubation" a better question to ask?
I think only if the answer to 'does Derby need more committers before
it can graduate' is 'yes.' Participation is growing nicely, but the Derby
PPMC is being careful not to hand out commit access like candy.
I definitely don't think the PPMC should lower the standard for commit access, nor do I think the Incubator PMC should lower the standard for Incubator graduation.
I'm really surprised we're even talking about graduation before Derby has met the most basic rule of three independent committers (didn't we just have a thread on this a few weeks ago about log4net?). Once that has been met, I'd expect a discussion about whether the project has the kind of community that could continue to maintain and evolve the project even if one individual / company stopped contributing to it.
I'd love to see what some people think about the community - go look at the lists. That is what I looked at first, and it gave me confidence.
I know that there are different opinions on the second point, but I believe the three committer rule is pretty widely agreed upon.
Well... the three committer rule is (although there are exceptions for corner cases...), but we have a bit of dissonance between how we are defining "independent committer" here (http://incubator.apache.org/incubation/ Incubation_Policy.html#Minimum+Exit+Requirements) and the general Apache custom of leaving our employers "at the door" and participating as individuals who have earned their karma through individual merit and demonstrated interest. (Yes, in incubator one might argue that isn't the case always...)
For example, we currently claim that an individuals ICLA is sufficient representation of ability to contribute. Is it? Clearly, we are implicitly stating here that it isn't - that there is some other binding on these committers by their employer that puts the project health at the risk by the employer.
<favorite_legal_hobby_horse_du_jour>
If that's so, doesn't it behoove us to ask for a CCLA for employed committers since we clearly believe that employers are capricious and can change their mind, and w/o the formal IP agreements of the CCLA....
</favorite_legal_hobby_horse_du_jour>
(Reality is that employers *can* change their mind, of course.)
In the end, I think it's a judgment call, rather than a hard and fast rule, because I would hate to have to constantly be policing projects at the ASF and sending them back to incubation if they failed to satisfy the 3 "legally independent" committer rule. It's absolutely clear that Derby needs a more diverse committer base, but I still would be ok with it graduating to DB because of what I see as the diversity in it's community. There are a large number of individuals that participate in the project, and there are commercial interests besides IBM around the codebase. It's even been a featured subject in The Bile Blog. :)
I respect people's judgment here and will work to help get more committers (I could try to be one, but it wouldn't help as Jeremy and I work for the same company), but I do think we need to keep this facet of incubation in context, and for me it's a balance of aspects, including where the project is going (i.e. to an existing PMC, or a TLP...)
We also may want to be explicit by what we mean by "legally independent" committers.
I guess the basic question would be, 'Does keeping Derby in the incubator
add any value anywhere?' At this point I feel moderately strongly that
it doesn't, but that's just me -- and I can be convinced otherwise. :-)
I'm primarily concerned about the devaluation of the Apache brand by lowering our standards for what it means to have a strong, diverse community.
I'm reading this to mean that you don't think that Derby has a strong diverse community.
I think it has a diverse community. However, I don't think we have any good way of measuring that, or if things like the following are quantitatively meaningful. We can look at dev mail list traffic, info taken from eyebrowse :
Derby : # authors = 228, # msg YTD : ~1100
Beehive : # authors = 144, # msg (Oct04-Jan05) : ~1300 (is there a problem w/ archive here? Dropped off in feb05 so didn't want to do YTD as a compare, as then it's only ~400)
Directory : # authors 171, # msg (Oct04-Jan05) ~1800 (used same date range as it exited in march)
So it has 33% more unique authors on it's dev list than Directory which graduated, and has has "order of magnitude similar" volumes of traffic. (1800 is significant %-age more than 1100, but there was a weird 900 message month for Directory in Dec, I think...)
What it doesn't have an "employer-diverse" committer set, but see merit in the argument that it wouldn't hurt to be graduated. I had the very similar concerns about Geronimo - that it needed more committer base growth - that were IMO for some similar reasons : a) difficult subject matter that required some measurable expertise and b) a bit of conservatism by some committers. It's still not where I think it should be, but it's growing, and sometimes it's just about having the time to grow, I guess.
Anyway, I just wanted to point out the inconsistency we have regarding employers, and that we're mixing up community diversity and committer diversity, and that a lot of this is a judgment call, taking many things into account.... Now if Derby would just solve this by getting that 3rd committer.... :)
geir
Cliff
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