On Wed 24 Jun 2009 06:08, Martijn Dashorst <martijn.dasho...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My current issue is with the definition of "open". Not necessarily as > documented (haven't looked at the text lately), but as a gut feeling: > when is a community open? > > - all (technical) discussions happen on publicly archived lists > - conflicts are resolved in a civil and respectful manner > > But also: > - the podling is able to identify new, valuable contributors and add > them to the project >From http://incubator.apache.org/guides/graduation.html: Apache projects are self-sustaining and self-governing communities. Long term success and health requires that these communities understand how to: - recruit users, developers, committers and PMCers - take responsible collective action - disagree in public on technical matters without destroying personal relationships - create an open, positive and inclusive atmosphere on the mailing lists Often podlings have to add at least one new committer just to meet the diversity requirement of at least 3 'independent' committers. Adding at least one committer has always been a litmus test for any podling I've worked with. As of a year or two ago when I last looked at the statistics, most podlings only ever add one committer during incubation. > If a community meets all the criteria, but hasn't discovered a new > committer (or two) by itself, is the community ready for graduation? > If not, how can we—mentors— nudge the community to focus on this > thing, without it becoming an exercise in "checking the check marks"? There are at least two scenarios: - The podling has attracted new contributors, but not made them committers - The podling has not attracted any new contributors since starting incubation In the first case, it's simply a matter of helping the podling committers be comfortable giving out commit bits. Sometimes the barrier to becoming a committer has been made too high. The second case is much more difficult. It might involve working with PRC to get a bit of press or marketing. It might involve making sure one or more of the committers go to ApacheCon to meet other ASF committers and potential users. If there's a user community, but no contributors, then the committers have to learn how to better engadge the community: asking for bug fixes, encouraging users to work out a patch themselves rather than just fixing it, putting together better documentation, etc. In either case, it *is* important for the project to learn how to add committers. If the podling leaves the incubator with the commit bit barrier too high, they'll have problems down the road. If they leave the incubator with users but no contributors, they're also going to have trouble. -- J. Aaron Farr 馮傑仁 www.cubiclemuses.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
