On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 7:12 PM, Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com> wrote:
>
> On 04/27/2015 02:45 PM, Upayavira wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 27, 2015, at 06:50 PM, David Nalley wrote:
>>>
>>> On Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 2:46 PM, Sam Ruby <ru...@intertwingly.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Initial sketch placed on the wiki:
>>>>
>>>> https://wiki.apache.org/incubator/WhimsyProposal
>>>>
>>>> Anyone who is so inclined is welcome to edit the proposal directly.
>>>>
>>>> No urgency or timeframe in mind (other than preferably starting sometime
>>>> in
>>>> 2015ish).  My current thinking is to follow in Steve's footprints and go
>>>> directly to TLP, but I'm starting a discussion here (in Incubator) to
>>>> see if
>>>> there are any other thoughts on the matter.
>>>>
>>>> - Sam Ruby
>>>
>>> So one question (and perhaps a selfish concern).
>>>
>>> Infrastructure has a significant interest in whimsy (the service and
>>> codebase). I suspect that the ASF is also likely (at least for now)
>>> the primary user. Infrastructure has spent some time and resources,
>>> and even has a contractor that is paid on working on Whimsy and the
>>> associated areas.
>>>
>>> My question (and selfish concern) is: We have generally accepted that
>>> the ASF doesn't pay for development on projects. What does that mean
>>> for the contractors? Are they effectively forbidden from doing
>>> development work on Whimsy? In particular, I have a ruby developer
>>> working as a contractor who I'd like to working on things like Whimsy,
>>> secretary workbench, etc.
>>
>> What a wonderful question!!
>>
>> My take: a contractor cannot be paid to work on Whimsy, that's fair and
>> understandable. He is paid to work on ASF infrastructure. However, as a
>> part of fulfilling those duties, if he needs to work on Whimsy, or to
>> code up a patch on httpd, or whatever, so be it. As far as the *project*
>> is concerned, he is a volunteer the same as everyone else. He's being
>> paid to work on infrastructure, not on Whimsy.
>
> This feels like sophistry, and a dangerous first step. If we have a *full
> time* employee who is working primarily on a particular project, then it's
> not odd to claim that they are being paid to develop Apache code. That being
> the case, then the ASF is doing that thing that we have asserted, for all
> time, that we will never do.

I'll assert that infrastructure team routinely writes code.  Random example:

http://s.apache.org/wPQ

I'm uncomfortable that much of that is "special snowflake" code; and
some of it has a sole author capable of maintenance.

I don't have personal knowledge of examples, but I do believe that
from time to time the Infrastructure team has contributed patches
"upstream" to the products they depend on (for example, FreeBSD?).

>> One thing that I saw during my stint as VP Fundraising is that projects
>> and the Foundation really are distinct things. The Foundation can
>> contract someone to work on a project that it needs in order to support
>> the work of the Foundation. If that happens to be contributing to an ASF
>> project, so be it. However, they are not gaining any special privilege,
>> they are as it were "paid by an external entity" just like all other
>> contributors to any other ASF project.
>
> In this case, though, it will be the ASF paying for a developer to work on
> an ASF project.
>
> I hope that we're not just taking a convenient position that will bite us
> later.

I trust that Ross, you, and David will find the right balance.

> --
> Rich Bowen - rbo...@rcbowen.com - @rbowen
> http://apachecon.com/ - @apachecon

- Sam Ruby

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