I think that this is an excellent analysis. The (gut) feeling I have about scarce resources are:
1) me. As Marvin noted, I am a failure mode as much as a contributor lately. This is largely due to my crazy travel schedule combined with lots of short term deliverables. Marvin has lightened that load enormously with the report group and I see that as a good way forward 2) mentors. As Zukka mentions, the number of mentors is roughly constant if you subtract away those who are MiA I worry that the lull that others have noted in drama level may be increasing again. I hope that we can manage that a bit by pushing to recognize common points of reference, move on to points difference and only then start discussing solutions. On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 2:13 PM, Jukka Zitting <jukka.zitt...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 2:50 PM Marvin Humphrey <mar...@rectangular.com> > wrote: > > On Mon, Oct 12, 2015 at 8:08 AM, Jukka Zitting <ju...@zitting.name> > wrote: > > > It sounds like ruminations about the Incubator are on the increase > again, > > > > I hope that we can make use of some of this bursting energy and channel > it > > into incremental improvements. > > > > The Incubator is a stable platform, and it has been functioning well by > > historical terms, and with blessedly low drama compared to a few years > ago. > > My impression is that frustration with the institutional resistance of > > Incubator to change is skewing impressions of how well it is doing its > job of > > incubating podlings. > > Yes, we're far from the drama of 2011. > > > > I believe the way the Incubator is organized sets an upper bound on the > > > number of podlings it can effectively manage. Based on experience and > > > historical data (http://incubator.apache.org/history/ *) I believe > this > > > limit is somewhere around 30 podlings. > > > > I'm curious, Jukka. Why 30? > > I don't have a firm theory on why this is happening, only some key > observations: > > * The entry rate of new podlings has been amazingly constant > throughout the existence of the Incubator even though the total number > of open source projects has been growing exponentially for much of > this time. > > * The "limit" was first reached in 2006 during which the board first > pushed back on Incubator reports and the current monthly 1/3 reporting > schedule was adopted and the process of retiring dormant podlings was > adopted. > > * The Incubator stayed at or slightly above the 30 podlings limit > until around mid-2010 after which many podlings started getting stuck, > leading to the crisis of late 2011. > > * We solved that problem with a concentrated effort in 2012 that > brought the Incubator back to around 30 active podlings, a level that > stayed mostly stable for the next two years. > > * The number of current podlings is again growing, and some of the > issues that have shown up recently remind me of the problems seen five > years ago. > > It could be that I'm just selectively interpreting history to match my > theory, but from a systems perspective it does look as if the > Incubator indeed has a structural bandwidth cap that probably feeds > into and limits the entry rate. > > > What are the scarce resources? > > Some possible answers: > > * Mailing list. There is only so much general@ traffic that a single > IPMC member can reasonably process without starting to skip > significant parts. > > * Mentors. The growth rate of the IPMC is fairly constant and, with > most members becoming inactive over time, I believe the number of > active mentors has not grown too much over the years. > > * Chair/Report Manager. Someone still needs to pay attention to > everything that's going around, which I believe you and all other > recent chairs agree is a daunting task. > > One could run some numbers to better quantify the above possibilities. > > > And how is this supposed degradation manifesting? > > The noise got loud enough to wake me up. :-) I don't have hard > numbers, but we do have a couple of recent failures and it sounds like > some people are getting concerned, which does remind me of early 2011. > Of course the one thing you can learn from history is that things are > never quite the same. > > > Additionally, I'll note that while we're at 43 or so podlings right now, > we > > have multiple podlings about to retire (Droids, Kalumet, likely > Corinthia) and > > others about to graduate (Kylin, Groovy). > > Right, this might be just a fluke. > > BR, > > Jukka Zitting > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > >
