Very valuable, Justin. It's a wealth of information and trend coming from such analysis, and I think a lot of the lessons here - especially "collaborate vs. correct", "tone of trust", "distributed responsibility" are striking the right notes (if not chords) with my own "anecdotal" observations and natural instincts of mine where more welcoming, trust-first, collaborate rather than critique, assume good intentions, but also not forgetting about principles and continue spreading, teaching and explaining them all the time is a key - not only for incubator, but also for already graduated PMCs.
Over time when PMC evolves for a few years, PMC members and committers naturally disappear, get disconnected, life intervenes and so on, and we have a lot more patient explaining, teaching and mentoring to do there as well. J. On Sat, Nov 15, 2025 at 1:38 AM Justin Mclean <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > I’ve just finished analysing ten years of subject-line data from this > list. I aimed to see if there were any long-term trends in how the > Incubator communicates and how our focus has changed over time. You can > find the full report here. [1] > Here’s a quick summary of what the data shows: > Over the past ten years, our discussions have shifted from defining the > process to refining it. In the early years, topics like Releases, Voting, > and Graduation were most common, while Reporting, Licensing, and Governance > became more routine. By the early 2020s, the number of messages had dropped > slightly, but the range of topics had grown. Mentoring and Governance came > back into focus, especially around capacity, balance, and sustainability. > - Releases and Voting remain the backbone of activity, showing consistent > throughput and serving as markers of readiness. > - Reporting has moved from manual reminders to quiet, automated routines > and now serves as an early sign of podling health. > - Mentoring has stayed low in volume, but there has been a recent increase > in conversations about mentor workload and how it is shared. > - Graduation has stayed steady and procedural, with more focus in recent > years on supporting projects after they graduate. > - Licensing issues are stable and resolved quickly, showing that everyone > is familiar with the requirements. > - Onboarding and Vendor Neutrality come up less often now, as these > expectations have become part of our routine. > Overall, the tone has shifted from being corrective to a more > collaborative one. People now rely more on shared understanding than on > quoting rules. > Key governance lessons > - Transparency drives stability more effectively than enforcement. > - Repetition turns the process into shared learning. > - Distributed responsibility across mentors, PPMCs, and podlings is > sustainable. > - Culture, especially tone and trust, is what ultimately allows governance > to scale. > The next step for the Incubator is not to add more structure, but to > strengthen the things that help governance stay flexible. This means > focusing on mentoring instead of just monitoring, renewing mentor capacity, > making things clearer and easier to find, combining dashboards with > stories, and encouraging global participation. > I welcome any feedback or further thoughts you might have. > Kind regards, > Justin > > 1. > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/Incubator+Discussion+Trends
