Hi, Martin, and Everyone,

If someone is interested in taking over a truly inactive project,
maybe they should fork and start their own SVN repository from their
own domain.  The person should make it clear that their fork is in no
way sanctioned by Apache.

The only responsibility Apache might have in this situation, if so
inclined, is to include a link from "[inactive-project].apache.org" to
the fork, with some warnings that Apache's higher standards with
respect to intellectual property are not in effect if you follow the
link.

If the fork proves popular, and the person wants to bring it back into
the family, the person could write an email to Jakarta-General asking
to be nominated, become a committer, and then merge the fork back in.

I'm assuming that a reactivated project with only one committer is
still better than an inactive one with none  I'm also assuming that
the majority of "inactive" projects are smaller ones which probably
only had one main committer / benevolent-dictator in the first place:

http://blog.generationjava.com/roller/bayard/entry/enterprise_communities_episode_2

<blockquote>
Commons is a very interesting case study here. Here's a pretty obvious
white elephant - nearly every Commons component is running under the
dictator model. You can point to any component and as long as it's
active, it's "So and so's" baby.
</blockquote>

Martin, can you provide some example projects that are running into
this catch22?  Is it quite a rare situation?


yours,

Julius



On 2/10/07, Martin van den Bemt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi everyone,

Moving this from the private list to general (this is actually a spin of from a 
thread about adding
a committer to an inactive project, hence that it was on private).

Definition list :

Inactive project = a project that has no *developer* community.

The Apache Way :

To become committer on a project you have to earn that right, you have to stand 
out, submit patches,
show you care, learn the apache way and have to get noticed by the current 
committers who can
nominate such a person.

Problem :

If that didn't happen enough in the past, it can happen that at a certain point 
no developer
community is active anymore.

Which causes :

A catch22 situation. Since there is no developer community, no one is able to 
determine if people
deserve to become a committer. Even if you are monitoring such a list (such as 
I do for all Jakarta
lists), it is hard to determine if people deserve committership.

Solution :

I don't have one specifically :)
Part of the solution is always that a project needs a kind of mentor that is 
willing to invest time
in a project, teach the Apache way, etc..

Let's come up with a way to get around the catch22 scenario..

Mvgr,
Martin




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--
yours,

Julius Davies
416-652-0183
http://juliusdavies.ca/

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