Hi Bernd,
IMHO we desperately need tools for communicating with other committers
outside this mailing list.
Making them aware of the existence of Apache Labs is surely an important
step, but then we should think how much they manage to find something
interesting once they arrive here. Even if a lab is not endorsed and
cannot deliver an official release, so it cannot attract final users,
still we should do everything possible to attract other committers, and
being a "virtual space" we cannot rely on coffee machine chatter as it
happens in a physical lab.
Right now, on l.a.o there is only a brief list of labs with one liners
about their scope. A one liner is enough if you can use it to refer to
some JSR or otherwise give an anchor to wider documentation, which is
not necessarily the case for all labs.
We should :
1) Let other committers know that this place exists
2) Let other committers know what is going on here, which means
... what labs are currently open
... what is the scope, motivation, progress of each lab
... if it has recent activity, from who etc..
3) Let other committers, even those not on this ML, know about relevant
news, like :
... creation of a new lab
... promotion or relocation in another project of a lab
... main milestone progress of a lab
4) Let other committers easily take part in the developing process of a lab
While theoretically a mailing list and an SVN space is sufficient for
this ... we (people, in general) are all busy enough, and finding the
time to search older posts on the ML and check out the code to actually
find informations listed above is simply too much time.
I'll skip the first point cause you and Bertrand are for sure more
acquainted with Apache MLs.
For the second point, probably a small restyling of our site should be
considered. We could permit to each lab to write something, even a
single page with a predefined template, to better describe its scope,
motivation, current progress state etc.. Eventually to provide a couple
of links to relevant documentation, to the CWiki pages etc.. The PI
could be responsible for keeping this page updated, or we could generate
this page from the rdf file after adding some other ontology on it, or
from the some other file in the lab space.
For the third point, a blog would be ideal. I follow a lot of stuff only
via RSS feeds from their blogs. There has been a discussion about it
previously. Eventually, until PIs take the time to write posts about
their lab, the PMC could use it to publish relevant news. Then we can
setup some kind of rules for posting to it, like for example permitting
one post for each lab per month, or similar policies.
Regarding the fourth point, encouraging each LAB to provide a README
file with at least build instructions could be enough, but still many
labs (including Magma, ouch) does not provide it. This is not relevant
only for having more people join the project, but also for having other
people reuse them once the main PI abandoned it, it should the basic
documentation.
I would be more than willing to help developing these steps, if we agree
they are helpful and there are no other concerns.
Simone
Bernd Fondermann wrote:
Fellow researchers,
For some time now I wonder if every ASF committer is aware of Apache
Labs and what (s)he can do with it.
I think it's time to spread the word.
Probably by posting to committ...@.
Maybe by linking to l.a.o. from the new committers FAQ.
WDYT?
Bernd
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Simone Gianni CEO Semeru s.r.l. Apache Committer
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