On Tue, April 25, 2006 12:36 am, Craig McClanahan said: > Without commenting on the merit of the proposal itself, or the reasoning > presented as its justification, it is important to note that we (the > Struts > community) do not have free reign to do whatever we want in this regard. > As > part of Apache, the Struts community is accountable to the Apache Software > Foundation's Board of Directors, and one of the things that gets watched > is > how well the various projects implement "the Apache Way". And one of the > key tenets of that "way" is how new committers get selected.
I understand that... does that mean that a particular project is not allowed to try something new? If there are rules in place to keep projects from donig so, then I wasn't aware of that, and certainly that puts a damper on this proposal :) > Regardless of the details, anything along the general lines of what you > describe would be quite different from the way Apache has grown from the > very beginning to what it is today -- and it would, therefore, be looked > at > with a *lot* of skepticism by Apache as a whole. I would *hope* it would be looked upon with skepticism :) I'm certainly in no way saying the Apache Way hasn't worked all this time, of course it has! :) But, is skepticism enough to dissuage an attempt at something? Assuming there are no rules in place to stop a project from trying it I mean. > Trying to argue that the > Apache Way is flawed, and needs to be fundamentally changed like this, > does > not seem likely (to me) to get much agreement Apache wide, given the ASF's > history, and the success of many of its projects at building communities > of > committers that buy in to that culture -- and, by the way, produce some > pretty popular software to boot. No argument. But again, I'm not talking about changing anything Apache-wide. I'm talking about trying something in one project where there *seems* to be a perception that things could be somewhat improved, and seeing how it works. > So what the heck is this "Apache way" thing? It is a culture; a way of > gathering a community that interoperates ... and it can be tough at times > to > write down a descrption that makes sense. But [1] is a pretty good > starting > point. I'd also recommend looking through the documentation for the > Incubator Project (where a specific exit criteria is that the folks > participating in the new project "get it" about the Apache way). > > Frank > > > Craig > > [1] http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html I've read this page before, and just did so again. While I think it is fantastic at describing what Apache is and how it works, I don't see anything that would help me or anyone else understand how to "get it". Aside from the discussion on meritocracy, nothing seems to discuss that. The Philosophy section seems to discuss the philosophy of a project, the the philosophy of how someone needs to conduct themselves to "get it". I would very much like to understand how this determination is made. > PS: If you like the code but don't like the community, one of the best > things about Apache is that the license gives you the right to fork and > build your own community, operated according to whatever rules please you. > So, even if a proposal like this is not accepted, you still have the > opportunity to go build "a better Struts" -- that doesn't have to be done > here. You are of course right about this. But, much like taking the ideas about inventory control and order processing and such from Dell and starting your own business is possible, the likelihood that you would get anything but a small fraction of the attention and business that Dell gets is slim to none. Frank --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
