On Tue, 2002-10-29 at 12:13, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote: > Great. Perfect description. Not disputing the general sentiment (I still > think it's moving deck chairs around if you move every committer into the > PMC).
I think it's more about a consistent naming and organization with the rest of apache ( and the httpd project where all things started ). It is also a good opportunity to improve few things: - find who's tracking what component. - better tracking of who's active ( if we use 'active committer' def. ) - a way to better pass the message and get people involved in the monitoring activity My view was a global 'SPMC' file listing all the people _and_ the components he's volunteering to monitor ( even if he's not actively working on it ). STATUS tracks who's working on what. We can create some rules so that any committer can join the SPMC by volunteering for some components and participating in some sort of load distribution, and use this as a way to pass information. > > The open questions are: > > - can jakarta PMC recognize jakarta-commons SPMC and delegate oversight > > officially ? > > Good question, and I donšt see why we couldn't ask, although.... > > > - if that's not possible, can jakarta-commons form a PMC and ask the > > ASF board to recognize it ? ( it seems implied that tomcat or ant could > > do that easily ). If so, can it remain part of jakarta ( and eventually > > extend/merge with xml.apache.org ) > > Yes, it could. I would really be against J-C separating from jakarta in any > way. Renaming all committers to be members of the PMC again seems like > window dressing until you educate those committers about their > responsibilities - where I then wonder if there is education to be done, why > don't we just do it? I'm not very sure what education - I suspect we all know the rules. We do need probably a bit more formal organization - and some explicit procedures/rules/plans. Regarding 'separating from jakarta' - I do think that j-c is in a way the 'core' of jakarta ( I don't know any other jakarta sub-project to bring so many people together ). But I wouldn't mind opening it up to xml.apache.org people - we already have few great committers from xml working on j-c, and I think it would be great to expand this. > > - technical details: who is part of the SPMC ( my initial proposal was > > 'all active committers who like to be', maybe with a 1-2 month delay for > > very new committers ). I'm sure other opinions will be raised on this. > > This is why I think it's window dressing - why would you *not* allow a > committer to be participant in the PMC? Would that reason, whatever it is, > be a reason for them not to be a committer? Don't we believe that when we > make someone a committer, its because they have shown they share the vision > and are willing to take responsibilty? It's more than just the ability to > 'cvs commit'. I think a 1-2 month delay is just reasonable - to let him get used with the environment and the rules. But I'm ok with dropping it ( again, this is my understanding of httpd procedures ). Using 'active' is a way to make sure we have things covered up and to track the people who are involved. If some European committer takes a 3-month vacation he should remove himself from the 'PMC' list and add back when he returns. This way we'll know that whatever he was monitoring/working on is not covered and we can redistribute it. I see little value in a very large PMC where 1/2 of people don't track the mailing list. I'm also very strongly against any 'elective' system - as you said, if someone is voted as committer he should also be trusted ( after some adjustment and READMEs ) as PMC. > Just curious - I am asking the same questions about HTTPD and APD, as it > sounds like it's pretty much the same thing. They assure me it's not, for > example the HTTPD PMC election is based on 'merit', where the Jakarta PMC > is a 'popularity contest', but no one has yet to define the difference. AFAIK HTTPD PMC includes every committer. I think it's more of a naming issue - the jakarta PMC is mirroring the board ( i.e. small set of people, elected ). I don't think it's 'popularity', but more 'trust' that is the target of the election. Each jakarta subproject behave just like httpd or apr - with all active committers doing all the code reviews and monitoring and decisions. The problem is that we call things differently, and this de-facto 'delegation' that happened since the beginning of jakarta is now considered a problem. > To me, merit would be objective, popularity would be subjective. However, > there are no objective measures of merit here, only opinions of those > voting. (HTTPD has the curious feature that only the existing PMC can vote > in new members, not the rest of the community... I have yet to ask about > that....) My work in Velocity is really valuable to some people (like > myself :), but someone else, say someone working on Jasper, might not think > so and believe it is anti-Apache, for example, as one of it's benefits is to > 'undermine' a standard, JSP, through the offering of an alternative. Again - IMHO it's trust that is measured by the election. And I think trust has nothing to do with what you work on or what technical opinions you have ( including 'hot' issues like JSP/Velocity). I think I had technical disagreements with almost everyone in jakarta. Costin -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:commons-dev-unsubscribe@;jakarta.apache.org> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:commons-dev-help@;jakarta.apache.org>
