If they do not know what questions to ask, how are they to find the answers? I have read what documentation was apparent to me and I feel I have a reasonable understanding of how things work.....but what if I don't? How do I know what the base set of information I should know is?
I have to ask so many questions these days I feel like an idiot. Sometimes I ask the wrong question, and have to figure out empirically how to ask the right one. But that doesn't stop me. I am trying to figure out how to be a jakarta subproject, and I ask when I am ignorant (perhaps even stupid if I forgot the answer given the first time and I can't find it). I think I can understand firsthand what it's like going in the other direction, and I have already had to tread the path you describe. What worked for me was to scan everything I could find, noting what seemed relevant, and asking questions.
Right, but in that case a great deal of patience must be involved in all directions. However patience seems to be a precious commodity in all respects.
No but organizing the information into a "this is the minimum you should know" will lead many people to read at least that. Then they will hopefully ask more questions.
Absolutely. We'd be done by now if all the volumes of mail on reorg@ and here were volumes of ASF doc. 8^) Mea culpa too.
hehe....but there in lies the dillemma... before the little fun on reorg@ I had NO idea how to submit patches to the www site! ;-) And everyone I'd asked had said "I don't know" ;-)
I've read them, but many people didn't subscribe to it at first, some people don't speak english natively and so the legalistic language may not be very digestable.
Agreed, i18n'ing all this stuff is an excellent suggestion for a later step. As you say, people are doubtless now catching up noi their reading.
Well you can easily deduce my opinion on the i18n thing... http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/ (see the various languages we've begun translating)....and if no one does it... I give it ago ;-) even if I don't speak the language... this encourages those who don't wish to see their native languages defaced in such a way to contribute ;-)
and what do you suggest I search on exactly. Do you feel that this kind of searching would be okay given the poor performance of the web server over the last few days?
Honestly it didn't occur to me to shell in and grep through the hundreds of megs of... I shall do so. (Though not via C shell which I have a great deal of distaste for :-p)
No worry. If I knew your problem set better (or understood WTF you wrote 8^) I might be able to help more. But it's worth using the tools, whichever ones you like, sometimes on unusual ways. 100's of Mb of grep might not be the best approach on a loaded server.
I'm looking for the text version of this:
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/agreement.html
which is supposedly in text form SOMEWHERE in CVS in some module...
"because thats the way we've always done it" -- perhaps a more constructive way to put this would be "Can we work to propose the changes formally before beginning to propose members on the community list and chaning the process ad hoc, would it not be better for sam to first put this up to a vote or something before just doing this"
On the other hand, perhaps sam regards doing this as free speech leading up to a formal revision of the process. I guess I'll leave that up to sam rather than speculate. While I've been posting proposed solutions to the problems as they are brought up and listing the tradeoffs as I see them and asking for further input (thereby trying to capture multiple viewpoints) , I think we're making progress on trying to build a more cohesive and open community... But then again, I'm a crazy man.
All of the above. On the one hand, "because thats the way we've always done it" doesn't invalidate a process that works. It might need to get that written down for some to feel better with it.
On the other hand free speech is cool with me, it should go without saying. 8^) It is customary to abandon working within a system if one exhausts all avenues there, and work outside it. I don't think that's been done here yet. I do realize some folks think they have exhausted all alternatives. That disconnect alone is fertile soil for polarization.
No I think its "openness" vs "closedness".. Saying "exhaust all avenues working in the closed system to see if that achieves the openness you desire" is kinda.... self-contradicting?
It seems a great deal of focus has been put on how to change Jakarta... I do not feel persistantly harping on the idea is productive without concrete and constructive ideas. I think we should begin talking about "Whats good" and "how do we improve it" rather than focusing on individuals and groups within the whole (singling them out) and finding what sucks about them. "Perhaps the HTTPD crowd is too autocratic and secretive" -- is that a productive statement? No. "Lets work on finding things that are currently discussed in secret, figure out why and how they can be made more open. For instance currently.... I suggest...." -- The same general statement --- only its connotation is very different. Thats how I feel about it.
I need to say I want to put the focus on changing ourselves, as well. The one thing I can't seem to see here sometimes are the results of self-examination as well as examining others. I know for a fact you and I are starting to agree more than we disagree, so I know that unwritten process can work.
Which I guess is basically the part I agreed with... Rather than having a philisophical discussion on it...lets you and I lead by example.. . ;-)
-andy
Chuck
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