Hi,

On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 11:55 PM, Paul Querna <[email protected]> wrote:
> I think it would end up with most threads CC;ing the relevant dev
> lists (cross posting ftw), as not everyone in the communities will
> sign up to such lists.

That might happen, though currently it's already happening as list
bingo over multiple dev@ lists. With a shared list there would at
least be an authoritative place where people could be pointed for the
main line of the discussion.

As a concrete example, I recently started an effort to collect general
purpose XML utility code into a small reusable library. The related
discussion happened over d...@commons, d...@cocoon, j-...@xerces,
tika-...@lucene, fop-...@xmlgraphics and commons-...@xml, with no
clear consensus of where it really should belong.

> Have there been projects who are consistently cross posting each other
> for a shared topic of interest?

Currently this doesn't happen too much as the resulting threads
quickly get really confusing as people don't keep cc'ing all the
lists. I tried to do this every now and then, but nowadays I mostly
use occasions like the ApacheCon where it's easier to bring related
people together.

Without shared forums most shared initiatives between projects rely on
having individual "bridge" developers who are actively participating
in all the related projects. That works to some degree (the value of
the "bridge" people is usually quickly recognized by making them ASF
members :-), but unfortunately such individuals aren't too common and
their time isn't always available. I'm looking for ways to lower the
bar for projects to cooperate.

> (if so, maybe they should look more deeply at who is in their
> community, maybe they should just be one TLP?)

That works for some cases, for example the gene...@lucene list serves
such a purpose for Lucene projects. But in many cases the related
projects are not as closely related.

For example, the currently incubating Sling project is related to
projects like Jackrabbit, Felix and CouchDB through technologies like
JCR, OSGi and JSON. None of these relationships really warrant a
shared TLP, but all of them are still strong enough to offer some
interesting avenues for cooperation.

Each of the above-mentioned technologies are also areas where we'd
easily have at least a handful of Apache projects that could benefit
from a shared forum that's not weighed down by the everyday issues of
any specific project.

BR,

Jukka Zitting

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