On 21/05/2010 15:36, Michael McCandless wrote:
I'd love to see some of the more "cultural" aspects of The Apache Way
somehow spelled out. For example things like:
I'd hate to see the excellent stuff in here go to waste in our mail
archives.
I think these items have a different objective to that of Bertrands
post. For me Bertrands proposal is short, snappy descriptions of the
*rules*. What Michael has here is more like the justification for these
rules.
I agree with Shane, we should post stuff to the foundation blog.
Michael, perhaps you would like to follow up Bertrands proposed post
with some of this content. Perhaps organised under the broad themes
Shane suggests.
I've made a few comments inline...
Health of the community is top priority. Protect/nurture/grow it at
all costs. A good chunk of a committer's time should be spent trying
to grow the community. EG, when you see a new person post a neat
idea, a patch, whatever, jump on it quickly, be exited, encourage
them, since they are "new". Likewise you have to defend the community
if a poisonous person shows up. You also have to do ongoing
"education" / preaching of the Apache Way, so new members learn&
spread the word.
Consensus from the community is a fragile thing and is hard to reach
for big/bold changes. Many ideas will temporarily stall/die (from
thread fatigue) because consensus could not be reached. This is
normal! It is still progress -- people's positions will have
softened/changed; the next time the topic comes up again (and it
will), the discussion will be different.
For smaller issues, lazy consensus still counts as consensus.
After community is the health of the source code. Source code is
always alive... it needs constant care, pruning, refactoring, etc.
"Progress not perfection": if the patch improves things, commit it.
Don't be too picky; it can be further improved/iterated over time.
Design for today / take baby steps.
After that are the individuals: people come and go with time. A
project should never become "singular" (rely too much on any one
person or any one "sponsor"). Names are not attached to code ("your
ideas will go further if you don't insist on going with them").
People don't "own" any part of the code. If a new person shows up
with new ideas, let them run free. While there are always strong egos
here, decisions must still be made for technical reasons, never by ego.
Finally, after that are the generous sponsors that allow us all to be
here. Sure we can focus on the things that are important to each of
our sponsors, but never to the net detriment of the project.
Probably reiterating Shanes observation about neutrality here. Sponsors
do not buy influence they just enable us to exist.
Email is a dangerously poor medium for collaboration. Never attribute
to malice that which can be explained by something else, eg a language
barrier, simple misconception, etc. No question is stupid!
Beware the vocal minority.
Things fall through the cracks all the time. We all get way too much
email. If an idea / issue / patch didn't get a response, gently bump
it, even if you weren't the one who sent the email. Gentle
persistence / nagging is vital.
A healthy project should in fact have raging debates/disagreements
("if two people always agree, one of them isn't needed"). But these
debates must be about the objective technical tradeoffs of the idea,
never devolving into personal attacks or "email rage", etc. -- step in
to protect the community if it does.
Beggars can't be choosers! We committers are the beggars; there are
never enough people to review patches/commit/etc, so when any
idea/contribution comes alone, welcome it with open arms, and be
responsive. Yonik's law ("A half-baked patch with no documentation,
no tests and no backwards compatibility is better than no patch at
all.") applies.
Patches should not languish: a patch arrives, it gets a critique
"please fix XYZ and here's why", or, it gets committed.
I imagine some of these will be contentious :) And I'm sure I left many
important things off...
I don't see anything contentious, I'm sure we could create more if we
worked at it.
Great stuff!
Ross
Mike
On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 9:30 AM, Ross Gardler<rgard...@apache.org> wrote:
Bertrand,
I don't want to get into painting the bikeshed this excellent proposal gets
posted in. Anywhere is good.
I think it's a great idea.
I'd encourage a comdev blog but I'm not sure we have the momentum to keep it
alive at this point. However, I will do what I can when I can to help move
things along.
I think any level of visibility for these issues is good. The wider the
better.
I agree we need to make sure that the summary presented here is inline with
other documentation.
I think we (comdev) should consider taking collective ownership of ASF wide
documentation about how we work. I've always wanted to create a "template"
website for ASF projects which has all this stuff clearly described in it.
Projects could then take the template and adapt it to their specific needs.
There are some external resources that could be leveraged here:
Why governance models are important and what they are:
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/governanceModels.xml
Description of a meritocratic governance model:
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/meritocraticGovernanceModel.xml
I also have an evaluation technique that measures the openness of a project.
At present it is very generic and deals with all aspects of openness and
freedom, but it could adapt it to provide a self evaluation tool for
committers to evaluate how they think a project operates.
I think that is a huge job and its about documentation, so not too exciting
and arguably not that useful. The production of endless documentation does
not increase levels of education.
I think this is a great mentored project for a student (and yes, I think I
may have a route to finding a candidate - more on this when things solidify
in 2-4 weeks)
In the meantime +1 on Bertrands proposed post as is.
Ross
On 21/05/2010 09:55, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
Hi,
I'd like to write a blog post (on the foundation blog, or might be a
good opportunity to start the comdev blog) about the basic rules of
Apache projects.
Trying to keep it as short as possible, with links to more info.
Feedback/corrections/additions are welcome - I will invite our PMCs
and members to this thread to try and get a nice
bikeshedding^H^H^H^H^H^H consensus.
-Bertrand
DRAFT: What are the basic, invariant rules of Apache projects?
The below rules and best practices aim to make ASF projects
sustainable and open to new community members, and to make sure source
code is released in a legally clean way.
Projects enter the ASF via the Incubator, anyone can suggest a new
project as described on the Incubator website.
Each project is led by its elected Project Management Committee (PMC).
New committers and PMC members are elected by the PMC based on merit.
Committers and PMC members are not necessarily ASF members, they have
to be elected separately for that (LINK).
Each project has at least one private and one public (development,
"dev") mailing list which are the only official communication channels
for the PMC members and committers.
Discussions and decisions about people (such as the above elections)
usually happen on the project's private list, but that's not a hard
rule, the PMC can decide.
All other decisions happen on the dev list, discussions on the private
list are kept to a minimum.
"If it didn't happen on the dev list, it didn't happen" - which leads
to two sub-rules:
a) Elections of committers and PMC members are published on the dev
list once finalized.
b) Out-of-band discussions (IRC etc.) are summarized on the dev list
as soon as they have impact on the project, code or community.
All decisions are made by consensus, following the ASF's voting rules
(LINK).
ASF releases consist of source code, binaries are provided as a
convenience only (LINK).
Release artifacts are created according to the ASF's release rules (LINK).
A formal PMC vote is required to publish a release.
Each PMC reports to the board of directors, at least every three
months, mentioning progress, problems and perspectives in terms of
community, releases, code and compliance with the above rules.
Trademarks and logos used by ASF projects belong to the ASF.
That being said: have fun at the ASF, and commit early, commit often,
and let everything happen in the open.
(this is just a draft to kickoff the discussion...)
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