On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 6:38 AM Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com> wrote:
> > > >> "However, having an idea of what red flags we're looking for > >> in a project can be a helpful way to start looking for places to mentor, > >> and sharpen, our projects." > >> > >> That is absolutely the wrong message to give. Who is "we"? This kind > of > >> thing sets the tone of the working group as some kind of external > policing > >> / inspecting function. That will not help. > > > > After a night’s sleep and pondering on what we’re doing here, I want to > really encourage all of us to view this, in perpetuity, as a work in > progress. If you see problems with the approach, please suggest solutions, > rather than raging at the darkness. > > It’s ironic that the response to a list of things that a project can do > wrong is to say that we’re doing it wrong, n’est pas? > Maybe ironic, but valid IMO. > > Having a list of “bad smells” is part of the process of getting to what > work we want to do. It’s not the end product. > Sorry but I disagree there. It is not just semantics to want to focus on community challenges and understanding rather than "smells." > > What I’m really hoping for, out of this working group, is a unified > approach that we can use to improve the Foundation as a whole, and sharpen > one another, collectively, to make the ASF live up to its promise. That is > always going to be aspirational. We’re not going to get there. Not for not > trying, but because we are several thousand humans with egos and > motivations. But we can work together to hone the edge a little. > I agree with you there, but there is a kind of basic issue here, which is the nature of what the Sharpeners are going to do and the problem the working group is trying to solve. > > The work, for the moment, is achieving some rough consensus, and that > involves respectful conversation. If we cannot sharpen ourselves, in this > tiny group of folks who have known one another for a decade or more, we > have very little chance of approaching a project full of strangers and > trying to guide them. > Sorry if I am not sounding respectful. I just have strong feelings about community self-governance and understanding and I will be honest about the fact that I am worried about creeping legalism at the ASF. Instead of looking for symptoms, I think Sharpeners should be looking for, and aiming to help with, basic challenges. In the use cases, I dumped vague descriptions of some challenges. They may be wrong and it might be better to just provide some kind of engagement path for Sharpeners and let them dig in. What I don't want to see is "red flags" leading to Sharpeners showing up and distracting communities from solving real problems or making them think they have problems when they don't. I will provide a concrete example here that I hope won't offend anyone. A few months back, the Commons PMC was called out for not formally voting on "releases" of the common maven parent pom that our builds use. We (IMO) wasted a lot of time going back and forth on whether or not our Lazy Consensus convention for agreeing to publication of this non-executable artifact was OK or not. The external "smell" of bad release voting caused a needless distraction. I don't want to reopen that discussion here, but just point to it as an example. We absolutely have challenges in Commons, but release diligence is not one of them. Where we could use help is in the following challenges shared by a lot of projects: 0) Committed committers - we are sorely lacking in volunteers to maintain the many components that we have. 1) Fragmented communications - we struggle with discussions spread across github PRs, JIRA and the (IMO under-used) dev@ list 2) Too many components and lack of resolve to mark obsolete / effectively dead ones as dormant Those things aren't going to show up as "smells" externally but they challenge the long-term viability of the project. I know I can speak on behalf of the full Commons community that anyone who can help us on any of them is more than welcome to jump in - especially 0 :) The point of the example is that the real problems (and others that I may be personally blind to) can only be seen by observing and engaging with the community. When I was a new board member, I used to try to do this for the projects that I was shepherding. It soon became more work than I had time to do consistently, but I always tried. I see the Sharpeners as a potential source of people to do this. It might actually be best not to have "triggers" for engagement at all other than requests from the communities themselves. Maybe just assign people on some kind of rotation like the Board shepherds. That would have the positive side effect of Sharpeners getting to learn from healthy communities too. Phil
