On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 11:23:47PM -0500, Peter Karman wrote:
> Could you comment on the Sponsoring Entity section in the Incubator proposal?
>
> http://wiki.apache.org/lucy/LucyIncubatorProposal#Sponsoring_Entity
You've gotten it right. The Sponsoring Entity in this case would be the
Incubator PMC:
http://incubator.apache.org/incubation/Incubation_Policy.html#Proposal
To start the approval process, a proposal MUST be submitted to the Sponsor.
Please read the Guide For Proposals.
The Lucene PMC sponsored the original Lucy project, and because we were all
new code, we bypassed the Incubator and became a Lucene subproject
as soon as the Lucene PMC vote passed.
In theory, the Lucene PMC could choose to oversee the software grant for the
KinoSearch code base that we are proposing. They have taken on other code
bases via grants, e.g. LocalLucene. However, even if the Lucene PMC were
willing, that doesn't seem like the most appropriate course of action, since
A) the Incubator PMC has more expertise on IP clearance issues, B) the Lucene
PMC is not going to be responsible for Lucy much longer. In addition, I now
think that Lucy would benefit from following the standard template for
incubation. The Lucene PMC has graciously chosen to continue overseeing us
for the time being, but I think we should thank them for their helpful
feedback and select the more rigorus course of study.
By the way, this is an interesting passage:
http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#incubator
The basic requirements for incubation are:
* a working codebase -- over the years and after several failures, the
foundation came to understand that without an initial working
codebase, it is generally hard to bootstrap a community. This is
because merit is not well recognized by developers without a working
codebase. Also, the friction that is developed during the initial
design stage is likely to fragment the community.
The difficulties of the original Lucy proposal also arise from not being able
to boostrap a community without a working code base. Recognizing merit wasn't
a problem, nor was contentiousness: it was simply an ambitious project and too
small a committer base to recover when one of two major contributors became
unavailable before we could bootstrap.
So now, we propose to address that problem by supplying a code base. And I am
confident that with a code base in place, we will be able to focus effectively
on community building and develop into the kind of successful meritocracy that
Apache wants to foster.
Marvin Humphrey
