Hi Grant, how would/could such a scale back look like?
Best, Sebastian On 24.03.2013 18:30, Grant Ingersoll wrote: > Personally, I think the bigger issue is that most of the committers (me > included) are not very active, so we either need to identify other committers > sooner rather than later or really scale back the project to just those areas > where we have activity. > > I know I struggle to find time to contribute, esp. in moving the ball forward > on issues that are non-trivial usually requires a significant amount of > effort to understand the math, etc. > > > On Mar 24, 2013, at 6:08 AM, Isabel Drost-Fromm wrote: > >> >> >> Hello, >> >> >> this is to those of you using Mahout or lurking on the mailing list >> somewhere. >> >> >> In the current Mahout board report [1] it became apparent that Mahout has a >> large number of users. However looking at the dev list there's barely any >> activity left: Committers including myself are drowning in help requests >> that >> they cannot keep up with or have been surprised by life taking away more of >> their time than a few months and years ago. Contributors wait for long until >> they get feedback on patches getting frustrated along the way. >> >> >> In the software world if there are no more resources to support a released >> version that version usually is marked as “no longer maintaned”, being >> subsequently retired and replaced with a new version. >> >> >> At Apache projects that are lacking resources, energy and support go through >> a >> similar process: Usually they get moved into the Attic – which means that >> mailing lists are closed though archives remain searchable, bug trackers are >> marked as read only. Honestly as a project founder my personal goal for >> Mahout >> always was to build a sustainable community that would survive core people >> having less time for the project at some point in time. I'd be distressed to >> see Mahout go to the Attic. >> >> >> If you are an active Mahout user and want to help – what can you do? >> >> >> At the current point Mahout doesn't need any new algorithms (though high >> quality contributions that come with people maintaining them within the >> project are of course welcome). What the project needs is much simpler even >> for beginners: >> >> >> - help answering mails on both dev and user list >> >> - help reviewing patches that come in: Having another contributor say “yes, >> this looks valuable and correct” can be a big help for committers – and can >> be >> the first step for you to become one yourself. >> >> - help with documentation – both for developers and users of the project. >> >> - help with structuring documentation to make it easier for others to find >> the >> relevant information. >> >> - help with making our build faster and easier: There are a few quick wins >> in >> terms of long running unit tests, there certainly are areas that lack >> testing. >> >> - help with code cleanup – there are areas that do not adhere to our coding >> conventions (standard Java, but with two spaces for indentation) – make >> changes in small batches >> >> - help with optimising existing implementations >> >> - if you truly believe that your algorithm or implementation is faster: Be >> bold. Prove that it really is faster for all relevant use cases and work >> with >> the community to replace existing code with your optimised version. >> >> >> Also help with what areas you are using and what exactly you see missing is >> welcome. >> >> >> It would be awesome to see Mahout gain activity. But in order to achieve >> that >> the project really does need your help. >> >> >> >> >> Isabel >> >> >> [1] <https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAHOUT/Monthly+Progress> > > -------------------------------------------- > Grant Ingersoll | @gsingers > http://www.lucidworks.com > > > > > >
