On Fri, 6 Jan 2017 12:26:09 +0000
Tomasz Matecki <[email protected]> wrote:
> ===============
>
> Milagro Project (incubating)
OK, I submitted this last week, in the absence of
anything more recent.
I also added a mentor note expressing concern:
I find it frustrating that after a year in incubation, dev activity
and decisions still appear to be happening away from the dev list.
Consequently there is little community activity beyond sporadic
questions and answers which, while good, could equally be served by
github alone. I have discussed this with some of the team and
understand there are good intentions for a push, and intend to post
a critique of this report to try and 'nudge' the project.
So here goes with the critique. This is not meant as a balanced
overview of what's right and wrong, but rather an explanation
of a single but crucial issue.
Basically, this is still not looking like an Apache project.
There are a very few active committers, and most commits seem to
be rather big pushes. There's little visibility of the workings
of the project.
Let's consider Tom's report:
> Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:
>
> 1. Develop MILAGRO toolbox
This is fine as a project goal, but it's not an Apache goal or
an issue to consider for graduation.
Whether it really is a project goal seems undefined, in that it
doesn't arise from anything discussed on this list. Where does
it come from?
> 2. Creating full working MILAGRO ecosystem, based on MILAGRO crypto
> library – further research and development (IoT, blockchain,
> fractions etc.)
Again, a project goal but not an incubation one. Though in this
case where it comes from seems clearer: kind-of implied in the
original proposal for incubation at Apache!
> 3. Building the MILAGRO community – engaging developers and
> cryptographers, raising awareness and helping to secure future of
> internet.
This is a proper incubation goal.
Can I suggest folks take a look at
http://incubator.apache.org/projects/milagro.html
which should track progress through incubation
(though to be honest I haven't updated it since
we first entered incubation).
> How has the community developed since the last report?
>
> After ApacheCon in Spain – MILAGRO was in the scope of interest, and
> we can see the increasing community interest in MILAGRO ecosystem.
> In December 2016 MILAGRO ecosystem draft was published on MILAGRO
> mailing list and now we are looking to begin development of new
> structure.
>
> How has the project developed since the last report?
>
> In last few months the MILAGRO ecosystem proposal was developed and
> published in order to organize, and prioritize the MILAGRO workflow.
> In order to develop new structure, we are discussing new architecture
> of MILAGRO repositories.
The ecosystem draft was posted as a more-or-less finished
white paper, with an apology for the lack of preceding
discussion on-list. I hope we'll see more of the activity
and thought processes leading to such documents in future,
but it still seems very quiet.
> Date of last release:
>
> n/a
Release early, release often! This *is* an incubation goal.
Releases don't have to be production-ready, provided they're
marked with the appropriate warnings.
> When were the last committers or PMC members elected?
>
> n/a
The fundamental issue is that it still feels that lots of
interesting activity is happening elsewhere. What happens
in public is great as far as it goes, but it doesn't feel
inclusive.
On the plus side, some of the core Milagro folks are
reacting well when third-parties show interest, albeit
more on github than apache!
