On Fri, May 31, 2013 at 3:36 AM, Richard Frovarp <[email protected]>wrote:
> On 05/30/2013 02:28 AM, ant elder wrote: > >> Hi Droids, I'm from the Incubator PMC and doing a review of the older >> Incubator poddlings and why they're not graduating. I also happen to be >> from the HttpComponents PMC which was the original sponsor of Droids. >> Looking about here the only thing holding Droids back is that there not >> many active participants. Would that be correct? >> >> Droids has been here such a long time now and the Incubator is not adding >> much value. There have been discussions on general@ about what to do with >> small poddlings, eg: >> http://markmail.org/message/**vd53bm3fouw7ueow<http://markmail.org/message/vd53bm3fouw7ueow>, >> which >> suggests including the mentors on the PMC when graduating to help make up >> the numbers. Any comments on that approach? >> >> Who are your mentors these days, and would having any new mentors help? If >> so i'd be happy to sign up to see what can be done. >> >> ...ant >> >> > Ant, > > Thanks for the note and offer to help. You are correct, graduation is for > the most part hung up on active participants. Thorsten Scherler and I are > both mentors, on the IPMC, and largely involved in the project. So in our > case, the mentors would want to be on the PMC. We could come up with a 3 > member PMC that would be active and could keep the project going. I've seen > messages from either the IPMC or Board indicating that a project needs to > have three active PMC members so that there can be legal releases. So in > theory we could graduate with a 3 person PMC, and be successful. > > One of the problems we've had is making releases. I've released managed > the two releases. Between Thorsten and I, we have two binding votes, but it > can be hard to get the 3rd IPMC vote, as you've no doubt seen from other > projects as well on the IPMC list. It would be easier for us to do new > releases as a TLP. I understand that the point of releasing through the > IPMC is to make sure everything is correct. With two releases we've shown > that we understand that piece. > > We have approached Commons to see if that would be an option. It might > work, but a TLP seems to be a better fit. There seems to be an effort to > not have sub-projects, with the obvious exception of Commons. We haven't > talked with the HttpComponents PMC, as it doesn't seem like a good fit. If > you think we should contact them, as they were one of the original > sponsors, let us know. > > I know you're quite active in the IPMC and else where in the foundation, > so your help would certainly be appreciated by me. I'm not sure what the > next steps are. We could always try a graduation vote with a 3 or 4 person > PMC. We probably would need to do a name change with Android and the > related devices. Any advice is appreciated. > > Thanks, > Richard > Becoming a TLP does sound preferable. A three person PMC is the absolute minimum but i don't recall ever seeing a podling graduate with that few. The problem is that as soon as one person goes away then the project is unable to get the three binding votes necessary to do releases so the project stalls. Even four seems a little small so if five or more people could be found its likely to make things easier. Smaller podlings often add their mentors to help make up the numbers, a problem here is that you two are the mentors so that doesn't help. To be honest i think your best bet could be to try recruit a couple more new mentors and then include them along with all the current listed committers in the graduation proposal. About the Droids name, the Incubator podling naming guide is here (if you didn't already know): http://incubator.apache.org/guides/names.html. If you'd like i can start going through that for you to see if it helps about the name? ...ant
