On 12 Nov 2003, at 11:21, Greg Stein wrote:
<snip>
The J-C development list is apparently so trafficked that individuals
cannot really keep up with it. To retain proper oversight, that must be
broken down and partitioned into manageable chunks. Quite doable. But the
PMC is still responsible, as a whole, for every chunk that is produced. No
matter how you might partition the *mailing lists*, that total amount of
traffic is still present. Then throw in all the other Jakarta traffic.
Then try to say that a group of a couple dozen people are directing *ALL*
of that effort. It just isn't believable.
i'm concerned about this kind of criticism (which has very often been repeated). it doesn't really tally with the opinions expressed by the jakarta pmc. jakarta-commons has more ASF members and jakarta pmc members subscribed than any other jakarta sub-project. many of these people look at every message that is sent to the list.
one mailing list is the solution not the problem. it forces everyone close together and makes it impossible to keep anything a secret for very long. in the past, the problems have arisen with umbrella sub-projects. these develop their own communities and their own rules of behaviour. they spawn new mailing lists and sub-sub-projects dividing the community and preventing effective oversight.
what worries myself is not the oversight of the jakarta-commons. it's turbine. i don't believe that umbrella sub-projects can be effectively supervised.
please greg, listen to what we've been saying over the last few months about this issue. the consensus on the jakarta pmc is that jakarta-commons works very well and is well supervised. we are worried about supervision - very worried - but not about worried at all about jakarta-commons.
jakarta-commons is high traffic but the worries about scalability are not to do with supervision but whether normal developers can continue to be attracted.
- robert
