William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
Sam Ruby wrote:
William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
IMHO - the only reason to have a project (TLP or subproject, no matter) is
to release code. Anything prior to a release might be a sandbox, it might
be a podling, it might be a lose alliance of the willing. Whatever...
[snip]
That said ... I don't believe anyone is saying Harmony must release it's
entire codebase to graduate. Any working and usable component or part of
the harness could be released as 0.1 alpha version, the processes followed,
the issues raised and resolved. With a codebase as large as Harmony, I sure
don't expect the whole ball of wax to be ready, or at the same level of
stability, all at once.
Be aware that in the context of J2SE, a "release" must fulfill some
compatibility requirements. Included in this is a requirement not to
subset.
Understood. This can not be a J2SE release. The question I raised is if
there can be part of the 'firmament' beneath the VM released. Yes, I grok
that none of this shall be released as a J2SE VM - because the only J2SE VM
is a complete VM.
Of course, one could simply manufacture a synthetic release for the
purposes of satisfying a perceived incubation requirement, but honestly,
that seems more like one of the "ticky-marks driven processes" I tend to
see within my day job than anything I would expect to see at the ASF.
I certainly hope that the concept of 'releasing the code' isn't just a tick
mark - I'd imagined (contrary to other proposals flying around) that it's the
end goal of nearly any collaborative effort at the ASF, no?
No, because then every project would simply disband after milestone 1 :)
[snip]
So as much as I admire the enthusiasm of the entire community and know that
the vote will disappoint some folks, I'll repeat my root question; how does
incubation status interfere with progress of the Harmony project prior to
its first release?
If you forgive me, let me propose a thought experiment. Why don't we
simply dissolve the board, and throw everything back into incubation?
What would it hurt? Projects obviously have been holding releases
during incubation, many have had multiple releases.
I'm failing to see where you are going here, and made your post initially
really hard to follow. Ignoring the above...
No, that's not a serious proposal. What I am growing increasingly
concerned with is that we (collectively) have started to lose sight on
what the mission of the incubator is. Yes, not having a release is an
indicator, but there certainly are other indicators. No, I'm not
advocating that we "rush" projects out of the incubator.
Absolutely, it's gotta be the question. If whatever decisions are made
at the incubator don't reflect its mission, well, those decisions are
pretty pointless, eh?
What I am looking for is a happy medium. In particular, I would like to
see is for the rate of disposition (either in a positive or negative
manner) of projects in the incubator approximate the rate of creation.
More succinctly: I want to see projects that are ready to graduate start
graduating, not because it benefits them, but because befits the incubator.
+1 to keeping some equilibrium, and I hope all the mentors are watching the
ball. The recent request by the board to highlight three of the biggest
obstacles might help define this.
-1 to simply pushing things out because our plate is full. I'm not going to
object if folks start throttling on the front end; "please hang on to your
proposal, it seems like a worthy effort but the pipeline is too full" ---
which hopefully leads to a show of hands from a few new ASF members to take
on and mentor a few more projects. I'm suggesting new blood/more blood, not
bleeding the current volunteers to death.
But no one is suggesting that we need to get Harmony out simply to make
room for something else.
After contemplating for several months now, we thought the time was
right. I think requiring a release is losing sight of the basic
premises of incubator, which are creating a healthy apache community
with a clean codebase.
A release is one of many things that a community will grapple with in
it's lifetime, and yes, it's a good reference point to *observe* a
project in it's natural state when evaluating health. But as I noted
earlier, there are many things that are good reference points to observe
(deal with a troll, resolve a technical difference, choose among two
solutions, deal with an outside project, etc...).
I think that the mentors and experienced participants teach. When the
mentors (and the podling) agree that graduation is in order, it's up to
the rest of us to evaluate the data that's there. Clearly the mentors
used some data to make their decision...
This is why I pushed back on this - not because a release of some small
thing in Harmony isn't possible, but because I think there is ample
information to look at and I think we're missing the forest for the
trees. I'm somewhat sorry that I didn't notice this sooner and speak up.
>
Returning the subject back to Harmony, with regard to a release, what
matters more to me is whether or not those who are directly involved
with Harmony (which most decidedly does *not* include me) are interested
in producing a release at this time. If not, and if their reasons make
sense, then I would be inclined to respect their wishes.
Which brings me back to your question, what's the point? If the point is to
have a self-sustaining community, I'd argue that a codebase without a release
at all is in serious risk of ultimately stalling.
I don't see how you can make that statement. Harmony doesn't have a
release. We have plans and a time line for a release, and have had it
for months.
http://incubator.apache.org/harmony/roadmap.html
We have not stalled w/o that release, but instead continue to rally and
grow. I know it keeps me up at night :)
A codebase with users and
a community that relies on it has a built in healing factor, in which the
users themselves can step up to the plate, even if the -entire- development
community waved goodbye. Or not, but that's then in the users' hands :)
Sure, and we need to get a minimum amount of working code to start
attracting users. We're getting drips and drabs of users now, but we're
still rather unstable, and we're competing with state of the art
implementations of the same thing that are FREE. We're not [yet]
something new and different that people can't get elsewhere, and hence
you can get a user community going of people that are willing to put up
with the warts if it solves their problem.
We knew this problem going into this, and are more than happy to grit
our teeth and keep going, because once we *do* get the code stabilized,
I think you'll start seeing users and consumers of the parts.
And as far as their wishes go, nobody's addressing the question,
how does incubation status interfere with progress of the Harmony project
prior to its first release?
Can someone shed some light on this, please?
Because being out of the incubator gives others confidence that there is
a solid community (-ish) and that the greater Apache community is
serious about the project and approves it. It's really all about
external perception. (I was happy just coding away down there for the
last 18 months, but it's time...)
For some projects, this means that people are more willing to use the
software as it feels more "real". In our case, where we're always
looking for contributors and participants, and many of these potential
contributors are conservative commercial organizations, they may be
holding back simply because they want to wait until we are "real". I
personally don't have this problem, but I've heard it enough times to
know that the perception is out there.
I hope that helps.
geir
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