On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 2:39 AM, Ralph Goers<ralph.go...@dslextreme.com> wrote: > > On Aug 4, 2009, at 2:10 AM, Jukka Zitting wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 10:10 AM, Bertrand >> Delacretaz<bdelacre...@apache.org> wrote: >>> >>> In such a case, the key point is, do the people who write the code >>> listen to the community? >> >> That's certainly good, but IMHO not really the key point as it doesn't >> address the case when those people lose interest. A community that >> actually writes the code is much stronger than one that just helps key >> committers do that job. >> >> The River and PDFBox podlings that I'm currently mentoring are good >> examples of projects where community input was valued and taken into >> account by the key committers, but when they no longer had >> time/interest the projects essentially stopped as there was nobody to >> continue the work. PDFBox seems to have overcome that problem now and >> River is showing some positive signs, but both cases have required >> (and still require) quite a bit of mentoring to get them going again. >> >> Besides all the other good things diversity brings it's also an >> insurance policy for the project, and that's what I think the >> Incubator should be looking for as a graduation criteria. >> > > You are trying to predict the future. Good luck with that. > > The rules are there because we have a belief that meeting them will give the > project the best chance to succeed. I would argue that if this is your > measure you should take a look at Logback and SLF4J. The number of people > who have commit rights is very small (essentially 1 in the case of Logback). > But Ceki is a recognized expert in the field and is passionate about > logging. The odds of his abandoning the project are about equal to that of > him getting hit by a truck.
OK we have a similar example here at the ASF - when Craig McC. left Apache Shale it slowly died - and AFAIK become the first project to join the Attic. So Ceki decides to become a Yak farmer in patagonia and maybe the same thing happens to SLF4J. I'm in two minds about Pivot's graduation - but I do believe that for its long term health it needs to get more people actively working on the code. Niall > But there are severl active participants in the > projects (myself included) and many more who stop by and ask questions. > > Using these projects as an example is perhaps not the best from a community > perspective because Ceki has no intention of running them like Apache > projects. But even if he did, by these standards the projects might never > make it out of the incubator. Even if those of us who would like them had > commit rights I can guarantee that 95% of the commits would still be Ceki's. > > From my perspective we should be evaluating projects based on whether they > are building a healthy Apache community where we have sufficient belief that > the project will be able to sustain itself without further mentoring. IMO, > trying to factor in "what ifs" about what will happen if certain committers > leave, unless they have shown signs that that is likely, is not a very good > indicator of success. Over the course of time a project is in the incubator > I would expect that mentors to have a good sense of what the level of > commitment is and would use that as part of their recommendation for > graduation. > > Ralph > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
