On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 6:26 PM, Ross Gardler <rgard...@apache.org> wrote: > I've already decided that I'm going to have to recruit a number of key > mentors to help me protect the project during incubation.
Historically, I think there are two classes of podlings: - one which has a self-governing community and just needs to get indoctrinated in the "Apache Way" (SpamAssassin, Subversion, etc.) - one which doesn't have a self-governing community (thrift, traffic server, etc.) Perhaps Greg is on to something with having us split up the process. It's always bugged me that there were two different classes that we tried to shoehorn into one process. Accordingly, in these two models, the role of the mentor is very different: - self-governing community: making sure they get introduced to the right people and understand the minimum requirements; but, really, they shouldn't interfere with the actual day-to-day governance. - no self-governing community: helping the developers understand what it means to self-govern. For an existing self-governing case, I would ideally like it so that the mentors were purely advisory - the ultimate responsibility lies with the community - as it must, or we're teaching them the wrong things. I don't know (or really care) how that reconciles with any corporate structures - but I'm sure we can certainly get creative in solving this. In Subversion, the mentors we had were already full committers and had earned their merit within the community. So, when Greg, Dan, Sander, or I said something, the rest of the community knew we weren't crackpots. Based on Ross's description of the community, it doesn't sound like there's enough coverage to get a 3 member "minimum" - but, the very fact that a community can decide to come to Apache is itself a form of self-governance. So...it's a touch circular, but I go back to thinking that a purely advisory role is right for any mentors coming in when there's self-governance already existing. Considering Thrift's situation in trying to bootstrap their self-governance, I can totally see why Joe likes that particular tweak and why that might be sufficient for their case. I don't have any clear answers, but, I'd really like to continue exploring where this thought takes us as I think there's a solution here that can ease the pain somewhat. -- justin --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
