On 2/25/2011 4:25 AM, Troy Howard wrote: > My point was: > > Bill made a statement, which though rather neutral and ambiguous, > seemed to indicate that he (or perhaps a silent mass of others) did > not think the proposal was such a good idea, due to the risks > associated with a significant amount of corporate support and > involvement. At least, that's how I interpreted it. Since then, the > response has been fairly one sided, supporting the project, and > unfortunately, Bill has not responded to fairly direct questions about > his intent or reasoning. I'd much rather be hearing more from him > about this issue than continuing to express my opinions.
No, that's not what I meant at all. I was simply offering a small nudge to Ate that they frame this in terms of individual contributors (paid or otherwise) who will do the work of making the project a success, beyond initial code drops. Yes, it's unambiguous that this project will succeed based on the software contribution agreements and offers of code from all of the organizations who are championing this effort. But unlike many other valid, respected standards and open source project bodies, corporations aren't members in the Apache-style governance. Even when a corp withdraws from a project, as in the recent case of IBM retreating from Harmony to OpenJDK, the ASF doesn't measure the impact of "IBM", but of individual contributors from IBM who no longer have time and/or perhaps interest. Several projects have come into the incubator on nothing but one or even two corporations interests, with contributors, only to disappear when the corporate interests shift, or the contributors realize how really difficult it can be to collaborate with your competitors. This particular proposal reads very similar to other Open* incubation efforts which were failures primarily from the same starting point, but had corporate pissing matches to derail the effort to collaborate. I would have liked to see more on the subject of collaboration, and I would liked to have seen more about how individuals were given work time to pursue their own interest in this collective software effort, vs the corporate business case that there is a (collective) business need for this software. The former can lead to a very successful project even when the corporate winds shift. All of the above are not enough to earn a -1 from me, I certainly would have said so in the first place. This was merely a suggestion to reread and potentially revise the proposal and ensure the participants were not coming at this effort as they might for a W3C or JCP effort, where the business case and corporate participation is usually the nexus. And I would have privately chided Ate about how organization-heavy versus what little detail about the contributors themselves was offered in the proposal. But we discuss the merits, risks and missteps of incubating projects on general@, because this is how we learn from each others successes and mistakes and to recognize ASF culture. Please read all posts to general@ incubator from all ASF folks here as simply ways to improve the chance of the proposal's or project's success, unless the message has an explicit +/-1 (and even those are often reversible if the concerns raised can be addressed). Bill --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
