Hi, On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 12:19 AM, Ralph Goers <ralph.go...@dslextreme.com>wrote:
> The ONLY issue I see for Flume to graduate is diversity. No one will > convince me that the current makeup constitutes diversity of any kind. > > Perhaps I shouldn't have brought up the mailing list issues as that was > only meant in the spirit of trying to offer some advice on how more > diversity could be achieved. Flume is really the only community I > participate in that contains Cloudera employees so I do find myself > wondering if the way the project is run is because that is the way all > projects with a large number of Cloudera employees are run. That might > make all of those participants comfortable but might create a barrier to > others. > Here are the committers who have been active in the past three months: * Brock Noland (Cloudera) * Hari Shreedharan (Cloudera) * Jarek Jarcec Cecho (AVG Technologies) * Juhani Connolly (CyberAgent) * Mike Percy (Cloudera) * Mingjie Lai (Trend Micro) * Prasad Mujumdar (Cloudera) * Will McQueen (Cloudera) * Arvind Prabhakar (Cloudera) There are four companies represented in this list: AVG Technologies, Cloudera, CyberAgent and Trend Micro. Compared to other projects that have successfully graduated from Incubator in the past, this meets the diversity requirements very well. > > In any case - I'm not insisting that the way the project is run needs to > change. I'm simply saying I cannot support graduation with the current > makeup of the committers and PMC. I don't have a hard and fast ratio - > gaining 10 new unaffiliated committers who don't do much isn't nearly as > good as 2 or 3 who are very active. Ultimately the project needs to figure > out how to solve this. > Stating that some committers "who don't do much isn't nearly as good as 2 or 3 who are very active" is an unfair characterization. This is more unfair for those who are part of the project but have not been active lately due to whatever reasons, but have played a foundational role in getting the project to a point where it is today. I think they are as important as any other committer who may be very active at the moment. Merit once earned, never expires [1]. [1] http://www.apache.org/dev/committers.html#committer-set-term Arvind > > Ralph > > > On May 23, 2012, at 11:48 PM, Eric Sammer wrote: > > > I appreciate your position Ralph and I don't want anyone to feel like > they > > can't contribute. As we've talked about before, we've been quick to > nurture > > new contributors to committer status successfully in a few cases. It's > true > > that some of the more active committers are from Cloudera, but it's not > to > > the exclusion of anyone. Others aren't from Cloudera. Those of us that > work > > together are also very strict about abiding to the "if it's not on the > > mailing list, it didn't happen" rule (where "mailing list" can mean JIRA > or > > other ASF infrastructure as well). > > > > I'm happy to take your guidance as a mentor, but you also need to > > understand that some of the ways the Flume project has elected to operate > > are just a matter of taste. They were proposed, discussed, voted on (and > > not as a block by Cloudera employees, IIRC - pretty sure I was -0), and > put > > in place and do not violate the Apache Way (like RTC vs. CTR). They > aren't > > unheard of and they do not work to the exclusion of contributors (RTC, > for > > instance, only impacts committers). I think the vote that was started was > > only to gauge community opinion as a first step (although I'm not > > completely well versed in the graduation process, to be honest). > > > > If there are concrete things we can do to improve diversity, in your > > opinion, I am extremely open to hearing them. We already do many of the > > (excellent) things listed earlier in the thread. JIRA noise withstanding > > (again, it's a matter of taste - I use the email frequently as I find > > trolling through JIRA slow) I'm definitely open to ideas. Of course, if > > Flume simply needs to remain in the incubator until we develop greater > > diversity, that's fine too. If we're not ready, we're just not ready. > > > > On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 11:18 PM, Ralph Goers < > ralph.go...@dslextreme.com>wrote: > > > >> > >> On May 23, 2012, at 10:48 PM, Patrick Hunt wrote: > >> > >>> On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 10:36 PM, Ralph Goers > >>> <ralph.go...@dslextreme.com> wrote: > >>>> > >>>> On May 23, 2012, at 10:15 PM, Benson Margulies wrote: > >>>> > >>>>> On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 10:09 PM, Ralph Goers > >>>>> <ralph.go...@dslextreme.com> wrote: > >>>>>> Right after I read Jukka's email that started this thread and I > >> posted my reply and discovered to my shock that they had started a > >> graduation vote. I am shocked because I have pointed out repeatedly the > >> project's complete lack of diversity. Virtually all the active PMC > members > >> and committers work for the same employer. I have told them several > times > >> that I would actually like to participate in the project but the way the > >> project works is very different then every other project I am involved > with > >> at the ASF and the barriers to figure out what is actually going on is > very > >> high. Almost nothing is discussed directly on the dev list - it is all > done > >> through Jira issues or the Review tool. While all the Jira issue > updates > >> and reviews are sent to the dev list most of that is just noise. Feel > free > >> to review the dev list archives to see what I am talking about. > >>>>> > >>>>> I don't follow flume, but I'd propose to soften your objection only > >>>>> slightly. I've met other groups of people who like a JIRA centric > view > >>>>> of the world. I suspect that if they did a bunch of other good things > >>>>> called out below, you or others would find the JIRA business > >>>>> digestible. Also, on the other hand, I fear that the co-employed > >>>>> contributors are collaborating in the hallway, and the lack of the > >>>>> context in JIRA or on the list is contributing to the problem. > >>>> > >>>> I have reason to doubt the collaboration in the hallway aspect and I > >> certainly do not doubt everyone's good intent. I'm not objecting to the > >> collaboration style as an issue preventing graduation. I'm just saying I > >> find it difficult to participate with that style and that simply makes > me > >> wonder if that is making it harder to attract new committers. I fully > >> realize that that issue might just be with me, but the fact remains that > >> there is practically no diversity in the project and I cannot in good > >> conscience recommend graduation for a project in that situation. > >>>> > >>> > >>> Hi Ralph, Benson, et. al., some background: > >>> > >>> Flume is similar to Hadoop and other related projects in that it is > >>> very jira heavy for development activity. No slouch in terms of > >>> mailing list traffic either though (1200 last month): > >>> http://flume.markmail.org/ > >> > >> Sorry I didn't include this in my prior post but here you are making my > >> point exactly. I participate in several other Apache projects. Wading > >> through 1200+ emails per month that are largely Jira/Review noise makes > it > >> very difficult for me to find posts that have any value. As a > consequence I > >> am largely forced to simply delete everything generated by he Review > tool > >> and Jira. And I'm a mentor. I just don't see how newcomers are going to > >> find this style welcoming. > >> > >> Ralph > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > >> For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > >> > >> > > > > > > -- > > Eric Sammer > > twitter: esammer > > data: www.cloudera.com > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > >
