On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Benson Margulies <bimargul...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll see Jukka one and raise him one. I have advised potential
> podlings to be very conservative with their initial list, and keep
> some potential contributors in their collective back pocket. This
> gives them a ready-made source of community growth, which is typically
> the scarcest and most precious commodity to a podling.
+1
I'm less seasoned than others here who have done a lot of Mentoring, but my
impression is that the act of identifying, nominating and voting in a new
committer or PPMC member is a valuable experience for a fledgling community in
and of itself -- going through the process seems to be beneficial, not just in
terms of securing a new recruit and boosting their morale, but for those doing
the recruiting as they debate and become comfortable with granting privileges
to new contributors.
Adding full PPMC members during the informal "open enrollment" period prior to
the VOTE on entering incubation limits the number of times a PPMC gets to go
through this invigorating experience. Perhaps that implies that the Incubator
should actively discourage open enrollment!
On the other hand, open enrollment can be a useful recruiting tool. It was
absolutely vital for AOO (whose circumstances were unique) but it has been
valuable for other projects as well -- you don't want to squander any of the
initial excitement and publicity a new proposal generates.
I believe there may be a best-of-both-worlds solution:
* Incubation proposals should have separate sections for "Initial
Committers" and "Initial PPMC Members".
* There should be text in the proposal encouraging people to add
themselves to the list of "Initial Committers" and to introduce themselves
on general@incubator -- but no such text regarding the list of "Initial
PPMC members".
The "open enrollment" period has historically been controversial -- Crunch is
not the first project to wrestle with it. Under this proposal, we avoid
rushing not-yet-podlings into granting strangers who have not yet demonstrated
merit a governance stake, but ease them into the essential Apache process of
expanding and refreshing their community as soon as the possible.
Signing on as a committer affords anyone who joins during open enrollment the
convenience of CTR (for projects that use that process), which ought to
provide sufficient incentive to keep people joining up -- yet it also gives
the podling the opportunity to vote people into the PPMC early and often. And
if committers who demonstrate merit are *not* brought into the PPMC, the
podling's Mentors and the IPMC should take notice.
Marvin Humphrey
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