As chair of the IPMC, I do not think that it is appropriate to have a vote to continue incubation for six months, with no consideration of success in between. I think that it would be reasonable to put aside the vote to retire, and expect a plan, with contributions from more than one non-mentor, in the next month, and some progress after that. I also think it would be within the mission and discretion of the committee to go ahead and vote to retire.
If it's really true that recently resolved legal muddles have been the one barrier to success, then the removal of that barrier should unleash some fairly substantial results. To address the more philosophical discussion here: The incubator is a structure set up to bootstrap communities. It's not the only possible structure of this kind, and it's not necessarily the best one. Like everything else at a *volunteer* organization, it is constrained by the amount of volunteer labor available. In a perfect world, yes, the Foundation might operate a sort of home-for-small-projects. Such a structure would allow arbitrarily small projects to benefit from Foundation infrastructure and legal benefits. However, this isn't a perfect world, and we are indeed very constrained by the volunteer labor, and so we aren't providing a home for years on end. There are other ways for this project to succeed other than as an Apache TLP. You could find a related, existing, project, and merge into them. You could set up shop on github. On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 7:36 AM, Suresh Marru <sma...@apache.org> wrote: > On Nov 27, 2012, at 3:08 AM, Eric Yang <eric...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Apache is a non-profit organization. If we restrict our thinking model to >> metrics of how many developers, and how many patches are committed in >> pre-defeined time limit. There is no software that is gong to succeed in >> this evaluation other than commercial software. Paid developers are >> contributing to the software that meeting cooperate interests at rapid >> pace, and smaller companies will work together until cooperate interests >> tear apart the software, or the funding eventually dry up and the software >> cease to exist, and the community will eventually fall apart. Good >> software usually comes down to a few individuals who work hard to enable >> the community to flourish. Many of the good software takes decades to >> develop from hobby projects. I will accept the voting result from IPMC, >> and I wish IPMC would use better human sense to enable future project to >> flourish. > > Hi Eric, > > Its good to see Jukka and Ant stepping up as mentors, may be that will give > you Chukwa one more chance. From browsing through the private list and the > general list, I see lots of philosophical arguments and how you will bring in > your patches now that legal review at your employer is over. Ofcourse you > mention new volunteers too. But so far I haven't seen an answer from you or > other Chukwa PPMC "what have you done previously to grow the community, what > did not work and what is the change in plan now"? I see multiple variants of > this question has been asked quite a few times in the last couple of days and > I am eager to see an answer from the Chukwa PPMC. > > Suresh > > >> Chris Douglas resigned from mentor position, therefore, Chukwa will need a >> new mentor, and one of Chukwa contributor Sourygna Luangsay volunteer to be >> the motivator for Chukwa development if Chukwa is voted to stay for another >> 6 months. >> >> regards, >> Eric >> >> On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 10:20 PM, Bernd Fondermann < >> bernd.fonderm...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 1:25 AM, Jukka Zitting <jukka.zitt...@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 10:53 PM, Alan Cabrera <l...@toolazydogs.com> >>> wrote: >>>>> As I mentioned in an earlier email, we did have this conversation seven >>>>> months ago. We came to a consensus to give it another try. We even >>> added >>>>> a few committers a "bit early" with the hopes that they would infuse >>> the project >>>>> with more energy. >>>> >>>> That doesn't take away the fact that there are still people who are >>>> clearly interested in continuing work on the project. Instead of >>>> telling the community to pick up their toys and leave, I'd much rather >>>> ask them to come up with a credible alternative. The failure of past >>>> attempts to grow the community does not necessarily mean that future >>>> attempts will also fail, so I'd give the community the benefit of >>>> doubt as long as there are new ideas and people willing to try them. >>>> >>>> If I understand correctly the problems in Chukwa are two-fold: 1) the >>>> community isn't diverse, i.e. there are only few people involved, and >>>> 2) the community isn't active, in that even the involved people don't >>>> have too many cycles to spend on the project. >>>> >>>> Thus I'd raise the following questions to Eric and others who want to >>>> keep Chukwa alive at the ASF: >>>> >>>> a) Is it reasonable to expect existing community members to become >>>> more active in near future? If yes, will such increased activity be >>>> sustainable over a longer period of time? Why? IIUC there was some >>>> recent legal progress that might help here. What would be the best way >>>> to measure the expected increase in activity? >>>> >>>> b) How do you expect to get more people involved in the project? What >>>> concrete actions will be taken to increase the chances of new >>>> contributors showing up? Why do you believe these things will work >>>> better than the mentioned earlier attempts at growing the community? >>>> Good ideas of concrete actions are for example cutting new releases, >>>> improving project documentation, presenting the project at various >>>> venues, simplifying the project build and initial setup, and giving >>>> more timely answers and feedback to new users and contributors (see >>>> also my observation from October [1]). How can we best tell whether >>>> such efforts are working? >>>> >>>> Coming up with good answers to such questions is not necessarily easy >>>> (and it's fine if not all of them can yet be answered), but going >>>> through that effort should give us a good reason to continue the >>>> incubation of Chukwa at least for a few more months until we should >>>> start seeing some concrete and sustainable improvements in community >>>> activity and diversity. >>> >>> This is exactly what we did for the last months (years, actually). >>> Give it yet more time. >>> Honestly, I don't understand why we should continue in this mode "for >>> another few months" when it failed for the past years. >>> Is this the extra-bonus IPMC time? >>> The legal issues only made it more clear to me that and why this >>> Incubation failed. >>> >>> The much I'd love to see Chukwa fly, this is getting ridiculous. >>> >>> Bernd >>> >>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org >>> For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org >>> >>> > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
