Hi! when a honor of the IPMC chair was bestowed on me beginning of 2014 it was crucial that the position remains to be rotated among IPMC members. As an aside: while Marvin felt that the ideal rotation period was 6 month my personal belief was that 12 months makes it long enough to be able to accomplish something, while short enough to still accomplish the goals of a rotating chair.
At any rate, with my 12 months almost up, it makes the last day of the year a perfect cut-off point to start talking about transition the Chair position, if it wasn't for one issue: At this point I'm really convinced that what ASF needs is not the next IPMC Chair, but the *last* IPMC Chair. That is to say, I truly feel like the best outcome for everybody involved in Incubation process is if by the end of 2015 IPMC gets completely dissolved. Here's why: First of all, as was pointed out in two other threads by Chris and Benson (see the quotes bellow) the current process lacks the most crucial bit of what Incubation is supposed to be all about: Apache project on training wheels. Instead of teaching our podlings what it really feels to have a responsible PMC and a Chair skilled in the "Apache Way" dealing with the board, we have IPMC. After serving in my current position for almost a year, I'm fully convinced by now, that there's a very fundamental problem with the organization. The existence of IPMC (despite all the goodness that still comes from it) has become a too-convenient of a excuse for *everybody* to play a really nasty shell game with responsibility. While the situation with ASF TLPs varies, at least the system is setup in such a way that there's a very clear accountability What's more important, there's a vested interest from those with authority (PMC, PMC Chair and the Board) to make sure the project is doing the right thing. Presumably, if you're on PMC of a TLP you really don't want the PMC to be dissolved and the project go away. You're not a member of some ethereal "league of extraordinary gentlemen" (aka IPMC) your status is in direct relationship to the livelihood of your project. Without the project there's no status, which is exactly *not* the case with IPMC. A pretty powerful motivator for doing the right thing is clearly lacking. Now, one might say that we don't need to dissolve the IPMC in order to fix this, one might say that something along the lines of original Ross' proposal would do. I would disagree. I think that the only way to send the message or clear responsibility is to make it impossible to be associated with an incubating project in any other way, but being on its PMC. You're either in or out. There's no other place to boost your ASF karma (which, sadly, I've seen around IPMC more than I'd like to). But wait, there's more! This real assignment of responsibility wouldn't just happen at the mentor level, it'll extend all the way to the board. The board will be directly engaged in overseeing the incubating projects and that direct interaction will be as much a part of the Incubation experience as producing releases or growing the community. The scalability of the board is not an issue here. First of all, the board still needs to read all the Incubating reports and moreover if the board doesn't feel scalable enough today, why would all of a sudden scale if all the projects vote on graduation at once tomorrow (and pass!)? If nothing else, this real engagement gives the board a very early indicator of its own scalability issues if any. Early warning are a good thing, not something that needs to be feared. All in all, it feels like direct overseeing of Incubating projects would be a good thing for the poddlings, a good thing for the mentors, a good thing for the board and ultimately the only mature and responsible way of making sure that the project we try to embrace get the best shot of becoming ASF TLPs. At this point, I'm struggling to see any potential negative effects. In fact, if there's one thing I really would like everybody commenting on this thread to focus on it would be that: arguing for potential downsides. With that, I'd like to thank all of my IPMC colleagues for this great opportunity and wish all of you the Happiest New Year! Thanks, Roman. ============== From: Mattmann, Chris A [...snip...] It’s not just the board - again please see the table I’ve listed at the bottom of the wiki. What my proposal does is remove the thinly veiled “IPMC” as the “catch all” which in fact doesn’t catch all. On its 150+ person committee - I supposed there are < 20 active people who keep showing up. I have statistics to prove it (see my active mentors tool I’ve shown) - I have experience having mentored many podlings to prove it; and the mailing threads prove it. So, promote those 20 people to ComDev PMC, promote them to ASF members, promote them however, my guess is that they *care* about the foundation; we want these people helping new projects, and they will continue to help those new projects - along with the board - along with everyone else. [...snip...] =============== From: Benson Margulies [...snip...] Here is where the 'Mentors in the Project' (whether directly reporting to the board or not) leaps up and looks like a great idea to me. The whole goal of incubation is to run an Apache project on training wheels. How does an Apache project run? WIth a chair and PMC members supervising it and _reporting to the board_. The proposal, as I see it, is to tell the champion and other mentors that they, and not the entire IPMC in some nebulous fashion, are the PMC in the PPMC. By the time the podling graduates, their need to have expanded themselves to a larger group. The board may choose to keep the IPMC around to organize and support this process. The board may choose to continue to ask the IPMC to add an extra layer of supervision. But the heart of the proposal is to insist that every podling be nucleated around at least three people who have the experience to operate as a PMC and have volunteered for the responsibility. 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