I have been reading this thread via GMane with some worry. I have now joined the email list and this post is fortuitous in that it allows me to make some of the points I wish to contribute.
On Fri, 2015-03-13 at 08:55 +0100, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote: > On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 6:07 PM, Cédric Champeau > <cedric.champ...@gmail.com> wrote: > > ...I see no point in wanting to reach a target number of > > committers. Having a large number of quality contributions, more > > contributors is IMHO more important than people having write access to the > > repo.... > > Once again, there's no set number that you have to reach to graduate - > it is not about numbers. I think something has gone very wrong with this point about committer count, see below… > > What we want to see from the ASF side is that the project is > sustainable, which means being able to bring in new committers and PMC > members, as in general it is common for people to leave or become less > active over time. Sustainability is critical, but has nothing to do with the number of committers per se, see below… > It seems like the initial committers of the Groovy podling have been > around for ever, and maybe you're all planning to stay for ever...but > still, a community needs to be able to renew itself over time, that's > what a podling needs to demonstrate. Again I think this is going off at a tangent. Sustainability and evolution/progress are the issues not how things are managed internally, see below… > As I said before, being a committer does not necessarily means commit > code - if someone's a project evangelist for example and you'd like > them to be recognized as a core team member the only way in an Apache > project is to make them a committer (and maybe PMC member). As in > "committed to the project", even if they don't write code. I think this is a fundamentally wrong metric. I have been associated with the Groovy programming language since 2004. Do I have commit privileges, no. Am I part of the Groovy community? Well I would say yes, and if you ask people at Groovy-related, DevoxxUK-related, ACCU-related conferences "Is Russel Winder a part of the Groovy community", I think those that knew my name would say definitely. Likewise "Is Russel Winder a strong Groovy advocate with a history of converting people to Groovy/Gradle/Spock/GroovyFX/GPars?" would get a lot of yes answers. Am I a committer to the Groovy project, no. Do I feel I have to gain status as a committer to validate my position in the Groovy community? No. With The Groovy Project seeking to become a TLP of the Apache Organization, I have been taking a peek at some of the writing on The Apache Way. The phrase that springs immediately to my mind is "Community over Code". Most of the discussion in this thread though is about the number of committers, as though only committers are part of the community. Forgive me presuming to say this but this seems a contradiction with The Apache Way as written about. Also it is very CVCS/Subversion focussed. In a DVCS world, committers are just the gatekeepers of the central mainline, the judges/jury as to what meets the quality criteria. They are not the totality of the people who contribute, and they do not define the community. Nor is meritoriousness with respect to the community defined by being a committer. To judge the community entirely by the number of committers is at variance with the DVCS way of working. Anyone, anywhen can create a changeset that can become an integral part of the project. Should they become committers? No. Well perhaps they might have to in a Subversion world, but in a Git/Mercurial/Bazaar world, No. Meritocracy is defined on an episodic basis and has no direct relationship to committer status. Moreover, it is perfectly possible for a meritorious person to propose a very stupid changeset. To determine health of a DVCS-based project entirely on how many become committers, how easily one can become a committer, etc. is to misrepresent how DVCS communities work, and how merit in such a community works. I think the language of sustainability and committer status has to change in this discussion. I see no problem with having just five committers to the Groovy mainline. Sustainability is not about head count per se, it requires knowing how to deal with rotation, etc. when it is needed. Even this is not a measure of health of the community, it is about ensuring the project never fails to be able to evolve. Release management is associated with sustainability, again an evolution and management thing, nothing to do with the health of the Groovy community. So I would say that status within the community is unrelated to status as a committer, and health of the project is likewise unrelated to the number of committers. If The Apache Way requires a person to be a committer to be considered a recognized person in a community, then I say the metric is wrong and Apache should reconsider its metrics. Having ways and means to ensure releases, that pull requests come in, that mailing lists are vibrant and constructive, that Groovy evolves to the needs of mankind (not just the current users) is almost, but not quite, totally unrelated to the number of committers. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
