While I've spilled lots of ink venting on the performance of the Kato mentors over on general@incubator, lemme just say that for the most part I think their work here as a whole was above average for what one could reasonably expect from an IPMC mentor. For the first year of this podling the mentors did a very admirable job of general stewardship, steering the podling towards resolution of graduation issues in a patient and friendly manner.
No reasonable read of the original Kato proposal would've suggested to anyone what sort of stunt IBM would eventually pull here, and had it not been snuck into the reporting cycle under the radar while nobody was looking, it probably would've been picked up on by the mentors. It is certainly true that had the authors of the Kato proposal even intimated that it planned to gate all work on Oracle's participation at some point in the original proposal, the IPMC would've rejected it outright. Nobody had any reason to expect what was eventually coming, certainly not the podling's mentors. While their grasp of the very clear distinction between private and public interests could use a little retuning, it's not reasonable to put the responsibility for the ultimate fate of this podling in their laps. That honor goes to IBM, should the reboot fail to attract sufficient interest.
