That was an extremely helpful and useful post. Thank you Ondrej for sharing it and taking the time to provide that insight.
Travis -- Travis Oliphant (on a mobile) 512-826-7480 On Dec 29, 2011, at 12:51 AM, Ondrej Certik <ond...@certik.cz> wrote: > On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 4:22 AM, Perry Greenfield <pe...@stsci.edu> wrote: >> I'm not sure I'm crazy about leaving final decision making for a >> board. A board may be a good way of carefully considering the issues, >> and it could make it's own recommendation (with a sufficient >> majority). But in the end I think one person needs to decide (and that >> decision may go against the board consensus, presumably only rarely). >> >> Why shouldn't that person be you? > > I haven't contributed to NumPy directly. But I can offer my experience > with SymPy. > > I agree with Perry. Having one person being in charge as the last > call (project leader) works excellent in my experience. For SymPy, > that person has been me, > up until a year ago (when I realized that I am too busy to do a good > job as a project leader), when I passed it to Aaron Meurer. > We always try to reach > consensus, and the project leader's main job is to encourage such discussion. > When consensus cannot be reached, he needs to make the decision (that > happened maybe once or twice in the last 5 years and it is very rare). > > There seems to be quite strong "community ownership" in SymPy (that > was Stefan's objection). I think the reason being that in fact we > probably have something like a "board of members", except that > it is informal and it simply consists of people whose opinions > the project leader highly values. And I think that it is very easy > for anybody who gets involved with SymPy development to > become trusted and thus his or her opinion will count. > > As such, for NumPy I think by default the project leader is Travis, who > created it. He became busy in the last few years and so he could > appoint a person, who will be the project leader. > > The list of possible people seems quite simple, I would choose > somebody who is involved a lot with NumPy in the last 1 year > (let's say): > > $ git shortlog -ns --since="1 year ago" | head > 651 Mark Wiebe > 137 Charles Harris > 72 David Cournapeau > 61 Ralf Gommers > 52 rgommers > 29 Pearu Peterson > 17 Pauli Virtanen > 11 Chris Jordan-Squire > 11 Matthew Brett > 10 Christopher L. Farrow > > So anybody from the top 5 or 10 people seems ok. This has to be a personal > decision, and I don't know what the actual contribution and involvement (and > personal ability to be a project leader) is of the above people, so that's > why it should be done by Travis (possibly consulting with somebody who > he trusts and who is involved). > > For SymPy, here is the list from the "1 year ago" when I passed the > project leadership: > > $ git shortlog -ns --since="January 2010" --until "January 2011" | head > 317 Øyvind Jensen > 150 Mateusz Paprocki > 93 Aaron Meurer > 81 Addison Cugini > 79 Brian E. Granger > 64 Ronan Lamy > 61 Matt Curry > 58 Ondřej Čertík > 36 Chris Smith > 34 Christian Muise > > It's not exactly accurate, as some of the branches from 2010 were > merged in 2011, but it gives you a picture. The above > list doesn't tell you who the best person should be. I knew that Aaron > would be the best choice, and I consulted it > with several "core developers" to see what the "community" thinks, and > everybody told me, that if I need to pass it > on, Aaron would be the choice. > > Since this was the first time for me doing this, I simply stated, that Aaron > is the project leader from now on. And in couple months we clarified > it a little bit, that I am the "owner", > in a sense that I own the domain and some servers and other things and > I am ultimately responsible for the project (and I still have a say in > non-coding related issues, like Google Summer of Code and such). For > anything code related, Aaron has the last word, > and I will not override it. The precise email is here: > > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/sympy/i-XD15syvqs/discussion > > You can compare it to today's list: > > $ git shortlog -ns --since="1 year ago" | head 805 Chris Smith > 583 Mateusz Paprocki > 508 Aaron Meurer > 183 Ronan Lamy > 150 Saptarshi Mandal > 112 Tom Bachmann > 101 Vladimir Perić > 93 Gilbert Gede > 91 Ondřej Čertík > 89 Brian E. Granger > > > So the activity has gone up after I stopped being the bottleneck, and > after there was again a clear person, who is in charge and has time > for it. > > > Anyway, I just wanted to offer some experience that I gained with > SymPy with this regard. As I said, I am not a NumPy developer and as > such, this decision should be made by NumPy developers and Travis as > the original project leader. > > I could see a familiar pattern here --- Travis has spent enormous time > to develop NumPy and to build a community, and later became busy. This > is exactly what happened to me with SymPy (when I was back in Prague, > I spent months, every evening, many hours with sympy....). In fact, > Travis once said at some lecture, that opensource is addictive. And > not only that, also, if you develop (start) something, it really feels > like it's yours. And then when I didn't have time and I knew I am not > doing good job with SymPy, it was probably the hardest decision I had > to make to pass the leadership on. > Now, from retrospect, I should have done it much earlier and it is now > obvious, that it was the right thing to do. But at that time, it was > not obvious and I was very unsure what is going to happen. > > So anyway, good luck with any decision that you make. :) > > Ondrej > _______________________________________________ > NumPy-Discussion mailing list > NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org > http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list NumPy-Discussion@scipy.org http://mail.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
