Indeed, I would urge PPMC members to push regular posts to the OOo blog.
While we do our work here on dev@ in public, it's often easier for the
greater world to follow a blog posting than it is to follow mailing lists.
From my perspective (as a mentor, not on the PPMC), here are some
suggestions:
On 7/12/2011 6:39 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
Good point, Rob. I am not floating a proposal, more an opportunity
for discussion. Here are some questions:
1. When should we conclude that the Initial Committers that have
arrived are all that are coming and we should close the door, with
all further committers being by invitation of the PPMC?
PPMC volunteers should double-check that each Initial Committer has
definitely been contacted personally, and perhaps send out another email
to each individual separately reminding them of the invitation and
setting a deadline (say in a week or so) for accepting the invitation to
become an initial committer.
If they don't respond positively (or with an obvious "yes I need more
time!", then take them off the list). It's been long enough.
2. A person is considered eligible to become a committer when there
is an established pattern of contribution on the
project:<http://community.apache.org/newcommitter.html>.
2.1 To what degree should contributions elsewhere -- a prior
reputation -- be taken into consideration? 2.2 For how long should we
do this, if at all?
This is a tough one. I wouldn't go too much further at "auto" inviting
past OOo contributors, because this is a new project community, and it's
important to see how well potential committers fit into this community.
In any case, if you do evaluate past contributions, be sure to include
an assessment of individuals ability to work with peers in a community.
If you read the newcommitter.html list, you'll notice that the item
about coding ability comes last on the list.
3. What do you expect to see as demonstration that the PPMC is being
even-handed in the invitation of new committers?
A process just like this one, where the community actively and
productively discusses the issue here on the dev@ list. 8-)
4. Is it understood why the ooo-secur...@incubator.apache.org list is
being created and the safeguards that are intended with regard to the
security under which matters of security are raised?
I would hope so. The PPMC is responsible for the project as a whole and
the product (we will be) shipping. However I would take recommendations
from the Apache Security team very seriously - they have a lot of
experience with security and privacy.
5. Most important: This is a learning experience for all of us. What
do you want cleared up around these growing-pain considerations?
Patience and thoughtful participation are key. Seriously: this is great
stuff, and while it seems a little chaotic, it's great to see so many
people participating and being constructive at figuring out both the
technical and community issues.
- Shane
- Dennis
-----Original Message----- From: Rob Weir
[mailto:rabas...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2011 14:34 To:
ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Project + PPMC
Growing Pains
Is this intended as a blog post? It reads like one. In particular I
don't see any proposals to discuss.
-Rob
On Jul 12, 2011, at 4:30 PM, "Dennis E. Hamilton"<orc...@apache.org>
wrote:
We are just one month into being the Apache OpenOffice.org Podling.
It is useful to interesting to take stock of all that is happening
and where we are.
The main activity that we are all holding our breath over is the
reconstitution of the code base under Apache. There is also
concern for the documentation and web sites and how they fit under
an Apache umbrella.
Depending on their interests and specialties, not everyone here is
immediately able to contribute much. We are in the process of
organizing and bringing over and IP-scrubbing the initial artifacts
for the project that will be the foundation for further work.
There is not much to get our teeth into in terms of actual
development until that is sorted out. (E.g., we don't have a bug
tracker yet and the documentation, localization, and user-facing
folk, including marketing, are still wondering how our project will
accommodate them.)
Meanwhile, there is also how we organize ourselves to operate as an
Apache project.
- Dennis
1. BOOTSTRAPPING COMMITTERS AND THE PPMC 2. HOW LONG IS THE OPEN
DOOR OPEN? 3. WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO BE A COMMITTER AS TIME GOES ON?
4. WHEN BEING MORE PRIVATE THAN PRIVATE IS IMPORTANT
1. BOOTSTRAPPING COMMITTERS AND THE PPMC
The set of Initial Committers is a self-selected group who added
their names to the Initial Committers list on the original
incubator proposal. That's how the podling is bootstrapped.
Likewise, ooo-dev participation is fully self-selected, and it will
stay that way.
This means that we are a group of people who have not worked
together as a single Apache project community before, even though
there are a variety of mutual acquaintances and associations in the
mix.
Of the Initial Committers, a subset were eager to be on the project
and have arrived. That is the overwhelming source of the current 54
committers, 41 also being on the PPMC.
2. HOW LONG IS THE OPEN DOOR OPEN?
There are still about two-dozen Initial Committers who have not yet
registered an iCLA. We don't know if they are arriving or not. One
issue is when to close the door on initial committers who have
taken no initiative to be here, although reminders have been sent
out.
It is also the case that all initial committers are welcome to
participate in the PPMC but not all have taken action to do so. At
some point, the PPMC will not grow automatically and that also
needs to be resolved.
3. WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO BE A COMMITTER AS TIME GOES ON?
We vote on other committers the same as any [P]PMC. The addition
of two invited committers has already been reported.
One thing that concerns the PPMC (who, for all but two members,
walked through an open door) is how and when do we move from
consideration of previous reputation and being known to some of us
to a situation where contribution on the podling is the determining
factor. We're working our way through that. The PPMC is also
concerned that, although the addition of new committers and new
PPMC members is carried out in private, we be transparent about how
we are conducting ourselves and that we demonstrate that we are
even-handed about it.
It is not clear what the ooo-dev community wants to see and what
the understood progression to the normal rules for invitation of
committers should be.
4. WHEN BEING MORE PRIVATE THAN PRIVATE IS IMPORTANT
The PPMC is responsible for dealing, quietly and privately, with
security matters and their resolution. The security@ team informs
us that because we have so many members who are unknown here and
also to each other at this point, a limited
ooo-secur...@incubator.apache.org list is essential. We need to
identify those few among us who have appropriate skills and
sensibilities around security matters and who can keep their work
secret when that is appropriate.
For this, we want to know who has been on the security teams of
OpenOffice.org and who happen to be here also. There will also be
cross-communication with other security teams that operate on the
same code base, or in some cases, that operate on the same document
formats.
We will be going ahead with the creation of the private
ooo-security list for that purpose. What we are waiting for is
identification of three moderators who are distributed around the
earth's time zones well enough to provide moderation of incoming
reports in something approximating 24/7 coverage.
[end]
