How ASF membership works and what it means
NOTE: copying members@ and community@ since this might be helpful to many people. As many of you know, three cocoon committers were nominated then elected members of the Apache Software Foundation yesterday. Since I've been inquired by a few on how the system works, I'll spend some words on the process and what it means for me. Note: there is current a debate happening inside the members of the ASF on the value and meaning of ASF membership so, please, don't take my words as the ASF truth (if there is one), but just as my personal opinion on this matter. Now, for the objective things, here is how the process works: 1) any ASF member has the right to nominate an ASF committer for membership. 2) when such nomination is done, a few sentences have to be provided on the reason for the nomination, for example, explaining what they have done for the ASF and why the nominator thinks that they have the skills/will/behavior required to be an ASF member. 3) in the past, a nomination required to be seconded by another ASF member. This is no longer required (am I right on this?), even if highly welcomed by the members because it indicates some level of agreement. 4) every 6 months or so, the members do an election. In the past, the elections were done physically and synchronously. Today, we have a digital voting system which works like this: a) if you are eligible to vote (you are a member and you are not emeritus), you receive an email with a number that uniquely identifies your vote. b) you connect thru SSH to cvs.apache.org and use the tool on /home/voter/ to vote, using the number that identifies your vote along with the vote content. c) the vote takes a time span (normally one or two days), you can vote as many times you want and the last vote is the one that counts (previous votes are overridden). d) votes are then counted. results shared to the members list (which is a private list where only ASF members can read/write email) and the elected people are informed and asked for participation. Members have access to all election data, so a member is able to find out who nominated him/her and who seconded. Votes, on the other hand, are secret and remain so, even for members. - o - Now for the value of ASF membership. The chain of merit inside Apache is: user - committer - member - everybody can be a user - users who care about a project are elected as committers - committers who care about the foundation are elected as members It is hard to nominate a member, much harder, IMO, than to nominate a committer. Why? well, because it's easy to understand if somebody cares about a project (they submit code, they participate in the community, they do stuff and get to be known), but it's much harder to know if someone really cares about the foundation, because normally they don't do much for the foundation if they are not made members. Kicken-egg problem. There are great committers who can be terrible members. And regular committers who can be incredibly good members. A committer that works on more than one project and takes cross-pollination and community building practicesa in great consideration, makes a great candidate for membership. A committer that evangelizes about the apache spirit, that cares about community dynamics, that tries to help other apache communities, makes a great candidate for membership. But since I value membership so much, I personally have a pretty high bar for membership (this is not shared by other people and others projects inside the ASF, but I don't see this as a problem because respecting differences is what makes us stronger and able to learn) and this is why it takes years for me to nominate somebody for membership. Now, what is a member? A member is a shareholder of the foundation. Basically, it's part of those who own the foundation and are able to effectively decide how the foundation works and, for example, where it spends its money. You want to make an official apache conference? the members decide how and who should. You want to have our servers hosted in a location that we own instead of sharing bandwidth with a corporation that can cut us off at any moment? the members decide how, where, how much we can afford to pay for it and so forth. You have an idea to promote the foundation or to do something new and marvellous? the members decide what to do. Also, remember that members nominate the board of directors who are the one that run the foundation in all those daily details that most of us don't see and take for granted. Yeah, all of this is still, in perfect apache spirit, a volunteer job. This is the reason why committers are nominated, then elected but it's still a personal choice if they want to participate or not. Becoming a member is not only a great personal achievement, but it's also a responsibility. A responsibility in front of those committers, those people, that you are going to represent with your
Re: Common documents across the ASF
On Thursday, June 19, 2003, at 05:31 AM, Glen Stampoultzis wrote: At 01:09 PM 19/06/2003, you wrote: Why NOT have shared documents? I've heard it said that the CVS organization is the barrier. OK, so why not look at what reasonable steps could relieve that barrier? What would happen if we had an Incubator module open to all ASF Committers? Would that lower the barrier and increase reuse? The reason why it hasn't been done is simple... because no one has actually stepped up to find all the redundant information and send patches to the various projects to fix it up. CVS access isn't the problem. Finding someone with the itch, time and motivation is. it's not as simple as that. the proposal is not only to create common documentation (which would be cool) but also to remove all existing documentation on subjects which should be common. this means removing most of the pages on the jakarta website. - robert - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: How ASF membership works and what it means
On Sat, 21 Jun 2003, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote: NOTE: copying members@ and community@ since this might be helpful to many people. WoW! - Excelent summary. Can we put this up somewhere on one of the foundation pages please, if need be as 'Stefano's excelent and balanced view' :-) Dw. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[OT] Concept Maps
Hi, Sorry for this slightly OT message. About 2 years ago, I discovered the Concept Map idea (http://cmap.coginst.uwf.edu/) and I began to do a simple proof of concept here: http://jakarta.apache.org/~vmassol/maps Better examples from the NASA are available here: http://cmex.coginst.uwf.edu/CMEX/Mars%20Spacecraft%20Mis.html I would like to revive this idea and start drawing some concept maps about Cactus and JUnit to put on the Cactus web site. However, the software I used then (IHMC Concept Map Software) is now very old (2001) and does not lend too well to distributed updating of the concept map (it uses a custom server which opens a specific TCP/IP port and thus does not easily allow updates behind a firewall, etc). My question to you are: 1/ Do you know how this concept has evolved? Is it still a hot topics nowadays? 2/ Do you know of any software (preferable free) that would allow me to easily draw maps such as http://jakarta.apache.org/~vmassol/maps? 3/ Do you think it could be a nice idea to draw such concept maps for Apache/Jakarta. Maybe it would help users to understand how everything fits together? Thanks -Vincent - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: How ASF membership works and what it means
As many of you know, three cocoon committers were nominated then elected members of the Apache Software Foundation yesterday. Since I've been inquired by a few on how the system works, I'll spend some words on the process and what it means for me. Thank you very much for these words, Stefano. This is very helpful and it is what I've been searching for to get a better feeling about membership. These words are useful to decide whether I'm willing to accept the invitation and responsibility of being an ASF member - not only for me but for everybody facing the choice. This text should be avaiable somewhere at the foundation site! Also thank you all for your confidence. Kess - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Meeting @ LinuxTag, KA, Germany
[I'm crossposting this to community@ and party@ to catch some more eyes; please reply on [EMAIL PROTECTED] Folks, some time ago we already had a discussion about a possible ASF meeting here in Germany. We also started to collect the locations of the interested people (see CVS:committers/docs/de-meeting) but somehow other tasks got a higher priority on my todo list and it seems that nobody else cared to track this down any further. Now, as it is pretty clear that there will be no ApacheCon this year here in Europe, I'd like to pick up the thread another time and suggest a meeting at this years [1]LinuxTag in Karlsruhe (10. - 13. July). According to the organizing association, LinuxTag is Europe's Number 1 Event for Linux, Open-Source and Free Software. It is accompanied by a conference/congress with plenty of [2]lectures, workshops and even a 'coding [3]marathon'. And the best of all: it's [4]free! Just a [5]preregisteration is required... Okay, while looking at the list of all the interested people and their locations it appeared to me that Karlsruhe is probably one of the most central locations we can get: it's a bit nearer to the north of Germany than Munich (which was initially proposed the last time) and it's also reachable for people from Switzerland and Austria. Another interesting point is the possibility to get one of two rooms reserved for open source developers and their projects. I'm willing to try to get in touch with the right people @ LinuxTag if there is enough interest for a meeting. Note, that there are also some ASF related speakers at LinuxTag including Ken Coar, Rasmus Lerdorf and Christian Egli from Lenya, a Cocoon subproject currently under incubation (schedule and links see below). Perhaps they are also interested and can spend some time on a meeting/party... Ken, Rasmus, Christian? Anyone around here? Well, if there is enough interest for this little happening we should decide some things as soon as possible; the time is short, I know: - who: are there enough people to organize something? - when: possible dates are 10. - 13. July ? - where: can we get a room? party location at evening? wasn't there somebody from Karlsruhe around last time? Okay, I'd also like to ping committers@ to ensure that we get the most possible visibility. So, that's it for now... open for discussion... opinions... ? Cheers, Erik BTW, I'll be there at 12. July and maybe I can also make it one day earlier. --- -- References/Links: [1] http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/en/index.html [2] http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/en/conferences/program.html [3] http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/en/expo/marathon.html [4] http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/en/conferences/free.html [5] http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/en/expo/prereg.html -- ASF-related sessions I spotted so far: 11.07. -- Seamless Content Management using Cocoon and Openoffice.org Christian Egli, wyona.org http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/en/conferences/talk.xsp?id=42 Do you PHP? Rasmus Lerdorf, Yahoo! http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/en/conferences/talk.xsp?id=45 12.07. -- Commercial Involvement in Open Software Ken Coar, Apache Software Foundation http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/en/conferences/talk.xsp?id=140 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
