Re: [DISCUSS] eliminate vetoes on personnel votes
On 1/31/2012 3:28 PM, Roy T. Fielding wrote: Having said that, I should note that the context of Incubator is significantly different than a normal PMC. If incubator wants to structure itself more like a board and less like a project, I really don't have much to say against that. Note that it should effect all of the decision guidelines that give veto power, not just personnel decisions. That touched on something. The incubator is a meta-committee. It is entrusted with and given more latitude to operate subprojects even as the board has attempted to squash or at least minimize the practice at other projects. Probably every issue that happened at Jakarta (etc) all could and probably will happen here at some point. Is there latitude to assign PPMC's full and proper subcommittee status, such that their actions are binding? Perhaps this is something that happens later in the project, following the initial phase of incubation. Perhaps the PPMC is charged with bootstrapping itself into a subcommittee consisting of those who will serve at the TLP committee; modulo early signers-on who had not made any actual contribution during incubation. Perhaps the mentors become pivotal in identifying those PPMC participants who made contributions and proposing the subcommittee to the IPMC? So you have an almost-TLP, still operating under the oversight of the incubator, until the final incubation requirements are met and the subcommittee is passed on verbatim to the board as a TLP. This would seem to solve certain desires for more PPMC autonomy and self-governance. Back to Roy's point, the incubator PMC produces almost no code. It is not a TLP in any sense of the word we know, although that seems to be lost or ignored in several discussions about incubator operation. But a subcommittee would have the onus of operating as a familiar code-producing TLP PMC in every respect. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [DISCUSS] eliminate vetoes on personnel votes
On 1/31/2012 5:05 PM, Mattmann, Chris A (388J) wrote: In replacement, I propose the following concrete actions: 1. Move the Incubator process/policy/documentation, etc., to ComDev - I agree with gstein on this. I think it could be maintained by the ASF community folks there, and updated over time. But it's not vastly or rapidly changing really anymore. 2. Discharge the Incubator PMC and the role of Incubator VP -- pat everyone on the back, go have a beer, watch the big game together, whatever. Call it a success, not a failure. 3. Suggest at the board level that an Incubation process still exists at Apache, in the same way that it exists today. New projects write a proposal, the proposal is VOTEd on by the board at the board's next monthly meeting, and those that cannot be are QUEUED for the next meeting, or VOTEd on during out of board inbetween time on board@. Refer those wanting to Incubate at Apache to the existing Incubator documentation maintained by the ComDev community. Tell them to ask questions there, about the process, about what to do, or if ideas make sense. But *not* to VOTE on whether they are accepted or not. Note that at the time the incubator was created, there was no particular process. Projects entered the ASF helter-skelter, without really following any template. Also, the legal committee was not a resource, comdev was not a resource, trademarks was not a resource, press was not a resource. I think it's sort of silly to suggest that resource needs are completely isolated to either incubating efforts, or TLP efforts. So the question is, what does the incubator provide today that should be persisted as a resource to any incubating or full project? Obviously, mentorship; but comdev seems like a really good home for that. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [DISCUSS] eliminate vetoes on personnel votes
On 1/30/2012 6:06 PM, Joe Schaefer wrote: It is clear that with all the turmoil of late and people lightly tossing around -1's that the notion of having veto authority over personnel matters makes little sense on this PMC. Therefore I propose we adopt the policy that personnel votes are by straight majority consensus, iow no vetoes allowed. -1 The argument is very simple, you don't allow a simple majority to tyrannize the minority. So the ASF has long held a simple standard of consensus on all committee additions and subtractions. Some majority might be irked at [insert name here]'s [actions|inaction| comments|silence] but that was never grounds to remove a committee member. If you want to propose some supermajority metric other than unanimous, that could work (e.g. 2/3 or 3/4 in agreement). - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [DISCUSS] eliminate vetoes on personnel votes
On 1/30/2012 7:41 PM, Joe Schaefer wrote: Lemme get this straight: a person who makes a class-action veto against a whole swath of people should have those votes upheld to protect that person from the tyranny of the majority? No. Joe, take a break. Then come back, and reread both threads, and do the math. I proposed no such thing, in fact my proposal argues against exactly that sort of thing; allow a supermajority to prevent against both abuses. Your hostility is not helping the incubator or your desired goals. You might use some time afk. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [DISCUSS] eliminate vetoes on personnel votes
On 1/30/2012 7:44 PM, Dave Fisher wrote: Sent from my iPhone On Jan 30, 2012, at 5:34 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wr...@rowe-clan.net wrote: On 1/30/2012 6:06 PM, Joe Schaefer wrote: It is clear that with all the turmoil of late and people lightly tossing around -1's that the notion of having veto authority over personnel matters makes little sense on this PMC. Therefore I propose we adopt the policy that personnel votes are by straight majority consensus, iow no vetoes allowed. -1 The argument is very simple, you don't allow a simple majority to tyrannize the minority. So the ASF has long held a simple standard of consensus on all committee additions and subtractions. Some majority might be irked at [insert name here]'s [actions|inaction| comments|silence] but that was never grounds to remove a committee member. If you want to propose some supermajority metric other than unanimous, that could work (e.g. 2/3 or 3/4 in agreement In your plan then a -1 is really a -2 or -3? Sounds like a filibuster... No, I'm -1 to this proposal. I'd support his proposal if it were modified to provide for a measurable super-majority consensus. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [DISCUSS] eliminate vetoes on personnel votes
On 1/30/2012 7:51 PM, Joe Schaefer wrote: - Original Message - From: William A. Rowe Jr. wr...@rowe-clan.net To: general@incubator.apache.org Cc: Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 8:47 PM Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] eliminate vetoes on personnel votes On 1/30/2012 7:44 PM, Dave Fisher wrote: Sent from my iPhone On Jan 30, 2012, at 5:34 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wr...@rowe-clan.net wrote: On 1/30/2012 6:06 PM, Joe Schaefer wrote: It is clear that with all the turmoil of late and people lightly tossing around -1's that the notion of having veto authority over personnel matters makes little sense on this PMC. Therefore I propose we adopt the policy that personnel votes are by straight majority consensus, iow no vetoes allowed. -1 The argument is very simple, you don't allow a simple majority to tyrannize the minority. So the ASF has long held a simple standard of consensus on all committee additions and subtractions. Some majority might be irked at [insert name here]'s [actions|inaction| comments|silence] but that was never grounds to remove a committee member. If you want to propose some supermajority metric other than unanimous, that could work (e.g. 2/3 or 3/4 in agreement In your plan then a -1 is really a -2 or -3? Sounds like a filibuster... No, I'm -1 to this proposal. I'd support his proposal if it were modified to provide for a measurable super-majority consensus. Define supermajority in a way that isn't patently absurd and perhaps I'll consider amending it. 2/3. 3/4. Take your pick. I'd argue on the high end. Consider that to defeat a 3/4 supermajority consisting of 9 votes requires more than 2 people against. This committee has an order of magnitude more voters. Simple obstructionism is easy to deal with. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: NOMINATIONS for Incubator PMC Chair
On 1/29/2012 12:11 AM, Alan D. Cabrera wrote: I intend to nominate Noel J. Bergman but would like to see the community come to a consensus about the rotation of the chair. (Dibs on Noel) :) If this goes to a nominations and a ballot, isn't that implicit that we've agreed to rotate the chair? I general, because of the moving parts in incubator, I'd prefer we didn't try to rotate annually, but perhaps ever 2 or 3 years, if the elected chairs are willing to put up and commit for that long. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE] Chukwa 0.5.0 Release Candidate 3
On 1/26/2012 5:57 AM, Ralph Goers wrote: Now you have me worried. This podling has 4 mentors listed. Only 1 voted on the release. You indicated you were too busy to look at it and the other two didn't participate at all. Although the tally below is obviously incorrect and needed to be corrected, your response leads me to believe you weren't monitoring the voting on chuckwa-dev. My worry isn't about the PPMC or committers but about whether this podling has sufficient mentors. Is everything being left to Chris? Now, three, so yes it would be good to bring on another if someone has some free cycles. But there isn't much to be worried about here, I had simply corrected Eric's post, and for the benefit of everyone on general@, pointed out what the IPMC is sensitive to so that future release tallies from any podling will be more informative. Mind you, I don't follow chuckwa-dev so perhaps my perception is incorrect, but a podling should normally be able to get 3 IPMC votes just from its mentors. We disagree; that entirely depends on the mentor's personal schedules. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE] Chukwa 0.5.0 Release Candidate 3
On 1/25/2012 11:49 PM, Eric Yang wrote: The voting period is now closed. Thanks to everyone who took the time to review the release. Result Summary for this List: +1 [1] 0[1] -1[0] With the one IPMC member vote from mentors on the dev list and two +1 from general@incubator, the vote succeeds. IPMC member voting record: Chris Douglas:+1 Ralph Goers: +1 Ant Elder: +1 I am very confused by your tally above. you cite [1] in brackets and there are three votes +1 between PPMC and IPMC. I'm very worried that, sans mentors, this PPMC can't muster three votes for a candidate. I think it might be premature to release and is a very long way from graduation. Please don't summarize simply IPMC binding votes, but cover all categories, most especially chukwa-dev community votes. Repost with the correct totals, because we [Incubator PMC] need that to gauge the health of the project. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE] Clarify the role of the Champion as an incubation coordinator
On 1/12/2012 9:02 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote: Once a podling is created, and until it graduates, its Champion must: 1. Coordinate the creation and timely delivery of the podling's board reports. 2. Keep an eye on the mentors' activity and take action (ask for new mentors, talk to the Incubator PMC) if they don't seem to provide enough oversight or mentorship to the podling, As far as the podling is concerned: 3. The podling can elect a new Champion at any time, and must notify the Incubator PMC when that happens. 4. Existing podlings will need to elect a Champion, unless their current one agrees to take on the above tasks. 5. The podling reports must indicate who the current Champion is. +1 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE] Chukwa 0.5.0 Release Candidate 3
On 1/15/2012 1:42 AM, Ralph Goers wrote: You know, you have 4 mentors all of whom are supposed to be IPMC members. Have they voted? Nope, traveling, and now back in project hell at one of my own homes. I did review the Chukwa monthly report and comment on several apparent issues on dev@. I don't expect to have time to review this specific candidate, owing to a backlog of work accumulated over this short vacation. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE] Clarify the role of the Champion as an incubation coordinator
On 1/17/2012 4:03 PM, Joe Schaefer wrote: Yes, but this may wind up raising the bar for the Champion position so high that we wind up with fewer people offering to fulfill it. In those cases, perhaps there is nobody actually qualified and willing to Champion the project at all? In which case we end up with the handful of half-attentive mentors which you have been ranting about. This may reset the bar. Perhaps that bar needed to be reset? - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: -1 on this months board report (was: Small but otherwise happy podlings)
On 1/11/2012 6:02 PM, Marcel Offermans wrote: On Jan 11, 2012, at 23:49 PM, Sam Ruby wrote: -1 for forwarding no the following reports from projects that are over a year old and lacking crisp plan for graduatuation: Celix A plan is being discussed on the list, but did not make it into this month's report. I would kindly like to ask the board to accept delaying that plan until the next report. If that is too long, we can report about it next month? WDYT? That's exactly what Sam is describing. Pull the incomplete report (Noel could choose to do so) and submit a more comprehensive report next month. No harm no foul. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Improviing quarterly reports
On 1/11/2012 11:54 PM, Daniel Shahaf wrote: On Thu, Jan 12, 2012, at 00:33, Noel J. Bergman wrote: Joe Schaefer wrote: Now lets look at the remainder- several projects with no report whatsoever This has been an issue. Perhaps we need to put some teeth in the requirement, such as closing down commit access until reports are posted? I don't have an issue with saying that a project that does not report by the assigned cut-off date has its commit access turned off until the report is posted. Or, perhaps to give weight to your view that Mentors need to be more involved, until after it is signed off by a Mentor? Is sending (satisfactory) reports to the IPMC the responsibility of the mentors or of the PPMC? The project. Which means, the PPMC collectively, including its mentors. Optimally the mentors lead the first few times to an incoming community who isn't familiar with our reporting goals. They can pick it up from there. The goal of incubation is for the PPMC to (gradually) assume all of the tasks that a TLP is responsible for. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Q. Forks without concensus?; A. anytime / depends / never without agreement
On 1/10/2012 6:40 AM, Roy T. Fielding wrote: On Jan 9, 2012, at 9:11 PM, Greg Stein wrote: There is no fork in the current plan, so this discussion is moot anyways. I believe the point was to settle the issue so that we don't have to deal with this situation again. Roy That was the point of my choice of subject lines, yes ;-) It is not helpful to have a number of directors contradicting each other on general@, never coming to consensus. In fact, its maddening. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Q. Forks without concensus?; A. anytime / depends / never without agreement
On 1/10/2012 2:20 PM, Donald Whytock wrote: I'm actually not seeing much in the way of contradiction in discussion of the policy. The letter seems to be: Apache projects don't import and incorporate code without the owners' consent. License to use is not synonymous with consent to import. The spirit seems to be: It is terminally rude to try to form an Apache project by ripping up an existing community without its consent. Most of the Apache people commenting here seem to agree on these things. Most of the argument on this thread seems to have been about whether or not they apply to Bloodhound. Bloodhound notwithstanding, there's probably enough practical clarification here to put up on a page somewhere, with a link from the main policy page saying, For a discussion of the issues, click here. But perhaps I'm naive. No, that's exactly what I've interpreted. Perhaps it is a bit more nuanced; if there were two sets of 'copyright holders' who could no longer tolerate collaborating together, perhaps the ASF would raise the issue again. More likely, go off and work your project elsewhere and come to the ASF demonstrating you already operate with appropriate community dynamics (fork'ers being presumptively suspect of problematic community dynamics ;-) So A. above appears to be Almost never without agreement. And let there be one heck of a detailed justification in the exception case. It would be good for the board to issue an explicit policy to this effect. But the discussion was sufficient to move on. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Q. Forks without concensus?; A. anytime / depends / never without agreement
On 1/10/2012 4:04 PM, Benson Margulies wrote: Greg both acquiesced in picking another plan while at the same time he did not retreat from the position that there is no set Foundation policy here. Roy takes a strong and continuing line that there is one. So I personally wish that the board put this on its agenda, and pass a resolution one way or another stating the board-level invariants. I'm sure that there will remain plenty of IPMC-level interpretation for evaluating particular situations. +1 - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Q. Forks without concensus?; A. anytime / depends / never without agreement
On 1/10/2012 3:50 PM, Jukka Zitting wrote: The IPMC is perfectly capable (in its own sometimes messy way) to deal with this issue. In fact the board has explicitly delegated the responsibility of acceptance and oversight of new products submitted or proposed to become part of the Foundation to the IPMC. Not if there is a foundation-wide policy, we aren't. The IPMC can no more violate our rules on accepting forks than it can accept GPL'ed projects, without the board revisiting policy. This is not G v. R arguing we should or shouldn't accept forks, this is G v. R arguing that a foundation-wide policy already exists. Let the board square it up. If the answer is 'depends', then you are right, incubator would have been the committee to weight those conditions. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Small but otherwise happy podlings
On 1/9/2012 7:04 AM, Ross Gardler wrote: I don't think Wookie should graduate, but it certainly shouldn't be kicked out (and I don't think it will be). However, as I not above incubation may be holding it back. The question for me is, can we do more for projects that are in this position? What if we had a generic five para pledged/statement on accepting new contributors and pmc members? Have the podling's PMC members go on record, on the dev@ list, confirming they are committed to that policy. Totally voluntary, but if they do so, trust and verify later on after graduating them. Any project which fails to bring in new committers dies of atrophy eventually, and the board is more than willing to flush and reconstitute a fair and functional PMC when the existing one isn't functioning correctly. Presuming there is a large enough base PMC, we could promote a number of podlings which suffer under the incubation 'almost ready' cloud. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Small but otherwise happy podlings
On 1/9/2012 11:40 AM, Upayavira wrote: Regarding attrition of mentors, it was discussed having mentors 'sign' the board report for their podling. Could that be encouraged, and used as a sign of minimum 'activity' for a mentor? How about simply sign off on podling-dev@? Even if it is Thanks for drafting this! No edits from me. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Small but otherwise happy podlings
On 1/9/2012 12:27 PM, Joe Schaefer wrote: Lame. I would actually like to see mentors WRITING the reports at least for the first 6 months to a year, then going to sign-off on the wiki. My point was, all mentors need to reply to the draft. -One- of them, or a leader in the community would still draft it. But if the mentors don't take the time to read and acknowledge the report, and offer any edits that are needed, they can be considered AWOL which Upayavira was getting at. The board indicated many times that PMC reports aren't signed. Don't see a point in going there. Everything should be - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE] Bloodhound to join the Incubator
On 1/3/2012 2:02 AM, Greg Stein wrote: On Jan 3, 2012 2:30 AM, Ralph Goers ralph.go...@dslextreme.com wrote: On Jan 2, 2012, at 11:15 PM, Greg Stein wrote: On Jan 2, 2012 10:51 PM, Ralph Goers ralph.go...@dslextreme.com wrote: Greg, I do not care one bit how much commit activity happens at Trac. As long as there is some kind of active community it is improper to fork it without their permission. Eh? You ever read the rules for revolutionaries page? The basic concept is: don't try to force two communities into one; when separate visions for the project occur, then separate them. I don't see it as our place to *judge* communities. If it is a fork, or a corporate spin-out, or a move, or brand new... All Good. We provide a temporary home in the Incubator to see if it can become a good, proper, and healthy Apache community. We don't turn them away a-priori based on their history. Greg, this seems to be so much B.S as it apparently serves some particular interest you have. I *do* have an interest in seeing Bloodhound be successful. I've always been very impressed with the approach the Trac people have taken. It is a great tool. It is a great project, but I think it can be better. Bugzilla is popuar, but crap. There is no other OSS issue tracker that is good and popular. Trac is te closest, and (IMO) best hope for filling this gap in the OSS toolset. A PMC I am on had this exact conversation with board members several months ago regarding a code base the project is dependent on that is housed outside the ASF which we were considering bringing in as a subproject. We were told that under no circumstances could we fork the code without the owner's blessing, regardless of what the license allowed us to do. To me, this answer is black and white. Not to me. :-) Which is the problem, isn't it? Note; hat switch, you are now speaking with the authority of a Director. In my mind, the Trac core has slowed, and it needs revitalization and a new vision. Others may disagree, and do, and that's fine. But I don't think it is fine for us to make judgements of communities (or nascent ones!) who want to try something new. To pick up and go in a direction that others are not heading, or do not have the time to make. I have no idea what you are saying. You ARE making a judgement on a community by saying it isn't active enough and deserves to be forked. Again, some of your fellow board members have said the ASF isn't the place for that. As a person wanting to see Apache Bloodhound take off... yeah, I'm making a judgement call on whether that can better occur at the ASF instead of within the current Trac community. (fwiw, some of the ideas are non-starters for Trac, so the *only* solution is do it outside the core project). I'm saying that the *ASF* should avoid judging. We allow competition among projects. We accept projects with hard problems and low chances of success. We accept projects that some don't want us to. We should not judge. We should provide a home to communities that want to be here. You realize, the paragraphs above are riddled with judgement calls? Mr. Director, are causing undue confusion here by putting on your Director hat to contradict the board. That isn't healthy public forum conduct. Either Ralph is grossly misinformed, or your are wildly out on a limb, or (most likely) the whole subject matter is a whole lot more nuanced than either of your posts are willing to concede. I'd challenge this we should not judge assertion. The incubator is charged by the directors with the acceptance and oversight of new products submitted or proposed to become part of the Foundation ... go back to 6. D. R2. http://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/2002/board_minutes_2002_10_16.txt That involves a judgement. When you get your fellow directors to accept an amendment to state the acceptance and oversight of new products contributed to the Foundation as the responsibility - then I can buy your reasoning that we don't cast judgements (on any number of measures). ... Folks, can we please find a better forum for religious This is the ASF debates to occur? And keep discussions non-toxic here on general@incubator? Please remember that we point newcomers here to general@incubator and suggest they follow that list to get a better understanding of what the ASF is. These threads do not help to convey any clarity, and they only serve to confuse our prospective contributors and potential, future members. Particularly when argued between directors. Not suggesting that public debate is bad... but if these can occur elsewhere, and -conclusions- then posted here to general@, it would go a long ways to help newcomers orient to the philosophy and expectations of the ASF as a whole. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail:
Re: [VOTE] Bloodhound to join the Incubator
On 1/3/2012 10:55 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote: On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 5:48 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wr...@rowe-clan.net wrote: ... Folks, can we please find a better forum for religious This is the ASF debates to occur? And keep discussions non-toxic here on general@incubator?... I don't perceive this thread as religious or toxic - I see a rather healthy debate on a difficult and important (for Bloodhound and Trac) question. That much... is good ++1! Is Trac a willing donor/partner/component-to-be- consumed? What is the effect of two dev communities? All healthy good questions to raise. As easily as it creates rifts, it can also heal some. The ASF will support a fork absolutely yes/maybe/never - that is where I'd perceived the whole thread sliding off the rails. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Q. Forks without concensus?; A. anytime / depends / never without agreement
On 1/3/2012 11:14 AM, Greg Stein wrote: On Jan 3, 2012 11:48 AM, William A. Rowe Jr. wr...@rowe-clan.net wrote: ... A PMC I am on had this exact conversation with board members several months ago regarding a code base the project is dependent on that is housed outside the ASF which we were considering bringing in as a subproject. We were told that under no circumstances could we fork the code without the owner's blessing, regardless of what the license allowed us to do. To me, this answer is black and white. Not to me. :-) Which is the problem, isn't it? Note; hat switch, you are now speaking with the authority of a Director. Euh, nope. Offering my personal opinions. A Director hat would (and does) mean nothing since I could not speak for the Board. So this is a question that should be put to bed once and for all, you have both been swinging pretty wildly at diametrically opposed answers to this question. If we read that the Board has charged this committee with acceptance criteria for submitted or proposed products... then the question above should be resolved. Essentially, we have several choices... [ ] Forks are accepted without judgement [Greg] [1] [ ] [something more nuanced here] [ ] Hostile forks are never acceptable [Roy] [2] If the answer lies somewhere in the middle, it would help potential contributors/forkers to know approximately where that middle sits. [1] I don't see it as our place to *judge* communities. If it is a fork, or a corporate spin-out, or a move, or brand new... All Good. [2] At Apache, all contributions are voluntary. We do not accept code from copyright owners who don't want us to have it, even if we have the legal right to adopt it for other reasons. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Q. Forks without concensus?; A. anytime / depends / never without agreement
On 1/3/2012 11:43 AM, Benson Margulies wrote: I don't understand the purpose of a vote here. Roy has stated rather firmly that [2] is settled foundation policy. Pointer to where that policy was established, or it didn't happen. It might have been a consensus relative to some specific incident or issue that arose, but only resolutions carry weight, as Greg rightly points out. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Q. Forks without concensus?; A. anytime / depends / never without agreement
On 1/3/2012 11:43 AM, Benson Margulies wrote: Would some please clarify is this is *truly* a hostile fork? Wrong thread, see Subject: above. Thx. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Q. Forks without concensus?; A. anytime / depends / never without agreement
On 1/3/2012 12:51 PM, Sam Ruby wrote: On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 1:28 PM, Kalle Korhonen kalle.o.korho...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 9:57 AM, Leo Simons m...@leosimons.com wrote: So the generic policy is there is no generic policy, and instead there is appropriate application of judgement to specific cases. Generic policy doesn't mean you couldn't use judgement or make exceptions. In principle, if the ASF's mission is to build communities around source code, we should not accept forks of open source projects if that's not the (consensus) will of the original community. I agree with the first statement in the above paragraph, and believe that it potentially leads to a different conclusion than the final sentence in that same paragraph. +1. I would suggest we would avoid encouraging forks of open source projects if that isn't the last remaining alternative to allow both groups of contributors to move forward. A fork is a social artifact more than a code assembly artifact. We have had unfriendly forks within the ASF. We have had instances where the original community has disappeared later to return and attempt to reclaim ultimate direction for a project. We've even had destructive forks where both the fork and the original community ended up failing. Good points. We can, and should, make a decision based on the specifics of the community in question, and informed by our past experiences -- both successes and failures. Or to quote the cited logic behind we accept voluntary contributions only, let's look at a genesis of that statement circa 1999; * This software consists of voluntary contributions made by many * individuals on behalf of the Apache Group and was originally based * on public domain software written at the National Center for * Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Which devolves to; 1. many individuals made voluntary contributions *on behalf of Apache* 2. this does not deny some contributions made externally (not on behalf of Apache) were not also incorporated (I'd speculate that some were likely adopted, say patches in BSD or similar) 3. this work is originally written somewhere else and not a voluntary contribution on behalf of the Apache Group whatsoever, but published as-is into the commons. The genesis of Apache is a fork. Not a hostile fork, but a fork of an effectively abandoned work. It's possible to read the statement above that all contributions are directly offered to Apache, but that really isn't what it said. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [PROPOSAL] Flex for Apache Incubator
On 12/21/2011 1:35 AM, Craig L Russell wrote: On Dec 20, 2011, at 2:51 PM, Ross Gardler wrote: On 20 December 2011 22:35, William A. Rowe Jr. wr...@rowe-clan.net wrote: On 12/20/2011 4:24 PM, Ross Gardler wrote: The proposal says Existing Flex-related conferences, podcasts and websites should be allowed to continue using “Flex” as part of their name - Apache Flex will have to create guidelines for that. Whilst I don't see any problem with that in principle it would be really useful to itemise these items so that we know what we are dealing with. It's a problem as a blanket statement. If the project is not going to donate its name, it needs to pick a new name on its way into the incubator, before graduation. The proposal does say the Flex trademark is being donated. The above is an indication that there are groups already using that mark and they should be allowed to continue to do so. My concern is that there may be a for profit using this trademark that expects to continue to use it. That, I imagine, would be unacceptable. even not-for-profits might present complications. Better to understand what these might be in advance. A quick search of the internet shows these potential conflicts as well: flex.org run by Adobe Platform Evangelism Team; will this site die or will Apache be expected to maintain it with volunteers? http://www.gnu.org/software/flex/ flex.at © 2008 Flex. All rights reserved. Site by instant flex.com ISP in Hawaii openshift.redhat.com/app/flex I'd really like to have trademarks and legal take a closer look at this... We know what a nightmare name conflicts are, even when the name in question is as well-known and well-understood as this one. If Adobe properly managed the Flex(TM) mark, everything is trivial from here on out. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [PROPOSAL] Flex for Apache Incubator
On 12/21/2011 3:00 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote: As long as there's no confusion as to which Flex is which, and as long as there's no favoritism in how people are allowed to use the Flex name, I think this might work. Whoa... slow down. You are not correct Bertrand. As long as there is no confusion over 'The ASF Project Flex' and everything else that has nothing (or little) to do with the ASF, or is commercial in nature, then you were essentially right. But the project doesn't have the liberty to say f**kit, everyone already is using the word flex, we'll roll with it. An ASF project name must be a distinct and defensible mark, in order to ensure that what the ASF aggregates is the ASF work and everything else is something else. That makes some existing consumers/distributors/providers uncomfortable and we can and will work with them on a case by case basis, to ensure that what they are doing is not confused with the ASF's efforts. But we can't just say it might work and throw it over our shoulder. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [PROPOSAL] Flex for Apache Incubator
On 12/21/2011 4:16 AM, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote: I totally agree that the use of the Apache Flex trademark needs to be clearly defined - once the podling starts. Or rather, before it is allowed to graduate. That is but one of the many steps during graduation, determine the provenience of the code, and the provenience of the mark. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [PROPOSAL] Flex for Apache Incubator
On 12/20/2011 4:24 PM, Ross Gardler wrote: The proposal says Existing Flex-related conferences, podcasts and websites should be allowed to continue using “Flex” as part of their name - Apache Flex will have to create guidelines for that. Whilst I don't see any problem with that in principle it would be really useful to itemise these items so that we know what we are dealing with. It's a problem as a blanket statement. If the project is not going to donate its name, it needs to pick a new name on its way into the incubator, before graduation. As far as acceptable specific uses for commercial purposes, there is a mechanism for writing MoU's between the ASF and such parties that clarify any possible confusion. As far as acceptable generic cases, it is always acceptable to use any trademark in an informational context. To offer an example, Flex Conference 2012 would not be allowable without a MoU. WizBang 2012; a technical conference about Apache Flex doesn't need trademark permission, because in that second case, it is a simple statement of fact. GooCorp Flex product name would not be allowed without a MoU. GooCorp FooD; based on Apache Flex doesn't need trademark permission, because again it is a simple statement of fact. We love adoption. We don't want entities to misrepresent themselves as the ASF project itself or that they are endorsed by the ASF. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Can (Podling) Projects collect funds through certification programs?
On 12/13/2011 5:20 AM, Ross Gardler wrote: On 13 December 2011 11:15, seba.wag...@gmail.com seba.wag...@gmail.com wrote: My questions is not about who collects the money, we can forward requests to http://www.apache.org/foundation/sponsorship.html But can we list those companies / individuals separated on our project website? Yes, many projects have a separate thank you page. The links from those pages should be rel=nofollow as that is the case from the main sponsor page. The PPMC can set the conditions under which companies can be added to such pages. However, they should not be used to benefit one or more organisations over others. And you cannot exchange monies for something of value, e.g. purchasing our affiliation. That can run us afoul of our 501(c)3 status. The criteria for being listed should rather revolve around companies who demonstrate competency, contribute code, support user groups and other things which benefit the commons/charitable purpose of the foundation. If this is simply a list of commercial products embedding project foo, this is just data/statement of fact, doesn't require a value judgement and won't run afoul of our charitable purpose. The ASF is expressly disallowed by our tax status from participating in commerce. Thus we are non-commercial, don't make commercial endorsements and avoid even the appearances of working towards the commercial gain of any individual entity. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [policy] release vetoes?
On 11/29/2011 9:52 AM, sebb wrote: http://httpd.apache.org/dev/release.html was just recently revised by Roy Fielding (ASF Director and founding officer) based on some nonsense back-channel complaints, and might be worth integrating into incubator docs. Would it not be better to integrate the clarifications into an ASF-wide document? I'm certain it would, the bigger question being who has the cycles to do so? - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: concerns about high overhead in Apache incubator releases
No committee can take action without a majority on that committee approving the action. The VP might take action by fiat (they are given that authority) - I can't imagine that would ever happen except in consultation with legal-private@ for a legal issue raised on private@ that impeded that release for the time being. So whomever wrote Votes on whether a package is ready to be released follow a format similar to majority approval -- except that the decision is officially determined solely by whether at least three +1 votes were registered. either meant Votes on whether a package is ready to be released follow a format similar to majority approval -- except that the decision requires a quorum of at least three affirmative (+1) votes. or was outright wrong. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: concerns about high overhead in Apache incubator releases
On 11/29/2011 10:26 AM, Martijn Dashorst wrote: On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 5:14 PM, sebbseb...@gmail.com wrote: This specifically says that a majority is NOT required. This does seem odd. This does mean that a release (for example due to a security issue) cannot be held back by any entity or block of committers. The majority can always block a release; this doc is wrong. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: NOTICE file must be minimal (was: [VOTE] Release Kafka 0.7.0-incubating)
On 11/29/2011 11:30 AM, sebb wrote: On 29 November 2011 16:59, Robert Burrell Donkin robertburrelldon...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 4:37 PM, Bertrand Delacretaz bdelacre...@apache.org wrote: I agree that a non-minimal NOTICE might not warrant rejecting a podling release, but the next release should fix that. This is one of those areas that's difficult and time consuming for the legal team to get right in enough detail to allow simple fixes. Unless more volunteers step up to help, rejecting a release for minimality is likely to mean a lengthy delay. In general, better to note points for improvement and have the team fix them in trunk. But if the team already agrees that the changes need to be made, why not do so and re-roll? One shortcut that can be taken when a /single file/ must be changed (and as discussed on the list, that change already has consensus), would be to roll the next candidate on a shorter 24 approval clock, provided that everyone had full opportunity to review the candidate, and that rest of the package had already met with general approval. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [policy] release vetoes?
On 11/29/2011 2:14 PM, Robert Burrell Donkin wrote: I've been wondering whether F2F meetups (bootcamps) for the incubator might be a way forward Every retreat I've attended - which translates to those in Wicklow - has included some level of incubator orientation, and some participation by a few incubating projects. Strongly encouraged, we should do more to get the word out on the eve of the next events. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Voting time period can be shortened ? (was: [VOTE] Release Kafka 0.7.0-incubating)
On 11/29/2011 4:00 PM, Neha Narkhede wrote: We would like to know if it is OK to either - 1. shorten the release VOTE for change to one non-code file 2. run 72 hour vote in parallel on the dev list as well as on general@ I've never seen a point to 2) to running serial votes. You need only 3 +1's (more +1's than -1's)... usually three mentors are enough to finish amoung the dev@ list, but announcing the vote (and its conclusion) on the general@ list seems entirely appropriate. If folks at general@ would like to have more input on the release, the ppmc dev@ list is really the best place to get involved. It is important to always allow 72 full hours. The reason is simple, we have participants in nearly every timezone, people who are here only on their own time, and more people who are here almost exclusively on work hours. 72 hours is long enough to accommodate them all, if they care to participate. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Voting time period can be shortened ? (was: [VOTE] Release Kafka 0.7.0-incubating)
On 11/29/2011 7:27 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wrote: On 11/29/2011 4:00 PM, Neha Narkhede wrote: We would like to know if it is OK to either - 1. shorten the release VOTE for change to one non-code file 2. run 72 hour vote in parallel on the dev list as well as on general@ I've never seen a point to 2) to running serial votes. You need only 3 +1's (more +1's than -1's)... usually three mentors are enough to finish amoung the dev@ list, but announcing the vote (and its conclusion) on the general@ list seems entirely appropriate. If folks at general@ would like to have more input on the release, the ppmc dev@ list is really the best place to get involved. It is important to always allow 72 full hours. The reason is simple, we have participants in nearly every timezone, people who are here only on their own time, and more people who are here almost exclusively on work hours. 72 hours is long enough to accommodate them all, if they care to participate. [... trackpad arguing with me over whether I was done ...] So as I previously pointed out; *if* the community is already familiar with the candidate, thoroughly reviewed it for that full 72 hours, then if the RM replied to this file is broken with I'll fast-track only that fix and roll a final candidate with a shortened 24 hour final vote should put everyone in the frame of mind to review the revised candidate. But you can't ever shorten the net review time below three days :) - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Voting time period can be shortened ? (was: [VOTE] Release Kafka 0.7.0-incubating)
On 11/29/2011 7:50 PM, Neha Narkhede wrote: So, you are saying option 2 is a reasonable choice, given that only the NOTICE/LICENSE files have changed one line here and there ? Yes, if you let the 72 hour vote run through with a clear message that it will be rerolled with a short vote. If everyone says oh, it's a broken package and doesn't test further, then a 24 hour vote wouldn't be sufficient opportunity to review. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: concerns about high overhead in Apache incubator releases
On 11/27/2011 3:34 PM, Benson Margulies wrote: I think I've been leading a sheltered existence. In the TLPs of which I play a part, over the 5 years or so that I've been around, I've never seen a release proceed past a -1. Every single time, a -1 has led to recutting the release. That is because, every single time, the RM agreed that the release was worth re-cutting. The vote hadn't (necessarily) failed... it was withdrawn for a better tag. When you get into complex alpha/beta releases, many projects will proceed, noting a -1 for some broken platform or broken feature, in order to get to the -next- alpha or beta release with that defect corrected, in addition to community feedback on the rest of the platforms and features. A majority of +1's over -1's is required, obviously :) - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
[policy] release vetoes?
On 11/28/2011 1:00 PM, Neha Narkhede wrote: That is because, every single time, the RM agreed that the release was worth re-cutting. We have been assuming that it is the rule of Apache to cut another RC even if it gets a single -1 vote. And that isn't correct, as Joe was kind enough to point out. A majority of +1's over -1's is required, obviously :) Although this seems reasonable, do people on this list believe this to be true according to the Apache rulebook ? In other words, can the podling RM and committers question and contest a -1 vote ? Is there any possibility of vetoing that ? If yes, who can do that in what circumstances ? Yes - you may always try to persuade someone who voted -1 to reconsider, especially by providing more information. For a code veto, that could include the fact that they failed to make a technical argument. Once they have a technical basis, you can't dispute it even if you disagree with it, it remains a veto. But always try to negotiate towards mutually agreeable code! No - nobody can veto a release. But you also can't slip in a vetoed patch and say this is a release vote, its not subject to veto. Well, as I had hinted, the RM can withdraw a vote, which is sort of like a self-veto. http://httpd.apache.org/dev/release.html was just recently revised by Roy Fielding (ASF Director and founding officer) based on some nonsense back-channel complaints, and might be worth integrating into incubator docs. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [policy] release vetoes?
On 11/28/2011 3:19 PM, Alan D. Cabrera wrote: On Nov 28, 2011, at 11:21 AM, William A. Rowe Jr. wrote: No - nobody can veto a release. But you also can't slip in a vetoed patch and say this is a release vote, its not subject to veto. Well, as I had hinted, the RM can withdraw a vote, which is sort of like a self-veto. A finer, maybe obvious, point to this statement, there are minimum requirements that must be adhered to. That gets a bit confusing though. You can't release a work under the GPL or BSD license from the ASF, that would be a board policy. But then there are conventions, which if the majority of the project don't feel are applicable [anymore] to this [particular] project, are subject to change through a release vote. For example, at httpd project, you cannot retag, if we burn a release rev number, we simply move on. Other projects are perfectly happy with spinning RC numbers until they arrive at the perfect sequential .0, .1 .2 releases. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: should podlings have informal chairs?
On 11/19/2011 1:45 PM, Brett Porter wrote: Should we appoint one of the mentors at the start to be the chair of the PPMC, in the same way as a full project? I would see them as responsible for ensuring the podling is reporting, and that all of the mentors are engaged and signing off the reports. Most incoming projects have leaders. One challenge of incubation is teaching the leaders to let go of the reigns, that there is no room for a BDfL at the ASF. So a chair during that period would probably be counterproductive. What you describe sounds like the role of a recording secretary. Yes, I think it's good if the project identifies one of its peers as the individual who is currently preparing the podling's report. Of course the podling could rotate the job, too. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Fw: [VOTE] Graduate ACE from the Apache Incubator
On 11/21/2011 11:11 AM, Benson Margulies wrote: Speaking wearing a hat: There is no requirement for monolithic releases. The project can choose whatever units it likes to release, so long as each one of them is fully buildable from the materials voted on in the release. If they want to hold one vote on 400 of them, well, it casts some doubt on whether the voters actually tried them all, but then again many TLPs inspire doubt in my mind as to whether voters are actually testing all the source packages. If a project is creating 400 discrete releases, this sounds to me like an umbrella project. Consider the ability to announce that a new release has occurred, and the frequency with which those would be broadcast. There's nothing wrong with a release model which provides for updated components within a much larger project, on a faster release cycle, but clear documentation of which have been updated and which components are still at their older revision that was previously approved. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: should podlings have informal chairs?
On 11/21/2011 5:13 PM, Benson Margulies wrote: Do you see any validity in my theory that the ipmc is so large and diffuse as to be directionless? Of course. It applies to the ASF as a whole. But Incubator submissions keep coming, as (generally part of one of) 1) dev lib functionality, 2) dev tooling, 3) ASF project extensions, or 4) (rare) userspace experience applications. Sure different groupings could have more focused 'incubators', but we tried that, and just held the wake for Jakarta (formerly Apache Java). But I suspect that the core of incubator understands exactly why we are here, code and language and tooling agnostic, to bring in new open source efforts. And we do an 'ok' job. We can't substitute for a lack of interest or broad participation. But we can probably do a much better job at recruitment/posting opportunities to be involved. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Adobe revises Flex's future ... at the Apache Software Foundation - The H Open Source: News and Features
On 11/16/2011 9:26 PM, Greg Stein wrote: NOTE: and yes, Adobe is doing this right: they say they are crafting *proposals*. Still chuckling that h-online somehow[1] avoided making any stupid errors in their article w.r.t. either Adobe or Apache or the incubation process ;-P [1] Thanks somehow :) - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: incubator is a single group
On 11/11/2011 1:58 AM, Roy T. Fielding wrote: I *suggest* that incubator change the procedure such that all committers (or at least all committers within a single LDAP group) have access to all incubator areas and that new people simply be requested to only commit within areas for which they have been given permission by the podling developers. +1 [provided that there be some machine-parsable record of the current PPMC composition, both committers and members]. I would rather see each PPMC come to a consensus decision on its lists of PMC membership and initial committers as a final step for graduation, since the mapping of I'd support this at proposal phase can vary widely from I've supported this at the end of the incubation phase. But its probably a topic for an entirely different thread ;-) - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Incubation end states (was Re: [DISCUSS] Graduating empire?)
On 10/30/2011 8:05 PM, David Crossley wrote: Benson Margulies wrote: Daniel Shahaf wrote: Thinking out load: perhaps just promote the project into a TLP, while having a few IPMC members volunteer to become PMC members of the new TLP and provide oversight? Yup. No muss, no fuss, no new mechanisms. Good solution. Presume that the project's community and the IPMC is sure that there is definite potential. Not if there are fewer than 3 contributors intimately familiar with the entire code base. You would be simply promoting incubator's issue to a board issue. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Retire Olio?
On 8/17/2011 12:47 AM, Henri Yandell wrote: On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 10:40 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wr...@rowe-clan.net wrote: On 8/17/2011 12:37 AM, Henri Yandell wrote: The copyright item isn't signed off at https://incubator.apache.org/projects/olio.html. So would need to delete the code (assuming a successful retirement vote). Where are the mentors? Wondering how conflicted-providence IP would hit svn in the first place. Digging a bit: Initial Olio code dump from Sun by clr. r700550 Added rails webapp by wsobel. r705828 Adding Web20Emulator by sheetal. r706388 There were other large adds, but those were the three initial big ones. I don't see any software grants relating to Olio. I see lots in the board reports about struggling to get committer diversity because the committers were at 3 corporations. I don't believe that conflicted-providence IP would have hit svn, yet if it's not signed off and (assuming no one steps up to say otherwise) I think delete is the only option we have. Agreed. Unless the mentors can check off that checkbox prior to the project's dormancy, svn will need to be rm'ed. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Retire Olio?
On 8/17/2011 12:37 AM, Henri Yandell wrote: The copyright item isn't signed off at https://incubator.apache.org/projects/olio.html. So would need to delete the code (assuming a successful retirement vote). Where are the mentors? Wondering how conflicted-providence IP would hit svn in the first place. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: launch trajectories
On 7/5/2011 7:36 AM, Benson Margulies wrote: Anyhow, what do other think? Should mentors be pushing early and often on this subject, or is it reasonable wait for, oh, 18 months and a few releases before getting pushy? 18 months and 'a few releases', with no obstacle but attracting more committers, seems like overtime in incubator. Provided everything else is golden, ensure you've worked with them on the podling private list so that they know what to expect when new committers show up, and how they will go about voting to grant commit privileges/tlp rights, and put them up for graduation already. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: launch trajectories
On 7/5/2011 7:45 AM, Benson Margulies wrote: I wasn't clear on the timing. They launched in Nov 2010 and have made one release. It will be 18 months in June of 2012. the question I was trying to explore was, 'how essential is it to have shown that they can attract and integrate new people before hatching?' Your answer seems to be 'not critical if everything else is OK'. In that case... late this year aught to be a good time to graduate them, it sounds like they will have created their second release. You dwelled on the question if no new committers were added... and the very simple solution to this issue is to offer to come along to their new PMC to simply help guide them with community, patch solicitation, contributor recognition, etc. It's often good if one or more mentors, even non-developers, come along to help with such things for a while. But it sounds like the question is only 7 committers, not independent? Having at least three independent contributors is absolutely necessary, or it isn't suitable for graduation. Where a majority of committers are all connected by employment, etc, it is critical to ensure that the committers acknowledge and demonstrate by their actions that from the ASF perspective, that common connection is not decisive on matters at the project, and they must act independently must not block any new individuals from participating/joining the PMC or otherwise trying to lock up the project in the long term for one organization's benefit. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Bluesky calls for a new mentor!
On 7/1/2011 4:04 PM, Gavin McDonald wrote: From: William A. Rowe Jr. [mailto:wr...@rowe-clan.net] We also made it clear the *author* should also commit their own code, and all authors should become committers. Each term (semester) Bluesky will get a new crop of students (committers) and the old ones will be gone forever. Sounds like SoC... and that's a pretty blanket generalization. One would hope a few students decide to continue contributing once their 'assignment' is finished, and it's absolutely mandatory that the project continue to accept their participation, if some so desire. Are we to keep on creating new committer accts for these folks knowing damn well that at the end of the term they disappear and a new lot appears? This is why they ( when they did commit) shared accounts. This differs from SoC how? - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE] Retire Bluesky Podling
On 7/1/2011 7:58 PM, Chen Liu wrote: We're preparing for the 4th version release. We need the whole July to do this work,thanks for your patience. Ok, stop. I think you are all conflating releases with what is required to continue here at the ASF. releases have not been the main issue. The month offers the chance to * patches all submitted to the list for peer review, not passed around the classroom or through an instructor. * vote in new committers who offer consistently clean patches and who express an interest in continuing to contribute * commit patches as posted to the list per items one and two * bring all development discussion to the list (again, as opposed to a closed group such as the classroom) * resolve licensing issues None of this actually involves a release per say. If these five things are not done, I believe the incubator will vote down any release. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE] Retire Bluesky Podling
On 7/1/2011 8:10 PM, Chen Liu wrote: We've already known our failure in ASF. We would not find any excuses for this bed situation. But we just hope one more month to release the 4th version work. We've been advancing Bluesky project and now the 4th version is an integtared system including something about commercial. We're aware of how to advance our development via ASF . Just give us one more month to finish the rest of work. If our work is not very well, pl vote us to retire. Chen, the quality of the bluesky code is not one of the issues in front of us. If you and other bluesky contributors can explain what needs to change about the process of development, and why it will be changed to fit with the Apache model of development, and convince the list participants that these are the issues you will address over the next month, people would have some more patience to let you improve. But the improvement is not about a release or code quality, etc. Nothing in communications from bluesky project contributors has even hinted that you understand what the underlying issues are, in terms of participating in an transparent open source project. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE] Retire Bluesky Podling
On 6/28/2011 12:49 AM, berndf wrote: Hi everyone, this is a vote to retire the Bluesky podling. 3.5 years into incubation, the podling has not made progress in terms of becoming an Apache project. Dev is still done behind closed doors, and developers are changing frequently without notifications on the public lists. Mentors are M.I.A. Reports are often late. No Apache release was every made. There were multiple attempts to reboot the podling (Thanks Luciano!) without much success. So now I'm calling a vote to end Incubation for Bluesky. The vote is open at least until 2011-07-02 12:00 UTC. [] +1, retire Bluesky for the time being +1 I'm sorry that the chief advocates of this code still do not see the actual flaws in the development methodology. I really believe that the language barrier is a significant obstacle in discussing code on list and part of the reason this project still isn't functioning correctly, even though these advocates have been reminded over and over what must happen to survive as an ASF project. If the advocates wish to run this project in a transparent, collaborative and open Apache-like way, a Chinese language development discussion list and more liberal granting of commit access for the students terms could make a lot of sense. This need not happen at the ASF itself, but could be replicated anywhere. Unfortunately, I don't believe there is any effort to run this in an ASF-like collaborative way, so this project doesn't belong here. The issue of creating localized development discussion lists is another matter that could have been pursued, and may one day happen for one project or another, but I don't think it would be very fruitful to further force a round peg in a square hole. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Bluesky calls for a new mentor!
On 7/1/2011 10:19 AM, Luciano Resende wrote: On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 7:49 AM, Benson Margulies bimargul...@gmail.com wrote: Based on the email trail recently, I'm in favor of completing the vote. I think that there is sufficient evidence that this project has 'failed to launch' as an Apache community, and should go put itself on github. If enough people disagree, they can vote -1. My vote is +1 to retire. This will be my sentiment as well, particularly if I look at the commit list archive [1] on Monday and continue to see no commits even after telling the podling that the code should be committed to Apache repository and any cleanup or further development should be done in the open. http://apache.markmail.org/search/?q=list%3Aorg.apache.incubator.bluesky-commits We also made it clear the *author* should also commit their own code, and all authors should become committers. I know of no progress on this issue, either. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE] Accept OpenOffice.org for incubation
On 6/15/2011 9:58 PM, Matt Hogstrom wrote: +1 (binding) Past the 72 hour notation below but I didn't see a final tally. Then you missed the note. [Hint: search for the subject RESULT] ---BeginMessage--- On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Sam Ruby ru...@intertwingly.net wrote: Binding votes are ones that are cast by Incubator PMC members. Quorum is 3 binding +1 yes votes. Once quorum is met, if more +1 votes are received than -1, the vote carries. Otherwise, the vote fails. Vote started on Friday, June 10th at 12:02pm EDT: http://s.apache.org/VgS Voting is now closed. Quorum was achieved, and the vote passes. Voting results: --- Summary --- Binding: +1: 41 --: 1 -0: 1 -1: 5 Non-binding: +1: 45 +0: 2 ±0: 1 -0: 1 -1: 8 --- Details --- Binding: +1 aadamchikAndrus Adamchik +1 adc Alan Cabrera +1 akarasuluAlex Karasulu -- antelder Anthony Elder +1 ate Ate Douma +1 bdelacretaz Bertrand Delacretaz +1 bimargulies Benson Margulies +1 brettBrett Porter +1 clr Craig Russell +1 curcuru Shane Curcuru +1 danese Danese Cooper +1 dims Davanum Srinivas +1 dirkxDirk-Willem van Gulik +1 elecharnyEmmanuel Lecharny -0 gnodet Guillaume Nodet +1 grobmeierChristian Grobmeier +1 gstein Greg Stein +1 jim Jim Jagielski +1 joes Joe Schaefer +1 jukkaJukka Zitting +1 jvermillard Julien Vermillard +1 kevanKevan Lee Miller +1 leosimonsLeo Simons +1 lresende Luciano Resende +1 marrsMarcel Offermans +1 marvin Marvin Humphrey +1 mattmann Chris Mattmann +1 mturkMladen Turk -1 niallp Niall Pemberton +1 nick Nick Burch -1 niclas Par Niclas Hedhman +1 noel Noel J. Bergman +1 noirin Noirin Plunkett +1 paulsKarl Pauls -1 psteitz Phil Steitz +1 rdonkin Robert Burrell Donkin +1 rgardler Ross Duncan Gardler +1 rgoers Ralph Goers +1 rhirsch Richard Hirsch +1 rubysSam Ruby -1 sanjiva Sanjiva Weerawarana +1 sdeboy Scott Deboy +1 stoddard Bill Stoddard +1 struberg Mark Struberg -1 twilliamsTim Williams +1 upayaviraUpayavira +1 wroweWilliam A. Rowe Jr. +1 zwoopLeif Hedstrom Non-binding: +1 aaf Alexei Fedotov +0 aku Andreas Kuckartz +1 asavory Andrew Savory +1 bayard Henri Yandell +1 damjan Damjan Jovanovic (v) +1 eric Eric Charles +1 edwardsmjMike Edwards +1 florent Florent André (v) +1 jkosin James Kosin -1 stevel Steve Loughran +1 mikemccand Michael McCandless -1 niq Nick Kew +1 ngn Niklas Gustavsson +1 rickhall Richard S. Hall -0 seelmann Stefan Seelmann +1 scottbw Scott Wilson +1 sgalaSantiago Gala +1 svanderwaal Sander van der Waal +1 wave Dave Fisher (v) +1 yegorYegor Kozlov (v) +1 --- Eric Bachard (v) +1 --- Mathias Bauer (v) -1 --- Thorsten Behrens +1 --- Stephan Bergmann (v) +1 --- Raphael Bircher (v) +1 --- Andy Brown (v) +1 --- Alexandro Colorado (v) -1 --- Keith Curtis -1 --- Florian Effenberger +1 --- Roman H. Gelbort (v) +1 --- Pedro Giffuni +1 --- Larry Gusaas +1 --- Daniel Haischt +1 --- Dennis E. Hamilton (v) +1 --- Don Harbison (v) +1 --- Kazunari Hirano (v) +1 --- Christoph Jopp +1 --- Steve Lee (v) +1 --- Dieter Loeschky (v) +1 --- Ian Lynch (v) +1 --- Carl Marcum (v) +1 --- Marcus +1 --- Ingrid von der Mehden (v) -1 --- Volker Merschmann +0 --- Cor Nouws +1 --- Simon Phipps ±0 --- Manfred A. Reiter +1 --- Phillip Rhodes (v) +1 --- Andrew Rist (v) +1 --- Jürgen Schmidt (v) -1 --- André Schnabel +1 --- Jomar Silva (v) +1 --- Louis Suárez-Potts (v) +1 --- Malte Timmermann (v) +1 --- Jochen Wiedmann +1 --- Donald Whytock -1 --- Simos Xenitellis - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org ---End Message--- - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE][RESULT] Accept OpenOffice.org for incubation
On 6/13/2011 11:26 AM, Phillip Rhodes wrote: On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 12:08 PM, Sam Ruby ru...@intertwingly.net wrote: On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Sam Ruby ru...@intertwingly.net wrote: Binding votes are ones that are cast by Incubator PMC members. Quorum is 3 binding +1 yes votes. Once quorum is met, if more +1 votes are received than -1, the vote carries. Otherwise, the vote fails. Vote started on Friday, June 10th at 12:02pm EDT: http://s.apache.org/VgS Voting is now closed. Quorum was achieved, and the vote passes. Voting results: Mondo rad. But one quick question what does the (v) mean, listed after some of the names in the voter list? A (v)olunteer on the committer roster - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE][RESULT] Accept OpenOffice.org for incubation
On 6/13/2011 11:31 AM, Sam Ruby wrote: On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 12:26 PM, Phillip Rhodes Mondo rad. But one quick question what does the (v) mean, listed after some of the names in the voter list? I meant to either explain that or remove it. Oh well. :-) That was my own personal notation as to which people had volunteered to be committers. It doesn't have an effect on the vote, but perhaps others will find it interesting. And I was picturing a whole group of supporters in Guy Fawkes masks donning black capes... - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [DISCUSSION] Accept OpenOffice.org for incubation
On 6/12/2011 4:03 AM, Niclas Hedhman wrote: Not that much; * Same players. * Same importance. Really? I'm pretty certain there is 0.05% overlap between the Office Suite and Java Runtime mechanics of either Sun or IBM. They probably never even shared so much as a VP, although I could be wrong. I learned this from my experiences with Port 25/Compatibility Labs in Redmond; if you take any group of thousands of employees and hundreds of managers, your results from one group are going to be radically different than your results with another group at the same Corporation. Painting with broad brushes may be useful in propagating FUD, but I don't think they offer much wisdom to our incubator discussions. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [VOTE] Accept OpenOffice.org for incubation
On 6/10/2011 11:02 AM, Sam Ruby wrote: Please cast your votes: [ ] +1 Accept OpenOffice.org for incubation +1 [binding] - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [DISCUSSION] Accept OpenOffice.org for incubation
On 6/10/2011 11:45 AM, Simon Phipps wrote: For us outsiders, can you explain who is allowed to vote and in what way, please? Everyone is welcome to vote. Binding votes include all Incubator Project Management Committee members. Non-binding votes can and do influence the opinions of committee members, so anyone who participated in this discussion should feel free to add the conclusion they drew from this proposal. Props to you for your subject: line etiquette :) - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Accept OpenOffice.org for incubation
On 6/10/2011 12:04 PM, Sanjiva Weerawarana wrote: (Officially I'm on the incubator PMC I believe but I have not been active .. so lets chalk this up for non-binding.) Then you just cast a binding vote. Feel free to change it, or withdraw it, but the committee roster determines which binds. Not active ... in the past week? month? year? ever? That simply does not matter and vote counters don't apply such a metric :) - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Accept OpenOffice.org for incubation
On 6/10/2011 2:04 PM, Daniel Shahaf wrote: Please. Being on a PMC can't *reduce* one's rights. So, if I were on the PMC and I said +1 (intentionally non-binding), I would expect it not to be counted as binding. Then state I would vote +1 but haven't spent sufficient time reviewing this, so please count me as abstained. Sam isn't responsible for parsing every follow-up to every valid [VOTE]. If you mean not to vote, be explicit. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Upstream/Downstream (was OpenOffice LibreOffice)
On 6/8/2011 10:06 AM, Ross Gardler wrote: On 08/06/2011 16:33, Charles-H. Schulz wrote: 1. find a proper coherence and relevance between Apache OOo LibreOffice on a technological level and on a distribution level 2. find a proper coherence with IBM's business requirements (Symphony). I hope we can move forward on this. If we are to call the vote on Friday as currently seems to be the target (which is in no way fixed) I wonder if the ASF representatives who engaged with the TDF lists can provide a little feedback. Specifically I'm interested to know if there was any discussion along the above lines. I'm hoping 'they' don't. E.g. that the ASF representatives who engage the TDF community are the Podling PMC members, old hats and newcomers alike, and that this communication and community bridge-building is delegated to that podling itself. But if there are new concerns raised at TDF that must be addressed before an acceptance vote, I hope any of the signed up committers already feel free to bring those concerns to this list. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Happy happy joy joy
On 6/8/2011 11:12 AM, Jochen Wiedmann wrote: On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 5:45 PM, Donald Whytock dwhyt...@gmail.com wrote: Is that a copyleft swallow or an ALv2 swallow? No definitive indicator for the latter, but if it consumes parts of the other, then it must be the former ... I believe the proper question is What is the airspeed velocity of an AL laden, GPL swallow? (seeing as an AL swallow can't lift GPL). - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: A little OOo history
On 6/7/2011 10:23 AM, Phillip Rhodes wrote: One question about the comment above though: Are you advocating that Apache OOo stick to source-only releases, and avoid building and delivering binaries altogether? Or is your idea that Apache OOo would deliver builds, but that they be Vanilla OOo , ala the vanilla kernel from kernel.org, with a presumption that (some|most|all) end-users will choose to use a distribution provided by somebody else... where somebody else could be IBM, Novell, LibreOffice, Red Hat, etc.? Just to clarify, only source code is released by the ASF. Yes, there may be binary artifacts built on that code (esp in the case of .jars), and some of the reviewers may choose to verify available binaries, and some may also verify their own binary builds, before voting on the release. Some|most|all end-users (by which I mean administrators and even developers using tools such as eclipse) obtain most Apache software as you describe above, from another party. In fact, RedHat might pick up the entire LibreOffice stack which in turn is derived from much shared OOo code, while a BSD distribution might pick up only the AL OOo base, and an entirely unrelated office productivity suite might pick only document manipulation classes from an AL OOo code base. As an observer to the CoApp project at OuterCurve, I'm particularly excited by what that project could accomplish with a Windows package, starting from the AL base, including the LibreOffice work in GPL/CC that the ASF would be unwilling to host. As an .msi based distribution which shakes out at the library/component level, upgrades from release to release might consume far less bandwidth. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: A little OOo history
On 6/7/2011 11:11 AM, Niall Pemberton wrote: On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 4:52 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wr...@rowe-clan.net wrote: Just to clarify, only source code is released by the ASF. Yes, there may I don't believe this is true - we have to release the source, but anything we distribute is considered released and needs to be checked/approved - and the release FAQ seems to agree with that http://www.apache.org/dev/release.html#what Really? Where do you get that? The Apache Software Foundation produces open source software. All releases are in the form of the source materials needed to make changes to the software being released. In some cases, binary/bytecode packages are also produced as a convenience to users that might not have the appropriate tools to build a compiled version of the source. In all such cases, the binary/bytecode package must have the same version number as the source release and may only add binary/bytecode files that are the result of compiling that version of the source code release. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: A little OOo history
On 6/7/2011 3:17 PM, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote: Danese Cooper dan...@gmail.com wrote on 06/07/2011 03:43:56 PM: Apache don't think that money is evil, but we also believe that seeing our code in wide use is more important than money. OpenOffice.org is important to the Developing World, some of whom will pay for convenience. I would hate to see Apache enter that business, however. Apache doesn't think or believe. That is an illogical reification. If I've learned anything from participating in this list is that Apache members of of different minds on many things. That is fine. On this, there is unity... http://www.apache.org/foundation/records/certificate.html 3. The purpose of the Corporation is to engage in any lawful act or activity for which corporations which are organized not for profit may be organized under the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware, including the creation and maintenance of open source software distributed by the Corporation to the public at no charge. The no charge bit is pretty explicit (and legally binding on our tax status). Any party is welcome to charge 99c to obtain the software as long as that fee is not misleading (suggesting that the money went to the authors or project or foundation). Another party is just as welcome to host it as a free app. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice: were are we now?
On 6/6/2011 12:47 AM, Phil Steitz wrote: On 6/5/11 10:16 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wrote: ASF members wish to devote considerable time and energy to this project, so exactly who the hell are you to decide what they should and shouldn't devote that time and energy to? I am just a volunteer who has seen the ASF struggle with growth-related issues for several years now. I think it is a fair question to ask whether we should think about different / more selective criteria for entrance to the incubator. Sorry if asking that question offends you. To clarify this, because we have so many guests and observers trying to figure out the ASF... Sufficient numbers of board members, ASF members and even incubator team members have signed up as mentors. But more to the point, the central premise of the ASF is to facilitate developers to scratch their own itch. If improving particular processes, code or documentation interests you, by all means, do it. If some part of the code holds no interest to you, let someone else. And if you come to the ASF (even as a user) complaining about a particular piece of code, bring a patch, not a complaint, if you expect it to be fixed. The mentor list suggests to me that there are enough volunteers for this particular itch to accept it for graduation. Phil, you are not responsible and should not feel responsible to follow the activities of this project if it truly isn't your itch. To address your concern, we should raise this issue to the board and set a policy of accepting no further projects, if your opinion is shared by the rest of the incubator PMC. That concern need not be applied on a project-by-project basis (except to ensure there are sufficient number of interested mentors). - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice: were are we now?
On 6/6/2011 1:06 AM, Sanjiva Weerawarana wrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 11:17 AM, Phil Steitz phil.ste...@gmail.com wrote: On 6/5/11 10:16 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wrote: Wow. Did it occur to you that the original project, Apache httpd, was commercially exploited by vendors *even prior to the creation of the Apache Software Foundation*? There is a difference between commercial entities using code vs manipulating communities. Clearly we disagree on this and what the ASF is for. Fine. I hope there is room for both of our views. I'm totally in agreement with Phil. There is a BIG difference in the two positions and I for one would not support ASF being exploited. ASF products being used for commercial success is absolutely superb. Let's clarify exploitation. This is a code dump (exploitative) with another group (IBM folks + OOo folks) to accept responsibility for it (counter-exploitative). No exceptions are made to our process, changes to the language of the the grant letter were not accepted. The proposers submit their idea to the incubator, just as all others must submit their ideas for the incubator to consider, vote upon, mentor and guide, and hopefully, graduate to a TLP. No exceptions. The code is not available to developers under a permissive license, this offer is to incubate the code under a permissive license. It has willing committers, and mentors. So what I'm asking is, what is the exploitation? That is a charged allegation. I initially thought the same until I read all of the background on the history and current composition of OOo consumers. ASF members wish to devote considerable time and energy to this project, so exactly who the hell are you to decide what they should and shouldn't devote that time and energy to? Um Bill you really should cool it a bit .. why are you getting so hot about it? Phil too is a long standing member of the ASF and has every right to comment on this! Yes, if he will clarify what is exploitative, otherwise the post is FUD. To be clear; OOo was not part of LO, although it was consumed by LO. OOo has players which use the code differently and under more flexible license than LO has. If Oracle incorporated OOo as a 501(c) and granted OOo an AL to all of the code and divested itself of the OOo foundation, would that have been exploitative? If not, then where is the exploitation of the ASF facing the same prospects as an independent OOo organization? I am just a volunteer who has seen the ASF struggle with growth-related issues for several years now. I think it is a fair question to ask whether we should think about different / more selective criteria for entrance to the incubator. Sorry if asking that question offends you. +1. Those (esp. members) who find that question offensive need to take a cold shower. Or rather, the incubator needs to evaluate current proposals on its current methodology, and (in a quiet time between proposals) generate more specific criteria for incubation, independent of any particular proposal. I just find it rude to change the rules of the game during the match. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice: were are we now?
On 6/6/2011 4:55 AM, Christian Grobmeier wrote: that being said - can OOo really be treated like each other podling? I start to feel it might not be the case. Can we change the rules while the game? Yes, we can. I would be very dissappointed if we would obey blindly to our own rules just because they are there. I want to think each time about them when I need them. If they don't fit anymore, I want to throw them away, if possible. To the extent that OOo presents the incubator with something the ASF has not faced, you are correct... these things we have no standards yet to measure whether a podling should be accepted. To the extent that it is the same, or similar, as many other incubator podlings, it should be allowed to proceed without changing those standards. The question is, in which ways is OOo unique to the ASF? We've had some good discussions here on these points. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice LibreOffice
In general, I'm avoiding the messages which are entirely based on the one true license... but I think there is one interesting point to be raised here... On 6/5/2011 3:30 AM, Keith Curtis wrote: Why open source advocates at IBM would stand up for the right of software to be made proprietary in the future makes no sense to me. I would think the job of an IBM evangelist would be to advocate copyleft, not to evangelize lax licenses using IBM's reputation. It is the little guys that get screwed by lax licenses. Convincing IBM to make GPL their official free license would be useful evangelism. Who is working on that? First, let me correct you, open source predates the FSF. The OSI has done a fine job of addressing the meanings in a way all open source communities appreciate. There is a specific term used by the FSF and others, Free/Libre software. Nobody is suggesting that any AL work is ever Free/Libre. There is a multiplicity of Open Source thought, and we won't go into detail, others have done so better than the two of us can. With that said... LibreOffice is a success, and way ahead of you guys As an advocate of the one true license, I make several assumptions; that you have a disdain for the Microsoft and OS/X ports, as those operating systems are not Free. You aren't particularly keen on the BSD ports either, not because it is not Free, but that it does not promote the cause of software freedom. You have a goal of having the best collection of software possible available on Free Operating Systems, notably Linux. Sorry for any mischaracterization, but I would like to use your strong post to draw out this point; I see a strong role for license advocacy from LibreOffice, and also expect LibreOffice to extend OOo (with or without the ASF) in new and exciting directions. There are many developers who feel as you do, some possibly who even refused to play ball with the Sun/Oracle copyright assignment. LibreOffice might be expected to remain the premier Linux distribution of OpenOffice, as some of the best minds in Linux/Gnome/KDE development believe as you do. But I don't see any licensing argument for LibreOffice to even try to be the preeminent Windows or OS/X port of the software, since by definition improving GPL works for a closed source operating system is something of an oxymoron. Not that such a fork can't or shouldn't continue! But reactions such as your own are inevitable and to some extent, an ASF project gives the LibreOffice project more flexibility to focus on its core ecosystems, the Libre OS's. None of this is meant to be disingenuous to any open source or free software people or communities, it's just my reflections on how those individuals with strongly held licensing beliefs can (and likely will) collaborate within and across communities. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice: were are we now?
On 6/5/2011 10:43 AM, Ralph Goers wrote: I posted a similar statement yesterday. Personally, I think the traffic on this list has settled down a lot in the last 24 hours and is now focusing in on topics more relevant to this list. But maybe that is just because it was Saturday :-) Agreed, just some quick thoughts... What I am still waiting to hear on are: 1. The amount of code in the project that the grant didn't give to us under the Apache License. List published by Sam, and Christian suggests this reflects the OOo repo... http://people.apache.org/~rubys/openoffice.files.txt Actually tearing into that repo for files differently-copyrighted might be a task for RAT :) 2. The amount of work that will be required to rework dependencies. Seems the list is manageable... http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/External/Modules Note that an unworkable dependency dropped by ASF Office can (and perhaps even should) be retained by LibreOffice in their distribution. 3. Whether the number of initial committers will be sufficient to start the project (this is probably going to be very subjective). After a matter of several more days, I'm optimistic at the current growth. 4. Whether there are enough mentors who have the time to devote to this. Since this is a very large undertaking I'd appreciate a bit more than just their name on the wiki but perhaps an actual estimate of how much time they have to devote to the project. I mostly replied to make sure everyone is clear. Mentors are here to serve as guides. As mentors, we are not coders, or documentors. We often help with the little things (starting the status pages, performing initial list creation, and introducing folks to ASF resources like Jira or Bugzilla, svn and other resources). Having some of those resources directly represented as mentors is going to speed things up enormously and help answer Why does the ASF do it *that* way? in a more thorough way. To the extent that the mentors help manage the project, they are participants in the podling just like all of the other contributors. They may have the only 'binding' vote on certain matters, but the community starts off, day one, as a community of equals. Earned merit follows based on individual contributions. So I feel that 4 is already covered. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice: were are we now?
On 6/5/2011 5:30 PM, Niall Pemberton wrote: On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 8:44 PM, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote: Niall Pemberton niall.pember...@gmail.com wrote on 06/05/2011 02:21:01 PM: This proposal raises lots of questions, but the requirements for entering the incubator are not high and so IMO don't need to be answered before a vote. The only reason I believe for rejecting this proposal would be because it would be in the best interests of the community to not split the FOSS development and compete with LibreOffice. Not to state the obvious, but OOo was LGPL when LO split from it last year. If you look at the list of proposed committers, you will see names with openoffice.org addresses. The community is currently split. It has been for quite a while now. This predates this discussion and it predates LO. There was a split between Novell and Sun/Oracle years ago. Any analysis that does not acknowledge these critical facts is incomplete. The community is split today. I'm not disagreeing with you on this. But Oracle is shutting that down and asking us to provide FOSS home for it and all I'm saying is why, when there is already a good FOSS home in existence? Because Oracle and TDF, in confidential negotiations, could not come to an agreement. And I think that's all that need be said on the matter. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice: were are we now?
On 6/5/2011 5:45 PM, Cor Nouws wrote: robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote (05-06-11 23:25) So, it does not logically follow that if a proposal at Apache is rejected that we go to TDF/LO. After all, why would you ? Purely argumentative posts aren't appropriate on this forum. Take it elsewhere. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice: were are we now?
On 6/5/2011 6:19 PM, Ralph Goers wrote: On Jun 5, 2011, at 3:45 PM, Niall Pemberton wrote: On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 10:30 PM, Richard S. Hall he...@ungoverned.org wrote: On 6/5/11 16:50, Jochen Wiedmann wrote: On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 8:21 PM, Niall Pemberton niall.pember...@gmail.com wrote: IMO the only negative thing then about LibreOffice is the copyleft license - everything else about them is great. When deciding whether to accept OO we should consider whether that and facilitating BigCos interests is worth splitting the FOSS community. I am considering voting -1 to this proposal for those reasons. Thanks for expressing my feelings so well, Niall! I'll lend a voice to the contrary. I can't see why splitting a community should be a factor in entry to the incubator. Just about every new open source community is trying to pull away developers from another community doing similar stuff. That's the nature of the beast. True, but when its essentially the same software, rather than different software solving the same problem? If I proposed a new project that was a fork of the HTTP project, how would that go down? If you proposed a new project to implement the HTTP server in Java and got a community around it I'd vote +1. I wouldn't join because it wouldn't scratch any itch I have but I wouldn't stand in the way. And if you proposed another community of committers who believed they had a better direction to take httpd that was not being accommodated by the httpd PMC, I would personally vote +1 for incubation. This is all tautological, the Incubator has supported forks, and will support forks given some legitimate direction. The direction of this fork is an AL codebase offered by Oracle which IBM employees and all other interested committers can support. Your -1 on this basis as a longstanding respected incubator PMC member would really give me pause to wonder exactly how fragmented the incubator currently is. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice LibreOffice
On 6/5/2011 6:04 PM, Keith Curtis wrote: On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 3:50 PM, Joe Schaefer joe_schae...@yahoo.com wrote: We are a type-O org. Anyone can take our blood and mix it with their own. That universal donor condition places lots of restrictions on our projects, but somehow they manage to release useful software. It is an interesting analogy, but seems not accurate because you can't mix with anything but type-O. The Linux kernel seems more of a type-O because it accepts both kinds of licenses. Wrong, Keith. This isn't the sort of claim you want to make while attempting to become a respected writer on software topics, although you are in good company with many technical journalists. With the exception of pure-BSD purists (who reject the patent clauses) AL can be mixed with any code to come out with the more restrictive of the licenses. AL + BSD == AL AL + MPL == MPL AL + GPL == GPL The following are not possible; AL + BSD != BSD AL + MPL != MPL AL + GPL != AL So the input AL code can be combined as a donor to any effort and result in an appropriate license to the finished effort. The converse cannot be said of GPL, which explicitly prohibits additional terms or conditions on the resulting license. GPL is type AB+, as it can not produce other outcome. Perhaps your ignorance comes from medical science, though? You supposedly learned this in 6th grade, but I wouldn't brag about your report card. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice LibreOffice
On 6/5/2011 8:05 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wrote: With the exception of pure-BSD purists (who reject the patent clauses) AL can be mixed with any code to come out with the more restrictive of the licenses. AL + BSD == AL AL + MPL == MPL AL + GPL == GPL The following are not possible; AL + BSD != BSD AL + MPL != MPL AL + GPL != AL Escuse the typo, getting tired of this thread. AL + MPL != AL. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
/ignore troll [was: OpenOffice LibreOffice]
On 6/5/2011 3:56 PM, Keith Curtis wrote: On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 10:47 AM, William A. Rowe Jr. wr...@rowe-clan.net wrote: others, Free/Libre software. Nobody is suggesting that any AL work is ever Free/Libre. There is a multiplicity of Open Source thought, and we won't go into detail, others have done so better than the two of us can. The first step to abandoning the Apache license is for others to recognize like you have that it is not a free/libre license. I don't know why people bother to put the Apache text at the top of every file, when someone else can just as quickly remove / relicense it. Anyway, that is for another day other than the fact that I think IBM should be endorsing the LGPL / GPL as their preferred license. Correct, it is not a free/libre license, doesn't try to be, doesn't claim to be, you cannot strip the copyright without permission, you can only relicense under appropriate terms. What you believe IBM should do likely has no bearing on what IBM will choose to do. We are now 50 posts on this list into an individual who is not a contributor to TDF/LO, and is here seeking publicity for his writing. Let's remember please to not feed the trolls, and move on. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [OO.o] updated mailing lists in proposal
On 6/5/2011 7:13 PM, Niall Pemberton wrote: On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 12:55 AM, Greg Stein gst...@gmail.com wrote: I just updated the proposal to provide more detail on the requested mailing lists. Figured it would be good to discuss here. This is what I entered into the wiki: The following mailing lists: oo-...@incubator.apache.org - for developer discussions oo-comm...@incubator.apache.org - for Subversion commit messages oo-iss...@incubator.apache.org - for JIRA change notifications oo-notificati...@incubator.apache.org - for continuous build/test notifications Note: a users mailing is not being requested at this time. It is anticipated that users will interact with the community through existing OpenOffice.org systems. In particular, note the lack of a users mailing list. I don't think we'd want one to start, but may want it after a release is made during incubation. Thoughts? There are 146 projects listed on OpenOffice.org - all with mailing lists. Last time I read the proposal, it wasn't clear how many of these are active and being brought across. It does suggest though that a single dev list is not sufficient. Can you break these down into the number of projects generating 1 message per day? Likely there can be a bunch of efficiency here in only creating sublists for the highest traffic topics. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: /ignore troll [was: OpenOffice LibreOffice]
On 6/5/2011 8:26 PM, Keith Curtis wrote: On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 6:12 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wr...@rowe-clan.net wrote: We are now 50 posts on this list into an individual who is not a contributor to TDF/LO, and is here seeking publicity for his writing. Let's remember please to not feed the trolls, and move on. I was only kidding about this being a promotional thing. Well, at least only half kidding... I have made contributions to all of these codebases ;-) If so, then I stand corrected, mea culpa. In my book, I talk for pages about the importance of the ODF standard. Did you know that OpenOffice is already behind LibreOffice when it comes to ODF support? It has to do with footnote markers. Which is apropos of... Let's be clear, you have strong GPL opinions. There are many forums for that decades-old debate; this list not being one of them. Oracle made a choice. Therefore Sam or another iPMC member or I will shut down each thread that debates the merits of AL/GPL, these were already detailed much better elsewhere and don't bear repeating. I expect that an Apache OOo project will have a great deal of respect for the TDF/LO community and results based on the past five days of very respectful discussion. If the converse happens, that's great too. None of this is particularly relevant to the question at hand; should the ASF accept a podling proposal to the incubator with an AL code grant from Oracle? If your comments don't bear on this question, please hold them for the dev@ list or take them elsewhere. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Legal concern: Are we getting to close ot a division of markets conversation?
On 6/5/2011 9:33 PM, Simon Phipps wrote: I still have no idea what you are talking about, not least since in this place we are all individuals. But I would be quite interested to understand why you have been trying so hard to stamp out all collaboration with the LibreOffice part of the OOo community right from the start. I don't read his comments that way, I read Don't partition as in, this is here, that is there. I don't see the problem because both are *free* public works, I don't know of (but could be corrected about) any examples where the antitrust laws have been used against public charities working in the public interest, especially in a transparent manner. But... and this is a big but... Rob also speaks for IBM. So I wouldn't expect further comment from him... individually. I don't think he's trying to stamp out anything, but do believe this will be best decided by each project on public lists if and when incubation has started, and a dev@ list here is created. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice: were are we now?
On 6/5/2011 11:43 PM, Phil Steitz wrote: Agreed. I wish I had a clearer idea of what constitutes a good reason to reject an incubator proposal on principle, though - even just a good enough reason to reject this one. As long as there is some promise of building a community and IP / grant issues are not insurmountable, we tend to say yes. In the present case, we are avoiding discussion of two core issues: 0) Where do we draw the line in terms of commercial exploitation of the ASF and the apache brand - and how do we even define exploitation? 1) Do we feel obligated to do no harm to OSS communities outside of the ASF? I know there is an easy answer to 1) that competition is OK; we have that inside the ASF ... blah, blah but that is rationalization in this case. We are talking about *the same codebase* and basically forking the community. Is that consistent with our mission? If not, is that inconsistency a good reason to reject an incubator proposal? Actually, we aren't, and the TDF/LO project will tell you as much. They have made a great deal of progress and diverged from Oracle's code. In the interim, contributors continue to patch OOo code. So these are not the same, now. But even if they were, every fork starts at the same place as its parent; you comment is nonsense. A TDF package would likely leverage GPL resources such as icon sets, fonts, and other desktop elements that we routinely reject from the ASF code. An ASF package would likely leverage BSD licensed icon sets and the like (or at least under an appropriate CC license, not NoDerivatives). These have diverged and will continue to diverge. There is a host of code at the center that can, and should continue to be commons, for the benefit of everyone, and that's what these lengthy discussions are all about. If you want examples of commercial exploitation, we aught to have rejected stdcxx (used ongoing by RougeWave after graduation), and Geronmio (used ongoing by IBM after graduation) etc etc etc. There is a real question here; does the fork at the incubator seek to do something that can't be accomplished at the parent (child, in this case) project? The answer is yes, the licensing differs, and the ASF is in a position to obtain the entire codebase under more liberal license terms than existing commercial exploiters had paid for, previously. That is a quantitative and qualitative difference. But what if a dozen committers came to us from project X, and asked to begin a fork, for the only reason that they couldn't get along with the personalities at the existing project. Would we say no? I tend to doubt it; if there were willing mentors and it appeared that the proposers were serious in moving the code forward, I guess that the incubator would say yes. And this is extreme example is clearly not what we are talking about with OOo. Item 0) is harder. I don't think we have anything close to consensus on what is OK. Many of us seem to have just accepted the fact that companies use the ASF to collaborate as peers and there is nothing wrong with BigCos using the ASF as a low risk, low cost environment for commercial software development. As long as individuals can at least in theory also get involved and the paid developers play by the ASF rules, many (most?) of us seem to be OK with it. So other than exclusionary practices or smoke-filled room decision-making what do we object to? Projects that produce only cripple-ware or encourage lock-in to closed source commercial products? Projects that damage other OSS communities? I admit that I am more conservative than most on the issues of growth and commercialization that we have been wrestling with @apache for as long as I have had the privilege of being involved here. That conservatism leads me to recommend strongly that we take the items above very seriously and consider taking a more selective approach to what we allow in the incubator and a more hard line approach on how we engage with commercial entities. I am on the fence in the present case. Personally, I think we do have an obligation to do no harm or at least do no harm needlessly to external OSS communities and there is more to the ASF that the ASL. I also think it is appropriate for us to consider whether we, the members of the ASF, should devote the considerable energy and resources required to support what looks to me like a commercial collaboration in search of a community. Wow. Did it occur to you that the original project, Apache httpd, was commercially exploited by vendors *even prior to the creation of the Apache Software Foundation*? And somehow, people still wanted to have the source code, hack on it, and give back. Even those very vendors. The second and third project were exactly what you have described above, Tomcat and XML. Why do you suppose the ASF should consider undoing the roots from whence it was born? Let's spin backwards a bit more... it
Re: TDF/LO, what is the art of the possible?
On 6/4/2011 7:37 AM, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote: It is not relevant how ASF would answer these questions. You see, I think it is, and apparently other mentors do as well... I'm open to to possibility that a 6-month old open source association with a single project might have more flexibility, as an organization, than ASF, a 12-year old foundation, with a legal entity and nearly 170 projects. Note that in this case I am talking specifically about the organization, not the collective membership. That is why I explicitly directed the questions to the TDF Steering Committee, asking for an official response. I think this would be very useful. What you describe with respect to 'negotiations' on these points is what the officers of the ASF would generally defer to the project/ASF members, or not entertain at all as 'official positions'. You approached this survey, in my reading, as an inquiry to a division head, CTO or VP Engineering. Open source, including the ASF and also TDF, is not managed in the hierarchical fashion that your questions seem to be directed to. There was perhaps an opportunity for the small pool of TDF folks to have made adjustments (in fact, LGPL+MPL seems to be just one of these) at the very early stage when they were defining themselves, before inviting the world to participate in their umbrella with some definitions of what that umbrella was made of and what color it was painted. There was perhaps a second opportunity for the small pool of TDF folks to have made adjustments, prior to the announcement by Oracle, which might have compelled them to make changes justified by their interest in accepting stewardship of the code under terms Oracle insists on. But once users are invited to manage a community, and do so effectively, the management/decision making process flattens. Six months was more than enough time for TDF to make this transition, and it appears you no longer have a TDF management to negotiate with, but the community of contributors now unified under certain precipts. Everything is public now, and it will be up to the TDF community to make the hard decisions. I don't expect TDF's officers to make such public decisions without input from community, be it polls, votes, discussion threads as we are having here, or whatnot. You could ask these questions of RedHat management, or Novell management, but in asking this of open source management suggests to me that there is a serious disconnect in your understanding of meritocratic, open source software development as practiced at the ASF, at least. So what I wanted to communicate to you is that asking these questions of the Management of TDF Project is insulting to the individual members of their community. This poll is written to divide and put stakes in the ground, not to find common ground. This ASF incubation effort begs for some contribution by those same individuals, so your questionnaire seems counterproductive and destined to add antagonism, rather than remove some, and I'd suggest you withdraw it. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: TDF/LO, what is the art of the possible?
On 6/4/2011 1:17 PM, Sam Ruby wrote: Our emails may have crossed in the ether. My suggestion is that I take ownership of this question. I will state that I do not plan to proceed via this questionnaire. I missed the *what* you were taking ownership of :) Coolio, and thanks. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal: Splitting the Community?
On 6/3/2011 10:20 AM, Florian Effenberger wrote: I on purpose leave out the discussion about (re-)licensing here, as others can comment much better about the impact of the various licenses, and how they play together, and what ASF could to with the software grant they received, may it be with or without other entities. I'd love to focus much more on the community and project side of things, and this is the part of my initial message that I still feel is unreplied: Why do we need a second project? From all those who propose the project at ASF, I have not heard much feedback on why this should happen, or otherwise said, on why TDF would be the wrong place to do it. I don't believe these two issues above can be separated. I'd also remind that the communities have been split, and the time to have initially reached a compromise was before the fork, so there were obviously some irreconcilable points as the TDF drew its fundamental lines in the sand. So, as I feel my question in the first mail has not been answered yet, I'd like to repeat it, and extend it on one further question, to everyone who supports the incubator proposal: - What is wrong about the TDF that is better at ASF, for being the home of a free office suite? I don't think anyone questions the value of a Free office suite at TDF, and in fact all here sort of expect one to persist at TDF with enhancements and community around Free/Libre Software supporters and platforms. In fact, all of the conversation in this thread suggests that there will remain a healthy ecosystem of various packing, training, and other services around this code base, as there has been for half a decade. - Why didn't those who propose this project talk to TDF about the issues that mattered to them and tried to change it? Because there is an ecosystem of BSD, OS/X and commercial vendors who do not so much leverage the Free aspect of Open Source. For this reason, some number of Sun/Oracle customers licensed the open code from them. IBM is one of these. The previous (singular) community supported both paid-commercial-closed works and free-libre-copyleft works with their contributions and their collaboration. Certainly even the paid-commercial-closed side of that world gave back much to the commons to improve the collaborative work, through direct contribution, or subsidizing Sun/Oracle contributions through their licensing fees, or both. Experience with Free/Libre Open Source Communities and Projects shows that such communities will not be flexible on licensing. Neither will the ASF Open Source Community be flexible. It seems this was a binary decision... It would appear that Oracle's OOo contribution to the ASF is meant to extend the freedom for developers to choose to open or close fork the code without the payment of royalties to Oracle. This puts every consumer in the same position as only the elite enjoyed previously, freedom to choose between an open or closed fork, and freedom to choose between contributing back or not. I am now convinced this is entirely a licensing decision, so I'll ask you, what was the probability for Oracle to convince TDF to maintain an Apache Licensed project consisting of their copyrighted code base? I'd politely suggest they believed there was no realistic chance they could persuade TDF to be the custodian of a BSD or Apache Licensed work. As custodian/sub-licensor of the donated code, the ASF (or TDF, if that were the case) retains the ability to modify the license. Clearly much of the interesting commercial activity surrounds online document services. As the case is today, the LGPL and MPL of the TDF's works offers no copyleft facilities for services, this would require an AGPL license. So given the choice between choosing a copyleft or permissive open source custodian, I can appreciate Oracle's decision for what it was, and really don't believe that conversations with TDF could have changed that outcome. This suggests no criticism of the TDF, it's mission or purpose, or the fruits of its labors, and if the ASF votes to adopt this new podling, I'm wishing the best of success to both efforts. I was initially sympathetic to the option that Oracle might be trying to un-copyleft their codebase, against the desires of a broader community. Personally I would have voted -1 as I would perceive this as violation of the spirit of our own mission, effectively the pawn in corporate shenanigans. But the fact that this was never copyleft, as pointed out to me initially by Sam, leads me to conclude that the ASF is, in fact, a good home to launch such an effort, and allows any actor from the general public to have the same advantages and privileges which were once reserved for the elite and most profitable consumers of this code. Just want to close this observation by pointing out that IBM has been a strongly reciprocal participant at a number of ASF projects, and I expect nothing else. I'm
Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal: Splitting the Community?
On 6/3/2011 12:36 PM, Simon Phipps wrote: On 3 Jun 2011, at 17:52, Ian Lynch wrote: Thing is that this is done, Oracle didn't and won't now give the IP to any other foundation. So we are where we are. We may be where we are, but we collectively have the opportunity to collaborate once Oracle has gone - that's what open means. My way or the highway talk - from any side - is detestable. ASF has the opportunity to reject the bait to head down the path of ideological conflict, choose a conciliatory path that respects the existing community and especially to use the trademark (which is the only actual asset being transferred) for everyone's good. In all fairness, in addition to a separate trademark grant, the stock example http://www.apache.org/licenses/software-grant.txt form spells out the assets. From your perspective, the existing LGPL/MPL hybrid may already grant most everything you require. For IBM and others, it had not, prior to this permissive grant. That said, the definition of everyone in your statement above would mean different things to different readers, and I'll step back from the licensing discussion precipice now :) ++1 to ongoing collaboration by all OOo code consumers :) - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal: Splitting the Community?
On 6/3/2011 1:17 PM, Jim Jagielski wrote: Are you ready to call for a vote? :) I'm certainly not support OOo from 2 committers and 1 mentor. It would be good to see the rest of that list hashed out and know that those already on board are good with the individuals signed up (including IBM folks who have not yet signed on, and any Oracle folk engaged 'if only for the time being'). If they expect to be committing, I expect their names on the original proposal. You apparently feel quite ready given the time you have spent thinking this through, but since the bomb dropped on the rest of us 6/1, it would seem appropriate to let this play out until 6/8 for a vote on the initial committer roster. About mentors, I'd strongly nominate Shane as a mentor, because I believe that the whole OpenOffice.org trademark policy alignment is going to require hand holding between our TM policy maker and the projects/consumers of that mark. Also, Sam seems to have a great deal of insight and would benefit the project to serve as both Champion and Mentor. Finally it would be good to have on member of ComDev step up to help with community issues. I wish I could volunteer myself for a mentoring task, but can't realistically find that many free cycles to do a proper job of mentoring right now. Shane Sam, and some member of ComDev, if you would serve, please add yourselves to the Mentor roster? http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal: Splitting the Community?
On 6/3/2011 1:43 PM, Jim Jagielski wrote: On Jun 3, 2011, at 2:30 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wrote: On 6/3/2011 1:17 PM, Jim Jagielski wrote: Are you ready to call for a vote? :) I'm certainly not support OOo from 2 committers and 1 mentor. You need to flush your cache... ~20 committers. You miss my meta-point, which was that those are the 18 individuals who just happened to catch the buzz and get rerouted and determine that they belong on that list within the past 52 hours. Giving this a week to play out at general@, and for people from all of the constituencies who might not be familiar with the ASF to become familiar with what exactly is going on seems entirely appropriate. Anything else reeks of this being shoved down people's throats by people gave this days, weeks or even a month of deliberation already. Your invitation to start the vote NOW comes across as a snarky drivers seat remark. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: TDF/LO, what is the art of the possible?
On 6/3/2011 7:09 PM, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote: If someone on the list from TDF is authorized to answer this (or can get such authorization), I'd appreciate an official stance on the following questions. This would help us understand what room there is for negotiation and what is not worth discussing at all. As the VP, HTTP Server Project, let me suggest how the ASF would answer your questions, and possibly lead you to rephrase many of your questions. Across the board, I would tell you that as the chair of an ASF project I do not speak for the individuals at my project, and such corporate- speak questions are counterproductive and indicate a disconnect, still, with ASF (annd TDF) style meritocracy and a collation of the willing, e.g. individual developers. Reversing roles and names below... 1) Require Apache 2.0 licence for future contributions to LO, possibly in addition with other compatible licenses. a) Not willing to consider it b) Willing to consider it A. a) the ASF publishes only AL code. It consumes code in many compatible licenses and will not combine code with incompatible licenses. I'm guessing that's also the TDF answer, that their finished product would be LGPL as it was before. That doesn't mean they couldn't frame the CLA for upstream bug fixes to comply with the respective upstream licensing, but even here at the ASF, we simply point contributors to send their bugfix upstream. Our shallow forks reflect minimal changes that aren't yet accepted by upstream works. And I don't think OOo + Gnome/KDE/other GPL Desktops has a lot of reasons to become AL. TDF has a pretty specific niche that is a superset of OOo, and not every element of TDF/LO needs be permissively licensed. 2) Encourage and facilitate TDF members signing an Apache CLA on their past LO contributions a) Not willing to consider it b) Willing to consider it A. a) as the organization would not do this, and I would encourage the requestor to send their request to the project list. For example, if there was a patch to zlib posted on the httpd list that fixed a mod_deflate bug, and zlib required a CLA, someone should point that out to the contributor. But that wouldn't be an ASF action. Since ASF posts seem to have been met warmly, I'd suggest that request is already 'in progress', with the question posted by ASF representatives if this should come to pass. I don't see this as an official TDF act but rather soliciting individuals to come contribute to either or both projects as their interests take them. 3) Encourage and facilitate TDF members contributing their work to both Apache and TDF under respective licenses a) Not willing to consider it b) Willing to consider it A. a) that it isn't an organizational issue, but an issue for individual contributors as mentioned above. The ASF does no such thing. You seem to be asking for a poll, not an official statement. 4) Join Apache and do the core development work there, with LibreOffice being a downstream consumer of the core, collaborating closely with Apache via patches, defect reports, etc. a) Not willing to consider it b) Willing to consider it A. a) that it isn't an organizational issue, but an issue for individual contributors as mentioned above. The ASF does no such thing. You seem to be asking for a poll, not an official statement. 5) Join Apache and consolidate all development there, under the name OpenOffice a) Not willing to consider it b) Willing to consider it A. a) Not as an organization. It's the choice of individual contributors where they each contribute. ASF works have been forked, and forks sometimes come home. The ASF has never endorsed a fork. Would expect the same answer from TDF. Not as an 'official' thing, and I doubt the ASF best serves all purposes of TDF. If all development meant all core OOo code, while the TDF continued to roll a Gnome/KDE flavored package, and even OS/X or Win32 packages, you might get a different answer, but your questions seem more divisive than collaborative. 6) Join Apache and consolidate all development there, under the name LibreOffice. a) Not willing to consider it b) Willing to consider it A. a) Not as an organization. It's the choice of individual contributors where to contribute. Sounds absurd on the face of it to the TDF/LO community, as the ASF does not ship Free/Libre software as I understand the definition. 7) Join Apache and consolidate all development there, under the name ODF Suite. a) Not willing to consider it b) Willing to consider it A. a) Not as an organization. It's the choice of individual contributors where to contribute. After you asked the last couple of questions, this one probably falls on deaf ears. I would humbly suggest your poll reads as a very argumentative, legalistic survey of the wrong landscape (the TDF vs TDF contributors),
Re: Recuse as mentor?
On 6/3/2011 9:17 PM, Jim Jagielski wrote: Seems that some people are not happy with my outreach to the communties, or whatever... There are plenty of suggestions and posts on things that I have done wrong, or did not do, or did not due to someone's satisfaction. If people want, I will happily remove myself as mentor. This is supposed to be fun and at least *somewhat* fulfilling... I found only one objection; throwing around insider jokes and taking people to task for their external (knee jerk) comments that were based absolute surprise at these developments. I did see your apologies, so if you keep your own frustrations to a dull roar, I see no reason for you to step down from mentoring this project. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal
OpenOffice.org will be contributed to Apache Software Foundation by Oracle Corporation in compliance with ASF licensing and governance. Luke, could you offer some insight into affixing the Apache License v2.0 to this code base? Only ALv2 code is released by the foundation. LGPL/MPL cannot be relicensed into any non-copyleft license schema without relicensing (including multiple licensing) by the copyright holders. Were all contributions to OpenOffice.org under copyright assignment (via employment or specific copyright assignment agreement)? How many other independent copyright holders would have to assent to the license change? How much non-assenting code would have to be eliminated and potentially replaced? Yours, Bill - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: [italo.vign...@documentfoundation.org: Re: OpenOffice and the ASF]
On 6/1/2011 8:41 PM, Louis Suarez-Potts wrote: My questions then are absolutely pragmatic and relate—hence the to post—to issues not so far discussed: * Apache Foundation owns the trademark to OOo? * We at OOo receive lots of requests to use it for mostly good purposes. We grant these, with minimal fuss and have set up systems to do that more efficiently. With the change in trademark ownership—if?—the situation will naturally change. I'd like some clarity on that. If the grant is accepted, AIUI, yes TM transfer would be expected. Please review http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/ for how such things are handled. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Licensing Q's [was: Incubator Proposal]
On 6/1/2011 10:37 PM, Alexandro Colorado wrote: On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 10:23 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wr...@rowe-clan.netwrote: Other Works * You can use the Creative Commons Attribution License (Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5). We only accept work under this license that is non-editable and for which there is no editable version that can be contributed to the project. This last item concerns me. How much of the contribution is unusable due to the Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 tag, which would appear to be a category X license to ASF works? (I couldn't find a corresponding Jira in the legal discuss tracker.) The CC was generated for non-code contributions as far as I know. I would need to have that confirmed. That is my understanding. But if we ask legal-discuss, all contributions at the ASF must be editable (one pillar of the Open Source Definition) and must allow derivative works ... IOW, under the Apache License. So I simply need to understand the scope of the CC elements of OOo which will need to be entirely replaced. (As I read CC-AND, even translations of such works pose a problem?) On 6/2/2011 4:24 AM, Sam Ruby wrote: On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 1:07 PM, William A. Rowe Jr. wr...@apache.org wrote: Were all contributions to OpenOffice.org under copyright assignment (via employment or specific copyright assignment agreement)? How many other independent copyright holders would have to assent to the license change? How much non-assenting code would have to be eliminated and potentially replaced? The answers to these questions are not known at this time, and will need to be resolved before exiting incubation. Correcting us both, I believe this is known, to the extent that Oracle holds copyright or joint copyright to all code and is in the position to license as they see fit (to the ASF or otherwise). I now understand from http://www.openoffice.org/license.html that the 80/20 of my concerns are solved (my list posts came across out-of-sequence), Oracle conveys their copyright license for the ASF to licenses as we will (AL) for the bulk of the existing work. I simply need some understanding of the scope of the CC-AND works. Are we talking fundamental documentation? Nice-to-have additions/examples? Have prospective committers stepped up to replace the necessary elements? AFAICT, our best incubation process may be to avoid checking in any of the CC-AND contributions within any initial svn import (and the second best option would be import-and-immediate-purge). No derivatives are allowed, ergo it will be very challenging to show that the replacements are not derivative, and starting from scratch is starting from scratch. I guess I've seen too many failures to launch at incubator to support any more projects coming in which are not in the realistic position to publish working results as AL works. So without these answers, I personally would vote -1 on such a new project. You can look at any number which required multi-year (half decade) of incubation without being able to graduate or release due to simply the licensing/dependency challenges. The incubator is not supposed to be this hard, and shouldn't be a parking lot for complex works with complex licensing problems. If major problems can be addressed, they are best addressed on incubation acceptance, leaving only minor issues to address during graduation. If major problems are going to be difficult to address, the incubator needs to think twice before accepting the podling, IMHO. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Incubator Proposal
On 6/1/2011 11:07 PM, Greg Stein wrote: On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 22:52, robert_w...@us.ibm.com wrote: ... What am I missing here? According to the Incubation Policy [1]: A Sponsor SHALL be either: * the Board of the Apache Software Foundation; * a Top Level Project (TLP) within the Apache Software Foundation (where the TLP considers the Candidate to be a suitable sub-project);or * the Incubator PMC. They wouldn't. It was just a simple error in the section headings. There is the Sponsors subsection, with several subsections. There shouldn't have really been anything under that main section, so I removed it and adjusted the subsections. http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/OpenOfficeProposal Is this correct? From what we've witnessed, the Board appears to have presented this to the incubator on behalf of the proposers. Although this doesn't change the need for the incubator to vote to accept the podling, it does seem to be a request at the behest of the Board of the ASF, and should be marked as such under Sponsoring Entity, no? - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: OpenOffice.org Apache Licensing Q's [was: Incubator Proposal]
On 6/2/2011 11:45 AM, Greg Stein wrote: We know the *precise* list of files that we have rights to. They are explicitly specified in the software grant recorded by the Secretary. For all other files not listed: we have no special rights. Those files would be under their original license, terms, and copyrights. There isn't much gray area here. The biggest problem is how to replace the stuff that we don't have rights to. And that is a problem for the podling's community to solve. And it is not unfair to ask if the podling, once accepted, can reasonably be expected to solve the problem and in some reasonable timeframe to allow them to create an Apache release, because previous efforts have had very mixed success. So I'm asking upfront if this is realistic. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
Re: Corporate Contribution [Blondie's Parallel Lines...]
On 6/2/2011 11:07 AM, Ross Gardler wrote: On 02/06/2011 16:22, Jim Jagielski wrote: The initial list has grown and I expect it to continue to; up until it was announced, no one new about it, so it was kinda impossible to get a more comprehensive list. Now that people do know about it, people are signing on. IBM plans to commit new project members and individual contributors from its global development team to strengthen the project and ensure its future success. [1] I have two remaining concerns with this statement. The ASF welcomes independent developers and those from commercial organizations on the same terms, by demonstration of merit and an apparent long term interest in improving the project. This is why I mentioned earlier that it is important for IBM folk to sign up individually on the wiki roster. Corporate assignments are notorious at the ASF for disappearing communities. Sometimes, there is momentum to keep going, often times there is not. Communities are based on individuals. Already, on the part of Oracle, this seems to be a code dump (the abandonment of code, in spite of whatever help with transition). I raised the question on another thread; will Oracle inhibit its interested engineers from participating on their own time, if it remains their personal interest to participate? And should IBM choose in the near or far future to divest itself from an OOo community, in the pattern of Harmony, is it willing to make a statement that its employees will not be discouraged from ongoing participation /on their own time/, again if this is their personal interest? So far, this proposal appears to be the effort of two individuals on behalf of two corporations, with some great enthusiam from others. All recognize that any resulting project at the Apache Software Foundation would be the effort of individuals, not companies per say. So these two answers would go a long way to ensure that the long term project health is not beholden to Oracle's absence, or any threat of withdrawal by IBM. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
