On 1 July 2011 11:06, Stefane Fermigier <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Jul 1, 2011, at 11:43 AM, Ross Gardler wrote: >> > >> I am not saying you *cannot* credit employers who support their staff >> volunteering here. > > Once again, you're denying the reality here. Olivier and I are not > "volunteering" here.
As a mentor I am stating the language we use. *everyone* is a volunteer here. You are paid outside the ASF, as am I. Nobody here can dictate what you do with that time. that is one definition of "volunteer", it is *not* a requirement that a volunteer works for no money. It might seem like a nuance (or even a fundamental misunderstanding at this stage) but it is very important to the way Apache projects are developed. It's one of the mechanisms we use to ensure that nobody can "own" an Apache project. Everyone is expected to act as an individual, in the best interests of the project and its community first, sometimes this means going against the short term best interests of their employer in order to ensure the long term health of the project (which I assume is important to your employer).. If you are going to be at ApacheCon you might like to attend my "Can I depend on software built by volunteers?" talk. I address these issues in detail and explain why it works like this and why the word "volunteer" is often misunderstood. >> One way of crediting employers without >> having to create a whole raft of red tape is have a page on which >> committers can optionally add their employers details (with nofollow >> links) > > Yeah right. This is absolutely unacceptable for me. Well, that's up to the community to resolve. However, I will point out that it is highly unlikely for the IIPMC (of which I am a member) to allow links without nofollow. It is not allowed for anyone else (including most classes of financial sponsors). Of course, you are welcome to discuss this on [email protected] if you believe this is a mistake the ASF has been repeating over and over for all these years. >> . This means the moment you vote someone in their employer gets >> credit. Another way (which is my preference) is you have a page >> listing *users* of the product (with nofollow links). This means >> everyone can submit a patch and have their employer listed. > > Come on. The EU is giving 6 MEUR to this project. Nuxeo is giving 50 KEUR. > There is clearly a hierarchy. There is no hierarchy in a sustainable Apache project (that means a TLP, not an incubating project). The EU money will run out, Nuxeo may decide this isn't a direction they want to go in. What then? The community needs to expand to be sustainable beyond the funding of the EU and a few other partners. That's why Stanbol is in incubation. All actions today need to prepare for the day when the money runs out. For what it is worth I am *very* familiar with academic funded projects and the dynamics found within them. I am a mentor on this project because I don't want the problems with those structures to be brought into the successful structures here in the ASF (and to help the ASF understand where sensible compromise is possible, this is not, in my opinion, one of those times). >> The ASF does not single out individual companies. If its not enough to >> get a load of free volunteer time on the software they want to use >> then they can do public speaking, they can publicly praise their >> Apache committers. They can be *seen* to engage with the project both >> here and at public events, like ApacheCon. > > I don't care about the ASF. I'm not even a member. Membership is earned. It cannot be bought or requested. You may not care about the ASF but I assume you care about the code being produced in this specific ASF project. Do you want it to succeed in the long term? If so then you need to participate in ways that have been proven, in over 100 world leading projects, to work consistently. There is no need for you to work towards being a member, but there is a need to act within this project in ways that are in the best interests of the project even if they appear to be against the best interests of your employer. Your mentors are attempting to explain why this is an important issue and why all existing contributors to *all* top level projects recognise the value in this position. This is not something we are suggesting for Stanbol only. If you are not convinced by our arguments then take it to a broader audience ([email protected]) - you'll find many hundreds of years of combined experience of world leading open source project communities on that list. Ross
