I recall this being discussed at ApacheCon, and I recall the idea seemed very
much for a semi-formal regular project meeting, in which project business would
be discussed on a pre-agreed agenda. Some ground rules were even suggested at
ApacheCon, such as ensuring the meetings occur in rotating timezones, that the
agenda is proposed and voted upon on-list in advance, etc.
Nothing is a decision until it happens on-list, and in this case the date,
time, agenda and process should be a proposal, not something that is
predetermined.
A great comparison is the CEP proposal, which was discussed at ApacheCon,
brought on-list, codified, modified and voted on.
It's very easy for people who have resources at their disposal to start to
behave as though they have decision-making power, because usually things happen
in the way that they propose. This happens even with the best of intentions,
and I have never once implied or suspected bad intentions.
On 11/01/2020, 04:24, "Jeff Jirsa" <jji...@gmail.com> wrote:
This will be rambling as I’m typing on my phone while watching The Office
and I’m not going to proofread, but:
PMC votes on releases, and code policies, and trademarks, and things of
that nature. While the link suggests PMCs *can* sponsor meetings, nothing
should preclude anyone from meeting to talk about the database - there are
countless cassandra meetups around and we never try to police those (and we
shouldn’t start), as long as they’re not pretending to be speaking on behalf of
the project.
A couple non-committer contributors deciding to hop on a video call and
encourage other contributors to attend seems both harmless to the project and
something that can help build awareness and bring attention to some of the
otherwise invisible work that’s happening.
It’s not on behalf of the project PMC, this thread has made that clear, but
I think there’s value here, even if anything discussed or proposed on any
hypothetical call has no standing and wouldn’t represent the PMC or the
project. Having folks who care about the database talk about the community,
even if they’re not committers, doesn’t seem all that damaging to me, as long
as they’re not violating trademark to promote it or somehow misrepresenting the
nature of the call.
I get the concern about implicit control of the project and how that can
devolve over time despite good intentions.
As with the long threads in 2015/2016, I think we should be sure not to
overreact out of fear, and should assume good intent.
Given the concern, I also think folks trying to build community should make
a point of over communicating to the dev list.
Hugs and kisses friends,
- Jeff
> On Jan 10, 2020, at 6:05 PM, Benedict Elliott Smith <bened...@apache.org>
wrote:
>
> To be clear, as it seems like I'm being very negative here, I'm really
pleased to see DataStax suddenly increase their participation, even if
currently it's limited to administrative activities. But let's try really hard
to do things in the right way.
>
> https://www.apache.org/foundation/governance/pmcs.html#meetings
>
> Community and meetings are explicitly within the intended purview of the
PMC. The Cassandra PMC ordinarily implicitly devolves decision-making to the
dev list, so a lack of formal role is no impediment to participation _here on
the devlist_ but making decisions off-list amongst a cohort lacking _any_
formal members of the community is a particularly bad look IMO, and the kind of
indifference to "The Apache Way" that lead to the fallout with DataStax many
moons ago.
>
> In this case, Patrick said "we've decided we're running a contributor
meeting on this date" which starts to look like an attempt - however
unintentional - to make decisions about community and collaboration _for_ the
project.
>
> Instead, IMO, presenting a clear proposal to the community about how this
could happen, giving it due time to respond and consider (and probably mostly
express gratitude!) is the right way to do it. It might lead to tweaks, it
might lead to minor preconditions about process, it might lead to nothing. But
that's how these kinds of things should happen, even ignoring the ASF stuff, if
only out of politeness.
>
>
> On 11/01/2020, 01:52, "J. D. Jordan" <jeremiah.jor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Isn’t doing such things the way people who are not writing code become
part of a project? By offering their time to do things that benefit the
project?
>
> Why does anyone “with a formal role” need to agree that Patrick is
allowed to use his time to try and get some people together to discuss
contributing?
>
> -Jeremiah Jordan
> Person with no formal role in the Apache Cassandra project.
>
>>>> On Jan 10, 2020, at 7:44 PM, Benedict Elliott Smith
<bened...@apache.org> wrote:
>> This is also great. But it's a bit of a weird look to have two people,
neither of whom have formal roles on the project, making decisions like this
without the involvement of the community. I'm sure everyone will be
supportive, but it would help to democratise the decision-making.
>> On 11/01/2020, 01:39, "Patrick McFadin" <pmcfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Scott and I had a talk this week and we are starting the contributor
>> meetings on 1/22 as we talked about at NGCC. (Yeah that was back in
>> September) Stay tuned for the details and agenda in the project
confluence
>> page.
>> Patrick
>>>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 3:21 PM Jeff Jirsa <jji...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 3:19 PM Jeff Jirsa <jji...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Fri, Jan 10, 2020 at 2:35 PM Benedict Elliott Smith <
>>>> bened...@apache.org> wrote:
>>>>> Yes, I also miss those fortnightly (or monthly) summaries that Jeff
>>>>> used to do. They were very useful "glue" in the community. I imagine
>>> they'd
>>>>> also make writing the board report easier.
>>>>> +1, those were great
>>>> I'll try to either do more of these, or nudge someone else into doing
>>> them
>>>> from time to time.
>>> (I meant ^ if Josh doesnt volunteer. Would love to have Josh do them if
>>> he's got time).
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