Hey folks, I've been talking a lot about what "committer" means recently. As a person with a vote on the project, do we award this position to people who contribute code, or people who we trust? And are there instances where we trust someone with a vote (i.e. they've shown merit, sustained contributions, etc), even though they do not (and are not likely to) contribute code?
One of the things that occurred to me is that I have no idea how other people do it across Apache. I'm involved in two TLPs (CloudStack and CouchDB) and the approaches are quite different. So I was thinking how I might learn more about this. I know ComDev is here to document stuff, but I recently took a look your website, and I noticed that some things are being recommended that seem a little unusual, and there is no mention of how common that thing is across Apache. (In this instance, we were talking about how to elect people to the PMC, and the ComDev website says that in most cases, all committers are on the PMC. This is interesting, because I believe this is actually the minority position across TLPs. But I have no data to back that up.) And it occurred to me that it would be interesting to do a survey of the Apache TLPs. i.e. Just ask people. Then collect that data, and present it in some meaningful format. My thinking is that this sort of data would be useful for the whole of Apache. ComDev, the Incubator, TLPs, etc, etc. I know that in the Incubator, for instance, it can be quite confusing, because the answers you get depend on the people you speak to. And I know that even on a TLP, there's often a "what do other TLPs do?" question that comes up, with no way of knowing. This is a project I am quite interested in doing, with a little guidance from people on this list. Assuming, that is, that you folks think this is interesting / worth doing. So, the next questions are: 1. What sorts of stuff are we interested in finding out? 2. What's the best way to conduct surveys? I think 1 can be handled separately to this thread, and on an ongoing basis. That is, I have some ideas, but I think they ought to be discussed separately. My thinking is that this should be a long, slowly-paced activity. I don't want to tire anyone out. And I think it could form part of a continual data-gathering activity. Right now, I am thinking about 2. A few ideas: a. Send an email to each dev@ list with a set of questions. (I think each survey should be small, focused on a specific topic, which ought to increase the chances that people respond and also produce meaningful discussion.) I'm not sure, but I think this is likely to result in fewer answers, but more discussion. Collecting and analysing the results would be a little harder, but not impossible. b. Send an email to each dev@ list with a link to a survey. I could use something like SurveyMonkey. This allows for very structured questions/responses. It also means that people are answering in isolation, which means more people might respond (i.e. are not put off responding because someone else already said stuff). But is also likely to result in less discussion on the list about the topics/questions raised. c. Send an email to committers@ with a link to a survey. Should result in less discussion, but might also result in less participation. (I expect less than 10% of the subscribers to respond.) I would certainly not want to put the questions in the email if I was sending to committers@, because discussion on that list would not be appropriate. Would using something like SurveyMonkey be problematic? As part of the activity, I would make sure that all the data was made available after the fact. That is, just use SurveyMonkey as a tool, and then put the data back on to a mailing list, or wiki, or perhaps even into a repository if ComDev has a repository for me to commit to. Would love to have your thoughts on this. As I mention, this is something I have in mind as a project I would like to undertake with the guidance from people on this list. Thanks, -- NS
