Thank you for sharing your experiences with offlist development Alex. Even single-developer large code drops can be damaging to the community in some cases. Malcolm Upayavira gave a good example. But single developers may find it easier to remedy the situation in the same way Upayavira did: by cutting the code up into reviewable-sized pieces, and courageously accepting community feedback to improve the code. Responding constructively to criticism is how we grow, right? By developing alone for a long period, we deprive ourselves of that criticism. Criticism outside of our in-group is all the better because it raises issues we wouldn't discover on our own. That's one of the major strengths of open source.
My goal here is *not* to find the exact shade of grey at which we prohibit off-list development. You're right, Alex, almost all decisions on this topic should be made by the project community and should be focused on the effect on that project community. If people who want to participate are being excluded by a particular development practice (even if it's a cool hackathon at ApacheCon), that is something that a community should at very least be aware of and be ready to mitigate. Each community can weigh downsides and upsides for themselves. My goal here is to spark awareness, by helping to discover and communicate the spectrum. An inventory can be a diagnostic tool by which communities can determine where they are on the spectrum and decide whether they are comfortable with their current shade of grey. Best Regards, Myrle On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 6:42 PM Alex Harui <aha...@adobe.com.invalid> wrote: > > This is just a nitpick, but it is the subject line that is bothering me. > Having a "no large code drops" mantra is not the same as a "limit off-list > collaboration" mantra which is different from a "no off-list development" > mantra. > > For Flex, Adobe made something like 5 large code drops. It simply took so > long to clear the various chunks of code being donated to Apache through > Adobe's approval process that it was done in stages. In fact, if I had time, > the Flex/Royale community wanted it, and I could get Adobe to support it, I'd > bestow a couple of other large code drops to Apache. It is all pre-existing > code, but again, the subject line makes it sound like any large code drop is > bad, which is not true. > > To say "no off-list development" could be construed as some limit on how many > lines of code you can write as an individual before making it available to > others to review. > > I think the real key here is "off-list collaboration". There will always be > off-list collaboration, and I'll bet some really significant things can > happen at a hackathon. That should not be prohibited. I think you are > simply trying to express the notion that groups, especially groups defined by > having a common employer, don't do too much collaboration off-list before > inviting others into the conversation. > > My 2 cents, > -Alex > > On 10/24/18, 7:17 AM, "Myrle Krantz" <my...@apache.org> wrote: > > Hey all, > > I'd like to invite anyone with relevant positive or negative > experiences with off-list development or large code drops to share > those experiences. The ASF policy of "no off-list development" is > implemented in a wide variety of ways in various communities, but > there are still may be some things that we can agree are absolute > no-goes. I'd like to figure out what things we see as: > > * You might get away with that once, but don't try it twice. That's > damaging to the community. > * Avoid doing that unless you have a really good reason that the > community has accepted. > * That has a bit of a smell to it. Have you discussed that with your > community? > * That's fine. You're helping your community. > * What a wonderful idea! Absolutely do that if you and your community > want to! > > I'm hoping to put together a diagnostic tool for offlist development > that can help communities help themselves. Something similar to > Beck's Depression Inventory. Because like mental health, community > health is complex, and sometimes it is not clearly 'good' or 'bad'. > > In order to do that though, I'd like to read your stories. Especially > from the people who've been around a few projects and seen a few > things. The stories Malcolm, Chris, and Jim already shared are > exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for, so if y'all would like to > elaborate that'd be really cool too. > > Best Regards, > Myrle --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@community.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@community.apache.org
