On Mar 18, 2010, at 11:11 AM, Leif Hedstrom wrote: > On 03/18/2010 09:04 AM, Mladen Turk wrote: >> On 03/18/2010 03:35 PM, Leif Hedstrom wrote: >>> >>> Can all the people who are no Yahoo's let me know which company >>> affiliation(s) they have? I had no idea we had to track what company >>> contributors / PMC members work for, that honestly seems a little bit >>> odd to me, but if it's the "way", I'm fine with it. I'd assume this is >>> "voluntary" information though, or is it required for every member to >>> disclose any and all company affiliations? >>> >> >> Found it: >> http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/ExitingIncubator >> >> "No single organization supplies more than 50% of >> the active committers (must be at least 3 independent committers)" > > Ah, bummer, yeah, that disqualifies us immediately. Even if you look at > "active committers", there are 6 Yahoos (including the two doc people) and > only 4 non-Yahoo's. > > Sounds like we can't graduate any time soon. >
Even though I brought up the issue of diversity, I did so only because it *is* a topic that needs to be brought up and will be a question that the board (and Incubator) has as we get closer. But I do not feel, personally, that it is a deal breaker for us, and I'll explain why. First of all, let's look at the reasons why we added that criteria. It's because we wanted to ensure a healthy and diverse community such that, should a company back away from the projects, there would be enough people to continue the effort. We also did it to avoid the potential that a single entity would wield undue influence on the development or "path" of a project. Now let's see how this relates to TS and way, imo, it's a non-issue. First of all, it is obvious that Y! has "backed away" from TS. Instead of creating a project that they can leverage and make money off of, they have done the exact opposite, and taken proprietary code, that they could have kept to themselves, and opened it up, with the express wish that others use it. So the idea that Y! would try to leverage it's percentage is non-sensical... Also, in many ways, Y! itself *has* backed away from TS. They want TS to succeed, which is obvious, but again it is not the same to them as what it was, which was an internal project with schedules, etc... Finally, I am confident that those Y! people who are working the project also have a deep, individual commitment to the project, not as Y! employees, but as ASF committers. One thing I suggested to the other mentors is that maybe one of us be PMC chair for the initial time-frame (at most, 12 months), as a recognition that there is the *potential* for the lack of diversity to be a factor, and even though we don't feel it is a blocker for graduation, we are taking this action pro-actively. In summary, I feel that we have enough in our favor to convince both the Incubator and the (rest of the) board, that as far as the letter of the "requirements" we don't "pass" the diversity restriction, but we do pass the spirit of it, which should be sufficient.
