On 14 Jun 2004, at 01:14, Noel J. Bergman wrote:
I am having some difficulty reconciling some of your comments, so please
take the time to clarify for my (and judging from Gianugo Rabellino's
comments, that of others) benefit.
I gather so, and I think I might have collapsed too many orthogonal reasonings into a single mail. Let me try to clarify my position so that we can move on.
Fair warning: this message is likely to come across as harsh. That is NOT
directed at you.
No worries, mate. I've been through worse, and I know you have good intentions. ;-)
Steven Noels wrote:Noel J. Bergman wrote:What is your take on the readiness of Lenya to leave the Incubator,
and on the question of putting out a milestone? Just as a reminder,
the distribution would have to be tagged as an incubator distribution,
not an ASF release.
My take is that - at last, and pushed forward primarily by the group of
non-Wyona, newbie committers - the urgent need for release and exit has
been recognized and is in the process of being addressed adequately.
For one reason or another, this has never been pushed forward by the
original donators, but now, the momentum has changed to a positive
effect.
All this being considered, I'm +1 on release and consecutively exit from the incubator.
Leaving aside the fact that Lenya has posted several "RC" distributions to
www.apache.org/dist without proper process or approval, why is there an
"urgent need for release"?
At long last, there is a tangible urge to release, originating from new Lenya folks. I think this shift in direction marks an important new fase in the project, and it should be applauded upon. Maybe stating they should release and consecutively exit is one convoluted step too far, but what I see now is the start of self-governance of the Lenya community, and I think this signifies the (community) project is maturing. If these folks want to release, they should be able to. If you think exit should be their first goal before that, fine with me. I think they should be able to release and exit, in whatever order that is.
And why release first, exit later? Why not get
cleaned up, exit and then have a real release? Personally, I suspect that
the "ability" to do the aforementioned "releases" has been a factor
underlying the lack of impetus within Lenya to get clean and exit.
It used to be, but this has apparently changed, even to my own surprise.
Thinking on it, we should probably delete those files, which were never
approved by either the Incubator or Cocoon PMCs. Baring commentary to the
contrary, I will do so within the next day or so (leaving time for
legitimate contrary views).
I don't think anyone will complain about you doing so. These were test packagings of Lenya, and while the process of getting these files there shows a lack of understanding, maybe even ignorance of the release rules of the people who were steering the project at that time, I think we bashed them enough onto their heads with the few rules they have to abide to, so that this isn't likely to happen again.
I do appreciate the desire to exit, and would like to know that if Lenya
does exit to Cocoon that the oversight issues that appear to have previously
marked the Lenya incubation have been corrected. I am much more concerned
about the Lenya community than the release of its code, and see the former
as gating the latter. You're also making a similar statement:
Lenya has an awkward history IMHO. It has been force-fed into the bowls of the ASF upon the idea that a community was more important than code, and because of pet-peeves of people: the ASF needed a CMS project, and Lenya would be a community seed for that - regardless of the community aptness to serve as one. The original Lenya folks were clueless about the Apache Open Source Way, but felt so much "invited" into the ASF that they figured they were doing a good job. The original number of committers was bloated, and their communication about the incubation status of Lenya was tendencious at best. Wyona didn't do a great job at opening up the project to the outside world (other than dumping code into public CVS), and there wasn't much direction or shared project ownership. Besides, there was a recurring theme of all CMS-related activities being integrated under a single vision that I can understand the sheer reluctancy of new committers to take the steering wheel and getting things done, so everybody kept quiet/indifferent and waited for Godot to appear.
What I see now is people empowering themselves and caring only about the project, not about all the peripheral dreams or company ambitions. This is a tremendous shift in project governance. I think the ASF needs to acknowledge and endorse this shift and give these people the ability to continue their course. Whether this course will be successful, we will only know within a year or so. I hope these folks will be able to attract new committers and continue what they started.
I'll be carefully looking after ASF brand abuse however in the
forthcoming months. This entire incubation episode has left me with
dubious feelings: for a long time, I've been thinking that Lenya would
be a sad example of premature ASF donation. It is good to see that some
volunteers finally stepped up and managed to create real momentum, and
I can only hope they will last for a long time. Lenya will still need
to acquire more external contributors to help them with this effort.
I'm glad to hear about the latter part of that paragraph, but you have to
admit that the first part of the paragraph is enough to give one pause. So
please explain why we should have a incubator release while there are still
so many questions regarding the viability of the community? Yes, you are
indicating that there are new members within the Lenya community who are
focused on doing everything properly. Great, but I'm still trying to
understand why there is a need to put out a distribution rather than put all
of the energy into helping Lenya conclude incubation and then release.
As I said, it's just a matter of the community maturing, and feeling two urges at the same time. Order isn't very important here.
I hope this clarifies things a bit, feel free to nag me with other questions.
Cheers,
</Steven> -- Steven Noels http://outerthought.org/ Outerthought - Open Source Java & XML An Orixo Member Read my weblog at http://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/ stevenn at outerthought.org stevenn at apache.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
