Leo Simons wrote: > David Crossley wrote: > > One thing that is bothering at the ASF is not having a > > clear definition of the various roles. > > Hmmm. I think there's a lot of people not bothered though. > Not being clear may even serve a purpose. > > > We seem to be having endless discussions at some > > projects about what it means to be a committer and > > a PMC member and an ASF member. > > Indeed. I have a hunch that "re-inventing the collaboration wheel" > is a significant part of "the apache way". An organisational > structure that is completely patching itself at every level has a lot > of appeal.
I partially agree. However when that re-invention occurs because of poor documentation, then we have a sad state of affairs. It is interesting to look at the following woeful document and its svn history (i.e. no changes since initial minor doc): http://incubator.apache.org/learn/theapacheway.html In particular see the last section. It encourages new incubating projects to follow the "Jakarta way". Not blaming Jakarta, but it seems silly to point to an umbrella project as "the" way to do things. > Other projects *never* discuss any of this. They just write code. I wonder if these projects are bringing on new committers and explaining the intricacies to them. > > It seems that over the years too much distinction > > has been made and some the roles have become confused. > > For example [4] says that "committers" have the > > right to vote on community-related decisions > > and [5] has that as the PMC member. > > As the ASF has grown, it has also grown more formal. If you look back (for > example) to the > beginnings of java.apache.org and later jakarta.apache.org you'll see that > there wasn't a whole lot > of design to the seperation between these roles. Heh. java.apache.org was a > rather sizeable > trademark violation. Can you imagine something like that happening now? > > If you go a little further back in time, eg > > http://httpd.apache.org/dev/voting.html > > there is no definition of "committer" or "member" or "pmc", just "Apache > Group members", which is > not further defined. > > As Jakarta people "moved up the ranks" the process documentation written (I > think by Jon Stevens > initially) moved up with them. When that happened people disagreed with that > process and it got > patched. Some patches found their way back into the processes of various > TLPs. Which bits hasn't > been overly co-ordinated. The mismatch has probably arisen because of the old experiment with such "umbrella" projects. > Compare > > http://httpd.apache.org/dev/guidelines.html > http://jakarta.apache.org/site/management.html > http://jakarta.apache.org/site/decisions.html > http://ant.apache.org/bylaws.html > http://xml.apache.org/guidelines.html > http://maven.apache.org/contributing/help.html > http://apr.apache.org/guidelines.html > http://tcl.apache.org/about.rvt > http://gump.apache.org/bylaws.html > http://geronimo.apache.org/get-involved.html > http://beehive.apache.org/contributors.html > ... > > TCL talks of a "project maintainership committee". HTTPD still refers to > "Apache Group" every now > and then. Maven, SpamAssassin and Geronimo don't describe their processes at > all on their website. > XML says "The Chairman or any member may be removed from the PMC by a 3/4 > vote of the PMC" which is > false (the chairman is a board-appointed officer and cannot be removed by the > PMC at all). Gump defines > "committer" but doesn't actually really keep track of them (when gump went > TLP there was really no > initial list of people that might be considered PMC members) because all of > Apache is allowed to > mess around with the code. Beehive has 0 pages devoted to saying something > like "get involved!", the > only thing that comes close is a news blurb on their front page. SpamAssassin > has a list of PMC > members at the top of their CREDITS file with links to Amazon wishlists. > That's smart innit! :-) > > There are only a few truly authoritive references: > > * http://www.apache.org/foundation/bylaws.html > * http://www.apache.org/foundation/board/calendar.html > * http://www.apache.org/licenses/ > > I think none of these ever talk of "committers" formally. > > Also note that the second one specifically tasks new PMCs with defining their > own bylaws, eg > > RESOLVED, that the initial XXX PMC be and hereby is > tasked with the creation of a set of bylaws intended to > encourage open development and increased participation in the > XXX Project. That is one reason that i am raising it. This job falls through the gaps and seems to be why our communities are not functioning properly. > yet there are loads of projects that don't have anything marked as "bylaws". > So we have a project > going through two years of incubation and community building, then they are > tasked with only a few > things (oversight, project growth, establish bylaws) and they often fail 1/3 > of that task. > > We have *loads* of inconsistencies, and a lot of the stuff on the main > foundation site is not > consistent with stuff on the pages of many TLPs. I don't think we're going to > be able to solve that > completely, and I think the incubator shouldn't task itself with that either. So if not Incubator, then who? And if not, then we had better remove the second paragraph of the Incubator home page. I wonder if it might be better to simply remove a stack of that top-level documentation, particluarly this "Roles" section of the "How it Works" document. Then simply say "go see each project for their own guidelines". However that puts a big load on each project to revisit such definitions, particularly if they do not have active mentors who have some insight into the rest of the ASF. Ah. Going to board_minutes_2002_10_16.txt where the Incubator was established ... "educating new developers in the philosophy and guidelines for collaborative development as defined by the members of the Foundation". That probably puts the ball back in the court of the Incubator, because i don't see such guidelines being developed elsewhere, other than Infrastructure trying to dig themselves out of the hole. > > I think that the first two sentences of the PMC > > role in [5] need to move back into the Committer role. > > Hmm. That page does seem a little out-of-sync with common practice. As i showed, it developed that way with influence of Jakarta and my efforts to fine-tune the docs may have exacerbated the situation. > > The PMC role should then stress that it is up to > > each project to define the composition of its PMC. > > Actually I think that is up to the VP for the project, formally, > which was established through board resolution. Yes, that is what i meant to say. Hopefully the chair also has the support of the project. > > If no-one says otherwise, then i will change that. > > I'm not saying otherwise :-) > > > I presume that even though committers can vote on > > project decisions, it is still its PMC that has > > the binding votes. > > Officially, "committer" does not exist, so, officially, > a "committer" cannot do anything "binding" on behalf of the ASF. > If someone uploads a release somewhere without a PMC vote, > then that action is > not on behalf of the ASF. Etc. > > > Are there any other clarifications that are needed? > > I dunno. I don't know where you're coming from, > eg I'm not too sure what problem you're solving. My main issue is that the developer communities which we are trying to encourage, are totally confused about what it means to be a committer and PMC member. The problem is exacerbated when we have an existing committer from another project. They bring their ways to the other project, and we go through another endless discussion. We are now seeing a new thing happening as a result of the Google Summer of Code and other situations at the Cocoon-based projects, which are introducing concepts which might lead to classes of committers. > Hope this helped a little, regardless :-) It did. Said many of the things that i had left unsaid and shows that confusion reigns. No wonder we have a hard time incubating new projects, and then having them run smoothly and understand what it means to be a committer or a PMC member. -David --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
