On Dec 23, 2005, at 10:57 AM, Justin Erenkrantz wrote:
On Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 09:11:55AM -0500, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
I am no longer convinced of this. Having the Incubator PMC there as
a "check and balance" is a good thing as it requires engagement from
others interested in this aspect of ASF life. It prevents one
individual or one PMC from being able to make significant social or
technological change, or at least ensure that there is a
theoretically impartial observer keeping track. It allows interested
members and other community members to "put their money where their
mouth is" on this topic, and join the Incubator PMC to help out.
I don't think that can scale appropriately.
Why would the Incubator PMC know more about whether mod_ftp is a
good fit
for the Foundation than the entire HTTP Server PMC?
I certainly agree that in 99% of the cases, this would be the case,
and I would never expect the Incubator PMC to ever stand in the way
of any proposal unless there is good reason of broader scope.
Healthy PMCs will IMO always do the right thing.
I was thinking more along the lines of the Incubator having to vote
and therefore do some due-diligence. It also does give the Incubator
PMC some control over rate of growth. I'm worried about growth, but
not anti-, but certainly worry about the incubator being stretched
too thin to effectively provide the legal oversight and community
shaping. Our incoming rate is faster than the outgoing rate - at
what point do we have more than we can handle?
Imagine if every PMC did what the Geronimo PMC just did, and invited
in say 5 new projects (as is their right).
That's about 150 new podlings at once. How would we deal with that?
I don't expect this to happen, but maybe you can see my point.
I think that there's little downside to this. A check on the
Incubator PMC is the board - any member or PMC could appeal to the
board in the event that they believed their proposals were not being
treated fairly, or if the Incubator PMC was behaving in general in a
way they disagreed with.
And the board has to answer to the membership.
I believe that there is *major* downside to having the Incubator PMC
second-guess the decisions of other PMCs.
If someone doesn't like the decision of a PMC, they shouldn't be
able to
use the Inucbator PMC as cover for their attacks. People who don't
like
what's going on in that PMC should confront that PMC directly. If
they
don't like what's going on in that PMC and have tried to redress their
grievances directly, they can go to the Board.
I'm assuming a healthy Incubator PMC here - not one in which one
person can leverage to attack a PMC.
Although, the Board is rightly wary of interposing itself in technical
decisions. We have no idea what makes technical sense or not either.
Right - I wouldn't think that the Incubator PMC would want to make
decisions based on technical merit either. That's a non-starter - we
have to assume that each PMC is the most clueful in their technology
domain.
But code sources, committer diversity, availability of volunteer
resources in and around the incubator all are things we can
consider. Like it or not, the INcubator PMC is the locus of these
efforts, and it's real resources that are needed for each podling.
Cynics like me are the *worst* possible judges of what's cool and
what's
not. That's the fundamental problem I have with this entire
thread: people
are trying to limit the growth or exclude projects. How? On what
basis?
I agree here - I would never want to exclude based on technology. I
do the thought experiment from time to time and ask myself which
projects I would have excluded if ordered to limit growth at the ASF,
and I never have a good answer. Maybe not let those "toaster language
bytecode people" in? I think our current java communities are a
*huge* asset. How about the pointy-bracket folks?
We need to actually increase our technical diversity here - we have
no real Ruby-oriented communities, nor any coherent .NET identity,
and I think that's going to hurt us in the long run.
That's why this talk about limiting growth is so dangerous. The
foundation
should go where our PMCs and our members want. -- justin
It's dangerous, but it's also a consideration of a vocal and active
part of the membership. It can't be ignored.
geir
--
Geir Magnusson Jr +1-203-665-6437
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