Sam Ruby wrote: > Raphaël Luta wrote: >> Erik Abele wrote: >> >>> It's just the initial code, nothing more :) >> >> I don't agree with this statement. >> The code itself is indeed only the initial codebase but along with >> this codebase come an established group of committers with an >> interest in keeping their current architecture or at least backward >> compatibility >> >> <snip> >> >> I think my point is simply that in a code grant incubation >> scenario, initial codebase and initial community *do* matter >> because they'll act as natural forces towards stability and >> are likely to shape the community and codebase for a long time. > > Hopefully, at some point, these somewhat abstract discussion of concerns > that are relevant to all proposals will solidify into concrete concerns > regarding this specific proposal. >
I was simply in disagreement with Erik statement that initial code is not that important. It's tangential to the actual zimbra proposal. > Is code irrelevant? That would be absurd. That's why the code has been > made available for all to download, inspect and comment on. > > I think a more neutral restatement of what Eric and Noel are trying to > say is that while good communities always overcome bad code, no amount > of good code can make up for a bad community. > While I more or less agree with this statement, I think that bad code can prevent a good community from happening in the first place, especially when good communities exist elsewhere. <Disclaimer>I've not reviewed the code so that statement above does not reflect any quality judgement on the proposed zimbra toolkit</Disclaimer> > On the other had, Raphaël, I see you making implicit assumptions that > the committers will have entrenched interests that will be difficult to > overcome, and that the existing community is "mature". What evidence do > you have of that? I'm sure that you can give examples of other > communities where that was a problem, and I can give examples of other > communities where that was NOT a problem. What do either examples > prove? Nothing. > > What specific concerns do you have with this community and this codebase? > If we're talking explicitly about the Zimbra proposal, here's my current understanding of the proposal : Of the 4 "Criteria" listed in the proposal, only 1 is met by the proposal: Alignment to ASF All 3 others are filled with boilerplate statements that indicate: - the project does not use at all a meritocratic model right now - there's no community - the core developers are strongly bound to a single entity with only Andy being easily traced to prior open source activity Of the 6 warning signs listed: - 1 is defintitely not met: the Zimbra toolkit is not an orphaned product - 1 is possibly met: Inexperience with open-source, again 30 minutes of Googling for the zimbra team show little oss credentials - 1 is probably met: fascination with Apache brand, but I'll admit it's a personal interpretation - 3 are definitively met: - reliance on salaried developers - homogenous developers (I'll admit that IMO if the 2 are often linked) - no ties to other apache products Additional personal expectations: - the Zimbra collaboration suite uses the AjaxTk so there will be some backward compatibility burden attached to the codebase. - if incubation is accepted, I expect a lot of PR noise around it due to hype surrounding AJAX and aggressive communication profile of Zimbra Positive signs: - the updated proposal has attempted to fix some of the issues raised after the first proposal that could be fixed (scope, number of initial committers) Negative signs: - the mentor for this project is salaried by the project sponsor ! - I can trace no public attempt to meet other possible user apache communities (myfaces, portals, cocoon, etc...) even after first proposal rejection - I see negative technical feedback on the proposal from ASF people I trust left unanswered When you put all this together, you can understand I'm hardly enthusiastic about this proposal. What would change my opinion ? 2 must have: - no PR before graduation - an independant mentor 1 nice to have: - some ties with a possible "downstream" community, possibly adding some of their committers in the initial committer pool -- Raphaël Luta - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Apache Portals - Enterprise Portal in Java http://portals.apache.org/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
