Hi All,
FWIW in my experience, the release process is a key driver for a podling
community to get it's collective act together.
On Qpid, we've done 3 major releases now. Until we worked towards the first,
one couldn't guarantee that the code would compile from trunk every day. Our
project really took shape during this process, and it was a good way to
start getting a handle on the Apache Way.
Having a focus, in the shape of a release, is a really useful way to move a
community towards a clear goal. Even better, it forces the podling to agree
targets (JIRAs etc) and work together to achieve them in a bounded way.
The other major plus is that iirc it took about 6 weeks of to+fro on our
first release to get a viable RC out (with all the necessary bits etc). The
process gets easier each time (at least the Apache bits do). On incubator
projects get oversight etc while all this happens and so they get better at
doing it, fairly early on.
In my view, without releases there wouldn't be any podling projects (as
Aidan suggested earlier).
Trust me, there are plenty of incentives to graduate :-)
Hth,
Marnie
On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 5:18 PM, Henning Schmiedehausen <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2008-10-06 at 13:45 -0500, William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
> > How about a brand new idea?
> >
> > Lay down a Milestone-style chart of what it takes to operate as an ASF
> > project. Demonstrate community of meritocracy, add committers or ppmc
> > members based on contributions, complete IP review, and then... and only
> > then... they hit the release milestone. One or two releases later, they
> > are ejected from the Incubator - either to the target PMC or as a TLP.
>
> While I like that idea, it is hard for a podling that comes from a
> corporate environment (where the initial committer base is basically a
> development team) to build a developer community without a release.
>
> Giving a podling a defined exit strategy (e.g. "Three incubator
> releases") is nice, but it will be subverted by projects doing "rc,
> alpha and beta" releases ("Oh no, that is not our second release, this
> is 2.0-alpha-1" Which is followed by 2.0-alpha-2 up to 2.0-alpha-8, then
> -beta-1 and so on).
>
> Then again, some podlings could use a kick in their collective ass to do
> at least one release (Hello Shindig).
>
> Ciao
> Henning
>
>
>
>
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