Steve, In the interest of completeness, please point out that folks from IBM did join and work on Axis2 which was a complete rewrite from scratch, got that integrated into other Apache projects like Geronimo.
thanks, dims On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 9:27 AM, Steve Loughran <ste...@apache.org> wrote: > On 06/03/2011 03:58 AM, Sam Ruby wrote: >> >> On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 10:24 PM,<robert_w...@us.ibm.com> wrote: > >>>> >>>> Corporate assignments are notorious at the ASF for disappearing >>>> communities. Sometimes, there is momentum to keep going, often >>>> times there is not. Communities are based on individuals. >>> >>> And individuals are often employed by corporations, and are their jobs >>> sometimes entail contributing to open source communities. I think we all >>> understand how this works. >>> >>> But do you have any hard numbers, for example, showing a higher >>> abandonment rate for projects with more corporate assignments? That >>> would >>> be an interesting correlation to show. Of course, we must also consider >>> the projects that never came into existence at all, for lack of corporate >>> sponsorship. That number is harder to estimate. >> >> I can confirm that is is a common enough phenomenon to warrant >> highlighting in the standard template: >> >> >> http://incubator.apache.org/guides/proposal.html#template-reliance-on-salaried-developers >> >>> And just because corporate withdrawals are "notorious" does not mean they >>> are common, or that they are the greatest risk we should consider. The >>> Boston Strangler and Jack the Ripper were also notorious, but you have a >>> great risk of death falling down stairs. >>> > > The issue with corporate reassignments is that everyone just "vanishes". > They get reassigned, and go away. In OSS, individuals tend to drift off, go > onto what else interests them, or whatever. The turnover/year may be the > same, but the way the turnover happens is different. > > to make things worse, because the paid FTEs tend to work full time on the > projects, they understand the code well, gain committers status through > their contributions, and so when they go, a big chunk of the active > knowledge goes along with their departure > > Examples > Axis 1.x: IBM staffers all vanish. > Harmony: IBM FTEs all vanish. > > I don't think we need any more, given that these show that IBM has a track > record of doing this. Maybe not your bit of the company, but we outsiders > can't tell that > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > > -- Davanum Srinivas :: http://davanum.wordpress.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
