On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 1:54 PM, Daniel Shahaf <d...@daniel.shahaf.name> wrote: > Two quick comments, haven't read the context: > > Marvin Humphrey wrote on Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 10:26:57 -0700: >> On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 12:55:01PM +0100, Jukka Zitting wrote: >> > To me this suggests that our current three state transitions [1] from >> > the podling phase -- termination, continuation and graduation -- may >> > need some adjustment. That could mean introducing new exit strategies >> > or relaxing the existing ones. >> >> How about adding another Incubation end state: "migration"?
I think that a different question deserves exploration, first. We all know what conventional success looks like for a podling: splashy growth, lots of people, even press. Of course, we also all know that this is sometimes the result of extensive quiet investment by companies. I'm now thinking that the podling that started this discussion is, in fact, merely on the low end of conventional success. We know what failure looks like. The silence of the grave. We also know what to do with these. The question is, what to do with, oh, 'brown dwarfs'. And I think it's worth looking in particular at 'diverse brown dwarfs'. A project consisting entirely of people employed in one place as a natural home in that place, and that place can work out trademark issues with the foundation. On the one hand, a small group of people can chug along doing work consistent with the Foundation's mission indefinitely, serving the public good. On the other hand, a small group is at constant risk of accident in which they drop below the active size needed to release and add committers. Should they get pushed out? Or should we look for a way to offer then the supervision needed to stick around? The Foundation has decided that 'umbrellas' are unreliable sources of supervision. Labs might be a model, but labs can't release, and can't add contributors unless they earn their stripes elsewhere in the Foundation. Could the incubator, or a clone of the incubator, serve as a permanent home for small projects? Essentially, this amounts to removing all the 'incubator' disclaimer and branding requirements for these projects, and retaining the volunteer supervision of the sort of people who are willing to be mentors (e.g. Foundation members and others voted by the iPMC). This would put additional eyes in the supervision process, and still allow growth. In the world of github, no one needs to be an ASF project to get source control hosting. The problem of 'brand vampires' is solved by requiring these projects to be 'small but diverse.' The project *and the users* get the advantage of operating in the Foundation's legal umbrella, and those users are what, to me, makes this consistent with the mission. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
