On Fri, Dec 19, 2014 at 6:09 PM, Louis Suárez-Potts <lui...@gmail.com> wrote: > Are we top posting now? > > My comments below Ross’ > > >> On 19 Dec 2014, at 16:33, Dennis E. Hamilton <dennis.hamil...@acm.org> wrote: >> >> As a participant, I have two concerns about a player-mentor requirement. >> >> 1. Sustainability. In many ways, it is mentors who need to have their >> attention on The Apache Way and cultivating a sustainable project. That >> means, from my perspective, that mentors need to encourage others to do >> things, especially around project management and procedural matters, and not >> just take on matters without leaving any bread crumbs. It seems important >> that others learn how to do that sort of thing too, whether or not special >> karma is eventually required to perform the same activities. >> >> 2. I have learned repeatedly, and it is evidently well-known, that a >> developer is his own worst project manager. It has to do with attention >> being at a completely different place when heads-down in development tasks >> than when heads-up watching the horizon and keeping objectives and current >> effort aligned. When I am in developer mode, I need someone else to pull my >> attention out of the weeds and look to see what course I am on and where I >> am at on that course. >> >> I remember in the 60s when a colleague had ended up managing a project at GE >> Medical Systems (or something similar) and he confessed that his team made a >> terrible mistake -- they allowed him to program on their project. >> >> I'm not saying that a mentor could not be an effective player. I think doing >> it well while mentoring is not common and it might interfere with training >> and development as well. >> >> - Dennis >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Ross Gardler (MS OPEN TECH) [mailto:ross.gard...@microsoft.com] >> Sent: Friday, December 19, 2014 11:01 >> To: general@incubator.apache.org >> Subject: RE: Incubator report sign-off >> >> Strawman: >> >> What if a mentor is *required* to be an active participant of the project. >> That is contributing code, voting on releases and generally engaging with >> the community, they would be a better mentor since they have a vested >> interest in the project itself. Sure, we might reduce the number of projects >> coming into the foundation but (IMHO) that is not a problem. Our goal as a >> foundation is not to be large, it is to be high quality. >> >> [ … >> ] >> > Accepting Dennis’ point, but I think that there’s a difference between being > in a large corporation doing in-house work and participating part time as a > mentor. It’s as if I were (as I do) to teach courses after work that relate > to my expertise but are not identical to it, if only because I like to think > that I’m more advanced than any student I’d have. > > In prior instances where we’ve had mentors, or where I know of them, e.g., > Mozilla’s Firefox extension program at Seneca College, Toronto, where the > lead instructor of the classroom of students (as well as of individual > pupils) is a developer at Mozilla. (He’s paid indirectly by Mozilla to teach, > I believe; that, at least, was at the arrangement we had with Seneca for > OpenOffice instruction, and ours was modelled on Mozilla’s.) In fact, the > argument presented to me by the instructor was that it was essential to be an > active developer, at least if one were instructing students on both the > collaborative dynamics as well as the code itself. To be sure, one need not > be immersed in the project (i.e., have it as a day job), but being engaged > and current with the latest was important. > > But to stipulate it as a requirement? Why? Why make it a requirement and not > just a recommendation, albeit a strong one? the only thing gained by making > it a requirement—and in bold, too—is to have a tool by which one could > eliminate candidates. And I do not think that is in the spirit of a pragmatic > open source project. > > louis > > >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org >> For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org >> > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org >
I'm not top-posting. I think the 'involved mentors' is part of an attempt to resolve several conflicting desires. The mentor model is that the PPMC members start out being all of the doers, and the mentors are coaches and supervisors. Conflict #1: coaching and supervising is not always a happy combination. Conflict #2: coaching means staying in the background to a large extend, as per Ross' statement. 'In the background' can be perilously close to 'gone fishing.' How does the IPMC (or whomever) tell the difference? Conflict #3: there's a shortage of people to mentor, and that leads to people with good intentions signing up and then failing to deliver. Over years, we've send many paragraphs of email trying to find a solution, navigating amongst these issues. We've added shepherds and emphasized champions. And, don't get me wrong, things are improved. 'Involved mentors' don't have conflict #1, because they are just part of the crew. They may be following the advice of a recent Bowen blog post and be planning for future un-involvement. That also cures problem #2. They aren't anxiously coaching from the sidelines. #3 isn't going away, but this idea rate-limits new projects by the availability of serious bootstrappers. I agree that it's best to look at this idea as a candidate for an experiment rather than a moment in time to debate the existence of the IPMC. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
