On Thu, Jan 1, 2015 at 5:32 PM, Benson Margulies <bimargul...@gmail.com> wrote:
> three cheers for Roman for all his hard work!
+1!
+1!
+1!
> For all other projects in the Foundation, we say, 'The chair is just a
> clerk who facilitates communications with the board.' Here at the
> IPMC, we expect the chair to be moderator of a very fractious set of
> arguments about how to incubate (or whether to even have an
> incubator). A leader, even.
For this reason, no one who runs for IPMC Chair will receive my support
unless they pledge to serve for a limited duration.
> It is my impression that no one is very happy with the current state
> of the incubation process.
I dissent.
The Incubator is functioning about as well as it could under difficult
circumstances, and I am extremely proud of our ongoing work. Including
all that you do, Benson!
The problems faced by the Incubator are the inevitable consequence of
flaws in the Apache Software Foundation and The Apache Way.
* We are expected to teach "The Apache Way", but "The Apache Way" has
no authoritative definition.
* We are expected to enforce Apache policy, but the the documentation
of Apache policy is a sprawling, incoherent mess. Yes,
incubator.apache.org is awful, but so is www.apache.org/dev and
community.apache.org.
Why can't Apache produce decent policy? For the same reason that
projects under Apache governance produce notoriously bloated APIs.
* Consensus requirements make it all but impossible to remove complexity.
* Openness requirements bias the system towards adding complexity.
People should leave the Incubator alone and go work on more pressing
problems. Come back once the ASF has policies normal people can
understand.
Marvin Humphrey
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