On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 11:12 AM, Benson Margulies <bimargul...@gmail.com> wrote: > The temperature of this might be reduced by replacing, 'no one knows what > the Apache Way is' with 'a lot of us have trouble translate it into > practical decisions in a repeatable fashion.' Or not. > > As reported here, we have performed multiple experiments in which multiple > members, directors, and others have derived conflicting _practical_ > interpretations from 'the way.' People need to make practical decisions > about releases, web sites, brands, and the like. People don't enjoy being > told that they have 'trangresssed'. People particularly don't like this > when their trangression was an action recommended by someone who is > 'supposed to know,' and, in fact, thinks that she or he does know. > > So, either a lot of us are really stupid, or the Foundation as a whole has > a gap between the general principles and their application. No, we can't > have a rule book that details every particle of how to run an Apache > project, but apparently we could have more concrete guidance. >
This! Specifically, in the context of the incubator projects coming into the incubator are likely told about the Apache Way, they likely agree with the big picture items, it's the practical application as they migrate their project that causes projects so much confusion; and I'd get away from even the term 'Apache Way' and ask this question in the context of the Incubator: 'What is required of an Apache Project'. Some examples of this: Can a project use an external bug tracker? Can a project use a third-parties CI system? Can a project host their website outside of the ASF? Can a project avoid a users mailing list and move to StackOverflow? Can projects use github? I've seen most (and maybe all) of these get different, conflicting answers from members, directors, and others when asked in the past year or so by projects coming into the incubator. As mentioned on another thread somewhere, one question is at what point does a project become 'in us, but not of us'? If all we are looking for is some reasonable intepretation of the six points here[1], it would seem that lots of the questions above are pointless. I realize that this is culturally known for members. It's ingrained, they don't even have to really think about it. But the outside world has no concept of most of this, or more importantly, it's practical application. --David [1]https://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#philosophy --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
