On Fri, 18 Mar 2016, Greg Trasuk wrote:
I don’t think it’s the Incubator’s job to choose which competing
projects should join the foundation. All we’re here to do is to make
sure that a community knows how to act like an Apache community, and
that the artifacts are licensed properly.
This is only my view, and I know that some key incubator folks think
it's too prescriptive, but I have seen it work
TL;DR - Alternate ideas and approaches Good, Confusion or Corporatism Bad
Where we have two different communities, working in the same space, but in
different languages or different approaches, then that's fine. The ASF
doesn't pick "winners", it picks "runners". So, having a Batch
implementation of the Foo protocol in C, and having a proposed podling for
a Streaming implementation of the Foo protocol in Java is fine.
Where we have two different companies doing rival implementations who
refuse to co-operate, that's an issue. Two companies who are competitors,
who both read the "Foo protocol" spec / Foo paper, and who found rival
projects to implement Foo in Java, is a problem. They don't have a
technical distinction, just a refusal to co-operate and a refusal to take
off $DAYJOB hats and a refusal to work for the best interests of the
community. That's an issue for the incubator and the ASF
If we have a similar proposed project coming in, I would expect the
proposed project to have a chat with the existing one to see if a merger
is possible. If they're in the same langauge, and take similar approaches,
then a merger could deliver a better community with more features, which
would be better for everyone.
However, if they two communities had a chat, and decided they really were
different + could explain that, then in my book that's fine. Document and
explain those, so potential new community members can pick the "right" one
for them. Maybe collaborate on some common code / tests / etc, don't
bad-mouth each other, and help new people pick the appropriate one for
them, then that's fine.
AcmeCorp and Contoso both want to bring a Java project for doing Foo, and
won't co-operate because they're competitors = red flag
AcmeCorp found a Ruby project for Foo, grow it, bring it to the ASF, then
a formerly Contoso backed Java project for Foo comes, fine.
AcmeCorp did a "Foo for 1-3 machines that's easy to get started with" and
want to bring that, while Contoso have been working on a Foo that's a bit
tough to setup for small clusters, but scales brilliantly past 3 racks,
that's fine. The can share some Foo compliance tests, and new community
members can consider their deployment sizes and pick the "right" one to
join for them
Only my view, though at least some others share it, I hope that helps at
least a little?
Nick
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