Agree - but the initial committer list is also an opportunity to show you really mean open development, and that it's not just business as usual with Friends & Family on the list.
One of the freedoms a project gains from moving to ASF is (somewhat) relief from institutional political considerations. A new intern at a company would no longer just be given carte blance write access without first engaging with the whole community and earning merit through contributions. Of course each community decides how high or low the bar should be to earn committership - but the bar should be the same for anyone. I found for several podlings that people (myself included) who were perhaps dormant "contributors" before the Incubator 'woke up' after being added as an equal peer on the initial list. The beginning of a podling; while sometimes struggling a bit with bootstrapping, is also a chance for a project to review many of its practices and to build common ownership - reduce the "us and them" feeling. I think Netbeans has the balance somewhat right - but I would hope there would be more engagement on their existing lists to more openly invite anyone who wants to join; or at least make it clear that the whole of the community (read: mailing list) gets to influence project decisions. On 22 September 2016 at 09:48, Bertrand Delacretaz <bdelacre...@apache.org> wrote: > Hi Wade, > > On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 11:38 PM, Wade Chandler > <cons...@wadechandler.com> wrote: >> ..I can say as a long time contributor who is not on the initial list, I >> understand, think it is fine, and agree that being added once we get into >> the actual incubation phase makes sense... > > Thanks! > > As someone who has mentored several projects here in the last ten > years or so I think although people sometimes see a lot of value in > being on the initial committers list they should not, IMO. > > What very often happens during incubation is some people who were on > this list almost never contribute to the project, and other expected > or unexpected people show up, do great things and get elected as a > result. > > Also, as mentor I will recommend reviewing the list of committers and > PMC members shortly before graduation, to give the opportunity to > people who didn't actually become active to gracefully retire - if the > project governance works it's easy to come back later by becoming > active, and the project benefits from having a roster that reflects > the reality of active contributors. > > So in summary people shouldn't put too much value on the initial list > of committers, it's just that - an initial list, a kind of draft that > will evolve during incubation, and probably evolve a lot for a large > project such as NetBeans. > >> ...I am able to contribute as much as I can at this stage anyways... > > Indeed, and that stays true once incubation starts. Even though an > Apache PMC ultimately makes all the project decisions, they are > expected to listen to their community. The "community" section at > https://community.apache.org/apache-way/apache-project-maturity-model.html > expresses that. > >> ...getting into building a thorough list before hand will >> certainly take time away from higher priority items at this stage... > > Yes, that's why the NetBeans mentors pushed to avoid adding people to > the list of initial committers before the incubation vote starts, as > for a popular project that's a lot of work with no real value as > mentioned above. > > Thanks for your understanding and for your contributions so far! > > -Bertrand, with my NetBeans mentor hat on > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > -- Stian Soiland-Reyes http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9842-9718 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
