Hi - Jumping in here although some points may be repetitive. (This turned into quite a diatribe, apologies.)
TL/DR - I believe we need to revamp our workflows and record keeping to better serve podlings and we need to teardown much of our website content as it is duplicative of the authoritative foundation documentation. > On Mar 3, 2019, at 10:50 PM, Ross Gardler <r...@gardler.me> wrote: > > That's right Greg. And since we are filling in gaps for people... > > I was originally against the pTLP concept (though I supported the > experiments) or any of the derivatives that came from it. I think I have > changed my position. Largely based on the fact that every single project I've > discussed the ASF with in the last 3-5 years has had a very inaccurate > perception of how the ASF works. I believe a large part of this is due, in > part, to the issues being discussed in this thread. I’ve spent the last day or so reviewing how the Incubator keeps records, does board reporting and build the website. I’ve looked at the top level and content files and directories in the Incubator SVN. This is quite revealing. Lots of good code and several attempts at various tooling at various times. A lot of it is somewhat broken. Podling’s requirements and the world of open development has moved on to new tools which are not well captured in the Incubator’s procedures. The website build was mostly moved to GIT a few years ago. The overwhelming majority of podlings use GIT and not SVN. The Apache Whimsy project has added extremely easy UI for seeing and doing some of the administrative process for a podling. Reporting has become a giant and onerous cat-herding exercise. Those of us with experience with cats know that cats don’t take well to herding. How can the IPMC be of better service? Our record keeping and processing SHOULD know a podling’s status. Much of what was the clutch report is broken. This can be fixed. Bertrand created INCUBATOR-231Cleanup Git-generated Incubator website [1] where we can discuss how to improve the website and finish the conversion. > I do not understand how a foundation which prides itself in having very > little bureaucratic red tape can be seen as having so much red tape. The > projects I talk to just want to build software. It used to be that the ASF > focused on running the legal and operational aspects of the foundation > projects and developers on projects wrote code. I'm not sure that's true > anymore. True. The Incubator is caring about reports and quick legal perfection at the expense of community development. The documentation is overblown. I think that 16 guides on the Incubator site can be reorganized and reduced. These need to redone to clearly focus on which Foundation committees are authorities that will help podlings on their path. For example why? https://incubator.apache.org/guides/names.html When this is authoritative: http://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/naming > > We need to fix it. Yes, for example why do we have "The Incubator PMC MAY consider the termination of a project for violation of these branding guidelines.” on the bottom of https://incubator.apache.org/guides/branding.html. Why is the Incubator website like the line oriented Adventure73 with dungeon rooms where dwarves appeared and often threw an axe at you? This is completely unfriendly and unnecessary. I’m in the Incubator to help, I’m not here as the Apache Police. If anyone on a TLP has paid attention to how the Board handles issues then you will know that private nudging is used long before any private hammer is thrown. > > I look forward to hearing how the IPMC will seek to strip down the > bureaucracy and get back to mentoring the incoming projects on how the ASF is > structured so they can get (relatively) quick and clear answers to their > questions. We need to refactor and justify every single incubator guide. There really aren’t too many requirements that are unique to podlings. And these should be easy to find and understand this is all that the Incubator should provide. Any content that the overall foundation has must be used as is and not duplicated often inaccurately. If anyone has a question about trademarks or a license’s classification then if we know it we can answer but the definitive answer should come from the Apache committee and guidance in email answers should refer to that as well. If you are on the IPMC and are also a license / release expert then join the Legal Committee and Infra’s distribution/release policy volunteers. The IPMC has tooling (maybe broken) to identify podling releases and could publish on general and undertake a review without the podling even having to ask. With the correct tooling the Mentor can be informed and take the best action based on their understanding of the community to rectify the situation. Let’s do everything we can to make the Incubator a direct guide to the ASF. We’ve never out and out retired a podling. Let’s cut out all the threats and negativity. If we think that official foundation documents need to be updated then do that and don’t write new guidance! Regards, Dave > > Ross > [1] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/INCUBATOR-231 > ________________________________________ > From: Greg Stein <gst...@gmail.com> > Sent: Sunday, March 3, 2019 10:1Let's 9 PM > To: general@incubator.apache.org > Subject: Re: [DISCUSS] Responsibilities and Improvements (was: Re: Whimsy > general@ subs check (was: .... introduce "[DISCUSS]" threads for podling ... > release candidates)) > > On Sun, Mar 3, 2019 at 10:37 PM Ross Gardler <r...@gardler.me> wrote: > >> If a podling is a committee in its own right then it can be empowered to >> act on behalf of the board and this its releases can be an act of the >> foundation. >> >> ... > >> Podlings would only become full TLPs once they have demonstrated their >> ability to do formal releases. >> > > The above pair of concepts was offered in $priorCycle as "provisional TLPs" > (pTLP). I believe the idea ended when Sam pointed out that if a pTLP is > trusted, then why not just call it a TLP and trust it to label its releases > appropriately? Thus, just create TLPs immediately for a "podling" > > [ I know Ross knows this; but for $others who may want to look at > historical proposals, and compare/contrast to current discussion ... search > for "pTLP" ] > > Cheers, > -g > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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
