Hi all, I just wanted to bring back a short summary of a discussion we had with Craig Russel on a private list regarding the role of podling mentors in the release approval process. And as there are currently many thoughts and discussions going on about these topics, I thought it would be good to have the essence of the discussion public.
Basically the point was when mentors should vote. In the IPMC Vote only or already in the Podlings Vote. Currently, the rules state that the approval of a podling release can only be given by IPMC Vote, see [1] and [2]. Both these documents do not mention the “mentor” explicitly but only speak of the podling and the IPMC. Also, the role of the mentor does say nothing about releases [3] and describes the mentor (as I read it) more as a lawyer of the podling with regards to the IPMC (and not vice versa). On the other hand, with the current dimension of the incubator, there is a huge “load” of approvals put on the IPMC. So I thought if it wouldn’t be possible to discuss and perhaps redefine the mentor role a bit with regards to release approval or voting. My observation is, that often times the IPMC vote consists mostly of votes from mentors (or PPMCs who happen to be also IPMC members) and from very few other IPMC members. I also think that this makes sense, as mentors follow the projects closely and can have an eye on the specifics of the project and have a strong relation to the project which makes them decide to vote for the project. On the other hand it would be a too big of a change (I guess) to simply skip the IPMC Vote and change it to a “Mentor-only” vote (and also Craig raised a lot of reasonable concerns and “technical” difficulties about what changes this would impose). But perhaps one could find a sensible compromise to e.g. motivate mentors to vote in the PPMC Vote and also state this in the IPMC Vote thread (how many mentors / IPMC members already voted). This would make it easier for the other IPMC members to scan through these mails and see if they have the feeling that they should also check the release or if they feel confident enough about the podling. And if 3 IPMC members already voted in the PPMC Vote one could simply close the Vote 72h later if no one else went active without big overhead. As I understood Craig this goes in the same direction as he (and also others) think we should go. Best Julian [1] https://incubator.apache.org/policy/incubation.html#releases [2] https://incubator.apache.org/guides/releasemanagement.html [3] https://incubator.apache.org/policy/roles_and_responsibilities.html#mentor
