On Thu, Mar 6, 2025 at 8:08 PM Dave Fisher <w...@apache.org> wrote:
> > Does it have to be strict in where it takes place in the process? The > main > > issue AIUI, is leaving the name search until close to graduation - > throwing > > away possibly years of building their “brand”. ASAP at the start of > > incubation would avoid that issue - but is it a big deal whether it’s > just > > before being accepted or very soon after? > > Yes, this has proven to be a serious and expensive issue for a podling > recently - in this case Apache Fury was denied. > > And for another (Apache Hunter now Otava) it is a slow problem as changing > resources for Infra is not automatic and we get into a series of back and > forth to test that every resource has been properly adjusted. > > It really is a problem. I think that it is now important enough that the > Champion should be responsible for this. If a prospective project really > loves their name and yet they cannot use it at the ASF then it’s only fair > to have that happen before spending years in the Incubator. >From the point of view of a podling project that had to change their name (Apache Otava, née Hunter) I would say the name change wasn't so time consuming for us, but appears to include a lot of unnecessary work for the mentors and infra team. Yes, we can blame the name change for missing one of our monthly reports, but then we missed another one anyway, so maybe it wasn't entirely because of the eventual consistency of our name changeprocess... The one thing that needs to be considered and provided if the name should be chosen and approved before triggering all kinds of incubator infra resources, is a place for the prospective podling to come together and brainstorm a new name. At least for us, ASF was always the natural gravtation point, and we didn't invest in any outside communications channels before applying to join ASF. So it could be useful to - for example - provide a mailing list or slack channel for incoming projects, just not all the git, website, apache.org username, etc... henrik
