Hi, This month’s mentor topic is something that appears frequently during incubation but can be tricky to interpret: when a podling relies heavily on one or two individuals.
Many podlings begin with a small group of very active contributors. Early focus on work isn’t unusual and can help a project make rapid progress. Over time, however, projects need to broaden participation so that decisions, reviews, and releases do not depend on a small group. Mentors often need to judge whether this pattern is simply part of early development or signals that the community is not expanding. Some prompts to get the discussion started: - What signals suggest that a podling may be becoming too dependent on a small number of contributors? - How do you tell the difference between a strong early driver and a long-term bottleneck? - What approaches have helped encourage a wider group of contributors to participate in discussions, reviews, or releases? - Are there examples where a strong central contributor actually helped a podling mature faster? Please share short examples, lessons learned, or patterns you’ve observed while mentoring podlings. Kind regards, Justin 1. https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/Practicing+The+Apache+Way 2. https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/Governance+in+Practice 3. https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/INCUBATOR/Best+Practices+for+Mentors --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
