At 05:48 14/1/01 -0800, Jon Stevens wrote:
>> I know it's out of context but this neatly summarizes it doesn't it ;) What
>> you may ask - well let me elaborate. When I first started working with
>> Apache peeps it was great - I never heard any complaints or had any issues.
>> It was Stefano who introduced of sorts to it all so if I wanted something I
>> would bug him and it would happen ;)
>>
>> Then I started hearing grumblings from a few people. Usually they involved
>> one of these points
>
>In other words, it is much easier to be critical of the people who are in
>public eye.
not sure what you mean by this.
>Projects which already have a community built up around it and a member is
>willing to sponsor it and the developers make a good match for the ASF. For
>example, I don't think that people who want to release their code as GPL are
>welcome here. :-)
right - well I guess this should be publicised somewhere. What about
projects that "start" here - ie tomcat never had a community before it got
here, nor did velocity I assume, nor possibly some of the regular
expression libs.
>Should we be raked over the coals for our lack of
>interest or ability as a volunteer organization to handle each and every
>request perfectly? I don't think so.
Well I disagree - for your lack of interest you should be but not for your
lack of ability ;)
>Correct. I think that that is a good estimation of me in fact. I tend to be
>short in my responses cause I don't have time to spend an hour sending each
>and every person a beautiful email that will make their day. :-)
I wasn't actually referring to you ;)
>I think that your assumption about management happening behind closed doors
>is 100% incorrect. I would change that to be something along the lines that
>we are all volunteers and extremely busy and if anything *no* management is
>going on and hence the issues that have been coming up.
well how do I know that? I don't know who is on PMC, how many peeps are on
it etc. Decisions are made that effect me as a developer but I have no say
in it - or at least I am not given oportunity to have a say ;) Also members
of Apache have stated they don't feel like they have a say - so ...
somewhere along the lines there is miscommunication.
>Not true at all! You can send email to the PMC mailing lists and get
>responses. We get *very* little email to the Jakarta PMC mailing list from
>the public. Why? You tell me.
how many people know about it? how many people feel they could approach the
list. Even if they approach the list whats th guarentee they will get the
full conversation. I have been cc'ed on discussions and only got half-ideas
of whats going on because not everyone CC's out the mail and again there is
miscommunication ;)
>> I know there is mailing lists that the public is restricted from accessing
>> and only the clique may get in - however why is this necessary ? I
>> understand that there may be - on rare occasions - a need to discuss
>> details under a NDA and thus outside the public eye. However - what about
>> the remainder of the time. Is there any need to exclude the rest of the
>> community?
>
>Ok, so you are asking us to double our workload in order to make you happy?
actually the exact opposite.
>I don't think so. Again, your assumptions about all this "management"
>happening behind closed doors is fully incorrect.
>
>It is important that corporations have the ability to have a place where
>they can email privately to a core select set of individuals and expect to
>get a timely response. That is what the PMC has been serving a role as.
I am not sure why this is needed and couldn't be provided in the open. Even
if this is needed why isn't the rest of the public given access to list
archives - don't you think it would aid communication, understanding and
help build a better community ? ;)
>> This is not the only exclusionary practices I have noticed either. This
>> meeting proposed is another example of practices that (possibly
>> inadvertently) are exclusionary. The vast majority of the jakarta/java
>> apache community would find it impossible to actually participate due to
>> practical reasons. Personally it would cost me about $4000 to go factoring
>> in travel, accomodation and time-off - and a phone call while cheaper would
>> still run me up just under $1000 (depends on mapping to local timezone).
>
>$1000 for a couple hour phone call? I find that impossible to believe. What
>phone company are you using?
Either $4 or $8 a minute from Melbourne, Australia during daytime using
telstra (Australias main provider).
>> For instance - it is somewhat disturbing that the fate of ant is going to
>> be decided at this meeting when the majority of active committers are not
>> present. Even more disturbing is that it is the person who has been focus
>> of conflict on ant and set out in many ways to destroy the community and
>> rebuild it in his own image that will be preciding over the discussion and
>> consequently will have a large say in the matter.
>
>Right. A conclusion was not reached on the mailing list. Therefore the
>situation has been escalated to the PMC level. I see nothing wrong with that
>as that is the same thing that we are having to do with Tomcat.
>> Now I am not saying it is the fault of anyone - I believe the PM have the
>> best intentions at heart and do put in a lot to make it work. However there
>> is the saying "The path to hell is paved with good intentions" ;)
>
>If you really believe we are headed towards hell, then please volunteer to
>help improve it, not make it worse.
What do you think I am trying to do ;) I can't *do* anything at the moment
because my opinion is carries no weight. I am neither member of Apache or a
PMC member and I can't help if I can't participate. I also can't help if I
don't know what needs doing. This is the case when I am just a member of
dev lists.
Consider the following. A while back me and Kevin Burton submitted a unit
testing framework similar to junit with added functional testing aswell
(via HttpUnit and similar projects). We were told thanks but no thanks as
junit was supposed to be coming here. When junit guys decided against
apache for whatever reason (another conclusion inaccessible to public) we
weren't informed and it became clear that there was little interest in a
universal Apache unit testing setup.
I also attempted to try to establish some set of conventions for build
files a while back. Standard targets, standard proeprties, standard
directory structure etc. I asked around and you brought it to PMC IIRC ?
Stefano told me there was basically no interest in it and to wait till
after ApacheCon when you would discuss it (don't know if you did or not).
After ApacheCon there was still no interest so I dropped it.
So I was knocked back trying to improve the technical infrastructure - not
for lack of trying. My conclusion was that basically I had buckleys chance
of getting anything done technically or non-technically unless I got people
to champion my opinion because I have basically no political power.
>Opening the organization has nothing to do with making people more aware of
>things as this portion of the organization is already 100% open.
Oh really - then where can I find out the basis of all your
opinions/decisions in past. Why was project X knocked back? Why did
decision/ruling X get made? What happens to projects that were "in-process"
of being Apache-blessed - ie whatever happened to the content management
project that Stefano was trying to bring here etc.
There is lots of things I don't know. How can I help if I don't know what I
am helping, how I should be helping and what I could be helping?
>> and generally relieve the
>> workload on PMC. It would also be one step closer to building a better
>> community. There could be a few objections but I believe if you are not
>> comfortable saying something in public then you probably shouldn't be
>> saying it in the first place ;)
>
>The workload on the PMC is currently very small. The workload of the
>individual volunteers on the PMC is currently very large. Do you see the
>difference?
I see - but that just emphasizes my point. As you said there is currently
very little management going on and as a result issues have arisen. The PMC
has members who have heavy workloads and lite PMC duties - their PMC duties
consisting of management. See my point ;)
The PMC could be doing much more either directly or through intermediates
but this will never occur as you guys are already overworked. Consequently
allowing other people to participate would get more done. They would take
up the slack and undoubtably think of more interesting directions to go.
If the current PMC still wanted authoritarian control it would still be
possible by channeling only "high quality feeds" up the PMC tree. So lower
down PMCs have to doo the shit kicking while you guys get to make final
decisions. Theres many ways of doing it and you can decided for yourself.
Is more people particpating in the process and presumably a better
resulting organization acceptable for the slight diminish in power you guys
will take. I think so but YMMV ;)
>> This still leaves the problem of realtime/high-bandwidth collaboration. No
>> matter what you do there are going to be people who are excluded for one
>> reason or another but it is best to minimize that. The only solution that I
>> can think of for decent collaboration is probably IRC or something similar.
>> It is still difficuly for the timezone challenged (ie I used to get up at
>> 4:30 am *shudder* Monday morning to participate in certain groups) but
>> usually these effects can be minimized. I am sure there are some irc
>> servers that would be willing to host apache discussions. As a bonus people
>> could even save transcripts so others could see what went down.
>
>Ok, so you are complaining because the VERY FIRST PMC meeting is going to
>make you wake up early in the morning?
Umm - no I am *commenting* that there is little possibility in me being
involved for practical reasons. As I said I have in the past got up at 4:30
am Monday morning to participate in projects I believed in. I believe in
Apaches way but I am barred from particpating due to setup. I find this
unfortunate.
>If you are really that interested in
>things, I'm sure you can suffer having to do so. For what it is worth, I'm
>suffering cause I have to drive an hour in traffic that morning and all you
>need to do is pick up the phone. :-)
;)
Cheers,
Pete
*-----------------------------------------------------*
| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof." |
| - John Kenneth Galbraith |
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