on 1/14/01 6:42 PM, "Peter Donald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 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.
What I mean is that I think that the ASF members as well as the PMC members
are attempting to do the best job that we can possibly do (remember, we are
VOLUNTEERS). Sure, we make mistakes, however getting all pissed off at us
because we do make mistakes is really absurd in my opinion and I think that
it is a lot easier to be critical than it is to step up and help fix the
problems.
>> 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.
Actually, Velocity and Tomcat did already have communities from the point of
view in that they had several developers (including ASF members) who were
willing to be part of the development from day one. In fact, when I was
explaining to the PMC why I wanted to create the Velocity project, that was
a specific concern of both James and Craig. I addressed that concern by
simply pointing to the fact that we had 3-4 people working on the project at
the time already.
As for the Regexp project, that was sponsored by myself...an ASF member as
well as James Davidson, another ASF member. That was enough to pass the vote
at the PMC level at the time.
> Well I disagree - for your lack of interest you should be but not for your
> lack of ability ;)
I'm going to assume that was made in jest. :-)
>> 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 understand that. But as a ASF/PMC member, I was. :-)
>> 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.
Yawn...
<http://jakarta.apache.org/site/whoweare.html>
AND (links to the above page from:)
<http://jakarta.apache.org/site/roles.html>
> 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.
Actually, you are given much of an opportunity to have a say. That is what
you are doing now, correct? You are voicing your opinions. This is something
that I do a lot on. The people who sit back and watch things don't have as
much of a "say" because they are not taking part in the grand scheme of
things.
At the next ASF meeting I will nominate you to become a member because you
have been contributing a lot and I would like to see you contribute more.
That is how it works.
>> 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 ;)
Great suggestion! Submit a patch that includes the PMC address more
prominently on the website.
In other words, again, we are volunteers and we aren't going to think of
each and every single little detail. We expect to get feedback from the
community on things. It may be obvious to you at this point that we are
missing a PMC email address on the website, however, to us, we have a
bazillion other things to worry about. Therefore, it is up to the community
to step up and help us out.
>>> 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.
Well, the above suggestion would increase my workload unless you have a way
to intelligently filter messages that should go to the public view and those
that shouldn't.
>> 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 ? ;)
Because those archives may contain NDA sensitive material. I thought we
already covered that. Are you now saying that you expect me to filter the
archives in order to provide them for public view? Again, you are increasing
my workload and I'm already busy enough.
> Either $4 or $8 a minute from Melbourne, Australia during daytime using
> telstra (Australias main provider).
I think you can do better than that.
<http://www.google.com/search?q=cheap+phone+rates+from+australia>
This link even lowers that to something like $0.027/min (USD)
<http://www.callback4u.com/rates.htm>
> 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.
Ok, so then lets fix that by nominating you for membership in the ASF for
the next round of voting (I believe it happens every ApacheCon).
> 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.
Actually, to clarify, the JUnit people decided to not use us...not because
we were being slow, but for their own reasons. As far as the
miscommunication...again, we are not perfect, nor do we set the expectations
that we are.
> 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.
Again, just because things take time or not picked up immediately doesn't
mean that they are dropped entirely. Again, you are expecting VOLUNTEERS to
cater to your every suggestion. I don't think that is a reasonable
expectation.
In fact, I DID bring it up to the PMC level and there was interest, however
at the time, I didn't have the energy to follow it through and no one else
did either.
I also didn't see you actually take the effort to make your suggestions
reality. For example, Sam has been working with all the projects he is
listing on his Tinderbox page in order to improve them and upgrade them to
work with his system. Did you take that extra effort? No. You got fed up and
dropped it as well.
> 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.
It has nothing to do with political power and does have *everything* to do
with championing your opinion. In the ASF, political power buys you
absolutely nothing because none of the members other than the people on the
board have any final say over what happens. This isn't like a corporation
where you can force people to do things for you.
> 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
Give me real concrete examples please because what you are working on at
this point is entirely speculation.
> - ie whatever happened to the content management
> project that Stefano was trying to bring here etc.
I have absolutely no idea of what you are talking about here.
> 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?
Stand up and take charge instead of sitting back and being the victim.
That is what you don't understand about this volunteer organization. You
think that everything has to be political when in fact, this organization is
merely run by popular vote (the +1 system) and people willing to stand up
and actually do work.
> 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 ;)
Yes, I see your point, however, the work involved with the PMC is very
small. The problems have arrived not from the PMC level, but from an overall
growth level. We have been growing like mad and will/have be/been experience
growth pains. Again, we are not perfect. I need to hammer that into your
head more.
My point is:
If the PMC was open, it would still make mistakes.
> 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.
Not necessarily. Having more people also increases the amount that needs to
be managed.
> 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 ;)
That is exactly what is already going on!
> 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.
"due to setup"? What does that mean exactly? Because you think that a phone
call costs more than it does?
-jon
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