AJAX Toolkit Framework Proposal

[Sylvain Wallez]

Leo Simons wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 04:14:22PM +0100, Sylvain Wallez wrote:
>  
>> I'm quite puzzled by this proposal. As I understand it, its mainly about
>> a set of Eclipse plugins for Ajax applications and the Zimbra library
>> that, among other features, provides a set of SWT-like widgets.
>>    
>
> How is that puzzling?
>  

Because the proposal mixes two different concerns, the runtime and the
IDE (see the "subproject" and "no tie in" discussion) and because
generic tooling is something unusual at the ASF.

>> So the questions are:
>> - is the ASF the place for Eclipse extensions? I don't deny the ability to _existing_ project to host their tooling, but this isn't the case here.
>>    
>
> IMHO that's a very valid question to which the current answer from the incubator is "yes, if there's sufficient interest from existing ASF members" with "sufficient" somewhat under discussion. I'll suggest that changing the answer to that question should be tackled independently of this proposal.
>
> IANAL. But from talking with Cliff at AC it seems there's not neccessarily a licensing barrier either.
>  

That's not a licensing question, but more a general OSS community
question. The ASF isn't alone in the OSS world, and there has been some
recent precedents where incubating projects have made other OSS
organizations uncomfortable. I don't say the OSS world should be
technically partitioned (e.g. server-side at Apache and IDE at Eclipse),
but that we should at least try to play nice with other organizations
and coordinate our activities.

Back in August, Cliff proposed a few modifications [1] to the incubation
proposal process, and IMO the current proposal shows how much these
modifications are needed.

>> - why incubate an Ajax library that none of the current ASF projects
>> uses nor plans to use, unless I missed something?
>>    
>
> for all the usual reasons. "ties with existing ASF projects" is a question
> we sometimes ask but the rationale for even asking the question has never
> been written down in an email before (I think). I think what you're "missing"
> is 2 years of history in how we're doing incubation (which often involves
> "stuff that no existing ASF project uses or plans to use" when incubation
> started, like, ehm, Harmony, or Geronimo, or SpamAssassin, or ...)
>
> (...)
>  

See my answer to Sam: the current proposal is very different from
SpamAssassin or Harmony.

> I personally feel that wanting to draw projects into the ASF *just* because
> other ASF projects want to use that stuff is Pretty Bad(tm). It should be
> easy and accepted and encouraged for ASF projects to use stuff that lives
> and breathes outside of the ASF if you ask me.
>  

Sure, and that's what many projects actually do (and you know how many
external dependencies Cocoon has!). Now I don't see why it is bad to
propose to an external project to join the ASF, to ensure more
visibility and long-term sustainability when that external project
already has a lots of merits and is used by several ASF projects.

This is a win-win situation: we help the growth and healthiness of the
external project, and by doing that we solidify the foundations on which
our own projects are built.

> (...)
>
> Hmm. I think your email is more puzzling to me than the original proposal :-)
> (A heavyweight java-based IDE for doing what's essentially designed as
> "lightweight" stuff...it seems easier to just fix the embed-java-in-the-
> browser problem, like Stefano is doing with Piggy Bank...oh well...)
>  

Hehe, this comment actually shows how confusing the proposal is: it's
not about embedding fat clients in the browser, but about on one side a
general-purpose IDE and on the other side a specific client-side library.

Sylvain

[1] http://tinyurl.com/bfaoy

--
Sylvain Wallez                        Anyware Technologies
http://bluxte.net                     http://www.anyware-tech.com
Apache Software Foundation Member     Research & Technology Director


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[Sanjiva Weerawarana]

On Wed, 2005-12-21 at 03:01 -0800, Leo Simons wrote:
>
> I have this urge to set up an "Under construction" sign on the incubator front
> page with a subtitle along the lines of "closed for renovations"...

+1, to give us a bit of soul searching time. We should put a cap on the
renovation time - 2 weeks seems ok to me given the holiday season.

[With lots of apologies to the proponents of the project :(.]

Sanjiva.


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[Bertrand L. Delacretaz]

Le 21 déc. 05, à 12:01, Leo Simons a écrit :

> On Tue, Dec 20, 2005 at 04:49:29PM -0800, Martin Cooper wrote:
>> Some comments:
> <snip/>
>
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 10:54:03AM +0100, Raphaël Luta wrote:
>> To me it raises all the possible incubation warning bells:
> <snip/>

Same feelings here, I agree with Martin's and Raphaël's concerns.

> ...I feel a bit sorry for the Zimbra guys..

To me the right thing to do if you were an "outside" company trying to
join the ASF with a cool project, would be to build interest inside the
ASF first and to get to know each other.

In other words, if I were Zimbra (but I'm not ;-) I'd get involved with
some ASF projects where my stuff makes sense (Cocoon, JSF, Tapestry,
you name it) to show us how good that stuff is, and most importantly to
build relationships before coming up with a proposal where we (or most
of us at least) recognize no one.

(I hope) the ASF is (still) about communities, not primarily code.

-Bertrand


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[Adam Peller-5]

Sanjiva,

My bad. I just meant the AJAX toolkit portion of Zimbra.

-adam



                                                                           
             Sanjiva                                                      
             Weerawarana                                                  
             <sanjiva@opensour                                          To
             ce.lk>                    general@...        
                                                                        cc
             12/21/2005 03:33          Andy Pflaum                        
             AM                        <andy.pflaum@...>, Chris    
                                       Boni <chris.boni@...>, David
                                       Boloker/Somers/IBM@IBMUS, Krishna  
             Please respond to         Akella/Austin/IBM@IBMUS, Ross      
                  general              Dargahi <ross@...>, Sam      
                                       Ruby/Raleigh/IBM@IBMUS, scott      
                                       dietzen <scott.dietzen@...>,
                                       Craig Becker/Austin/IBM@IBMUS,      
                                       Leugim A Bustelo/Austin/IBM@IBMUS,  
                                       Becky Gibson/Westford/IBM@Iris,    
                                       Javier H                            
                                       Pedemonte/Austin/IBM@IBMUS, Donald  
                                       Sedota/Austin/IBM@IBMUS            
                                                                   Subject
                                       Re: AJAX Toolkit Framework Proposal
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           




On Tue, 2005-12-20 at 23:18 -0500, Adam Peller wrote:
>
> 2) The other subproject is Zimbra itself, but there may be other runtimes
> here as well.  As you say, the main goal here is to provide layers of
> abstraction to hide the traditional browser tricks and quirk modes to
make
> browser-based programming more productive, and Zimbra does this well.

Did you really mean all of Zimbra or just the toolkit part?? I believe
Zimbra includes an email client platform as well .. and something
they're pushing with a dual license model (which clearly does not sit
well with us once code starts coming in from other contributors).

Thanks for the long explanation!

Sanjiva.



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[Jim Jagielski]

On Dec 21, 2005, at 4:50 AM, Ted Leung wrote:

> On Dec 20, 2005, at 4:49 PM, Martin Cooper wrote:
>
>> Personally, I am less than happy at seeing yet another large project
>> proposed from a corporate source (and IBM at that), along with a  
>> dozen new
>> committers who have not earned their merit at the ASF as most  
>> committers
>> have. I feel the ASF is losing its way, and becoming a repository for
>> corporate open-sourcing along with taking on responsibility for  
>> building
>> communities around corporate code bases. I suspect I'm in the  
>> minority at
>> the ASF, and I'm undoubtedly in the minority here in the  
>> incubator. But
>> there doesn't seem to be a way for the incubator to say "no  
>> thanks", other
>> than by a podling failing the incubation process, and that seems  
>> wrong to
>> me.
>
> The merits of the particular proposal aside,  I wanted to comment  
> on this paragraph.   This year at ApacheCon I was surprised to find  
> that a number of people also feel that the ASF is growing far too  
> quickly.   I know that are some people who believe that the growth  
> that we are experiencing is indicative of our success.  
> Unfortunately, I don't agree with that.    I think that the  
> incubation process is setting an incredibly low bar for access to  
> the Apache brand name, and this is a bad thing.   Corporations see  
> the value of the brand name, that's why they want to come here and  
> are willing to put up with all our overhead.
>

Unless we are very careful, Incubator will become a much
larger mess than the Jakarta project ever was... Which
would be quite ironic.

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[rubys]

Raphaël Luta wrote:

Excellent post!  It is nice to see somebody take the time to review the
actual proposal.

Overall, there is clearly strong interest in AJAX at the ASF, whether it
be based on Zimbra or Dojo or whatever.  Furthermore, the proposal needs
to be revised, particularly to incorporate the people who have expressed
an interest in participating and creating ties to other projects.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Criteria
> ========
>
> * Meritocracy:
>
>   I don't believe it looking at the committer list.
>   Who's going to argue with his VP of engineering ? To create a real
>   meritocracy, you can't have an established hierarchy in the committership.

Valid concern - needs to be worked.

> * Community:
>
>   none

A bit overstated.  There is a community, but it has yet to be incubated
and certified as following the Apache way.

> * Core developers:
>
>   no existing Apache committer or Apache member

That's the initial proposal.  The proposal was immediately was met with
several volunteers.

> * Alignment:
>
>   no simple mission statement but trying two roll out 2 complementary
>   sub projects into a single community.

My fault for not catching that one.  I have stated that the goal is to
build a single community.  See below.

> Warning signs
> =============
>
> * Orphaned products:
>
>   Apparently no

I'm not certain what you are trying to say here.

> * Inexperience with open-source:
>
>   Limited experience if I judge by the number of OSS related hits tied to the
>   proposed committer names on Google. Only 3 names get some hits.
>   You can also how Zimbra as a corp currently gets it here:
>   http://www.zimbra.com/community/

Valid concern.

> * Homogenous developers/salaried developers:
>
>   Definitely yes, all work for 2 companies with strong hierarchical ties in
>   the proposed committer base

Again, the proposal was immediately met with volunteers.  I will state
that everybody involved fully understands that the current level of
diversity certainly would not meet the incubator's exit criteria for a
project - and everybody supports the goal of building a diverse community.

> * No ties to Apache products:
>
>   True

Again, immediately upon seeing the initial post, several people
suggested a number of possible ties.

> * Fascination with Apache brand:
>
>   True, just see prc@ activity.

I understand how you could see it that way.  For those not on the PRC, I
sent a draft email yesterday which essentially said that discussions
were underway with the ASF and gave an overview of what AJAX is.

To help you see it another way, take a look at the following link:

http://ajaxian.com/archives/2005/12/apache_ajax_too.html

AJAX is hot.  People outside are watching.  IBM and Zimbra will
undoubtably get a lot of press people asking questions.  My experience
has been that such people are well trained in saying "no comment", but
the fact is that there is interest, and at some point it makes sense to
meet such interest with facts.

> As is, I can't see a single reason to support the proposal ans see several to
> vote a strong -1 on it in its current form :
>
> - The proposal is too large to incubate, it's hard enough to create a community
>   from scratch around a single well-defined goal and codebase, rolling 2
>   together is suicide in my book.

I don't mean to minimize the concern, but we have incubated larger.  As
we have seen in this and other donations - IP lawyers are very
interested in clearly delineating the precise origins of each component.
  As such, we've overstressed the separate nature of these pieces.

Just to be clear: the goal is to build one community.

> - I don't see any benefit for the ASF and several drawbacks (more
>   hard work and strain on resources, possible PR complications, additionnal
>   strain on friendly relations with other OSS groups like Eclipse)

There definitely is interest in AJAX at the ASF.  If not Zimbra, then
Dojo.  And as Sanjiva and Dims have eloquently put it

     I have no patience for any kind of "this space is mine, you keep to
     yours" type nonsense. I totally agree that the only discussion here
     should be does ASF want to take this on or not, not on whether
     Eclipse folks feel it "rightfully" belongs there or not.

and

     I really don't mind if Apache gets into Eclipse tools/plugins. We do
     have Eclipse plugins in Axis2 project. We also have another plugin
     for running Geronimo inside WTP. So it's not a new thing and the
     proposal has my +1.  Please pardon me for being blunt, I don't
     really care about what happens inside IBM/Eclipse or who said
     what/when. All i know is that we have a proposal in front of us and
     as a community we take it or leave it or ask for changes if we think
     they are needed.

> - There's no mentor yet ! Bad sign...

Again, two volunteers within moments of posting alone.

> - The odds of this project of successfully exiting the Incubator based on the
>   diversity of community criteria seem very low to me: there are too many
>   initial committers and most of them will have strong internal communication
>   channels which will be invisible from the community.

This will all move to mailing lists.

> - I don't believe most of the proposed committers would get committership
>   on their own merit and I would hate the Incubator to become an easy way to
>   bypass the meritocratic model of the ASF: work at IBM and get a free
>   committership when they donate the codebase to the ASF ! Most of the time
>   you end up with paid-for-committers that only last as long as they're told
>   to work on the project. (This is not pure paranoia ;) just look at Pluto if
>   you want to see it in effect)

Valid concern.

> In summary I see this proposal as a high risk, low value offer to the ASF
> and would definitely pass on it.

I don't want to minimize the risk, but I do think you have
underestimated the interest/value.

- Sam Ruby

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[Sam Ruby-2]

Ted Leung wrote:
> On Dec 20, 2005, at 4:49 PM, Martin Cooper wrote:
>
> Corporations see the  value of the brand name, that's why
> they want to come here and are  willing to put up with all our overhead.

I can't speak for all corporations, but I can speak to the proposals
that I have dealt with at my corporation.

IBM is fully aware that places like DeveloperWorks and SourceForge
exist.  The prevalent view is that such places tend to end up being
fishbowls whereby developers can work and be observed.  By contrast, the
ASF is viewed as a place to build a diverse and sustainable community.

This discussion, the attendant angst and so called "overhead", are
recognized as part of the package, i.e., necessary to establish the
desired diversity and community involvement.

- Sam Ruby

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[Mike Milinkovich]

> Big assumption right there. I'll assert there's a reasonable
> chance I understand what's under the hood of the Eclipse
> platform quite well. IIRC I helped the Equinox people decide
> on what to put in there at some point...

Mea culpa. I was reacting to the comment about the "heavyweight IDE". We
often battle some misperceptions of the Eclipse technology stack, so it has
become a bit of a reflex. My apologies.


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[Mads Toftum]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 01:50:28AM -0800, Ted Leung wrote:
> The merits of the particular proposal aside,  I wanted to comment on  
> this paragraph.   This year at ApacheCon I was surprised to find that  
> a number of people also feel that the ASF is growing far too  
> quickly.   I know that are some people who believe that the growth  
> that we are experiencing is indicative of our success.  
> Unfortunately, I don't agree with that.    I think that the  
> incubation process is setting an incredibly low bar for access to the  
> Apache brand name, and this is a bad thing.

Very much agreed - I've been worried about the same for quite a while.

vh

Mads Toftum
--
`Darn it, who spiked my coffee with water?!' - lwall


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[Garrett Rooney]

On 12/21/05, Ted Leung <twleung@...> wrote:

> I'd love to have a good AJAX project here at Apache, but I'm not at
> all convinced that this is the best way to get it.   I also talked to
> Alex Russell at Dojo about coming to the ASF (at this year's OSCON),
> and the overhead thing was already on his radar.   Perhaps we ought
> to be more concerned about making ourselves attractive to projects
> like Dojo.  We already know that the corporations see the value of
> the Apache brand.   Ask yourself why a small innovative project like
> Dojo would rather stay out of the ASF.   Wouldn't they benefit more
> from the Apache name than IBM and Zimbra?   An Apache branded AJAX
> toolkit would be seriously looked at just because of the branding.
> I would hate to be a party to helping a so-so AJAX toolkit displace a
> really good one, just because the so-so one came to the incubator and
> the other one didn't.

+1

-garrett

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[Raphaël Luta]

Sam Ruby wrote:
> Raphaël Luta wrote:
> <snip>
>
> Overall, there is clearly strong interest in AJAX at the ASF, whether it
> be based on Zimbra or Dojo or whatever.  Furthermore, the proposal needs
> to be revised, particularly to incorporate the people who have expressed
> an interest in participating and creating ties to other projects.
>

I completely agree that there's a strong interest in AJAX from many Apache
communities, Portals included. It's something many people in many communities
are trying to figure out how to best tackle, however so far I've never seen
Zimbra mentioned in an Apache community in this regard.

> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>> Criteria
>> ========
>>

<sniping some parts to keep mail shorter>

>> * Community:
>>
>>   none
>
>
> A bit overstated.  There is a community, but it has yet to be incubated
> and certified as following the Apache way.
>

I can't see any existing community described in the proposal, I can't find
any public forum about Zimbra AJAX toolkit and everything I get from Google is
press releases, whitepapers and conferences.
If you could point me to an existing online public community, I'll gladly admit
I am overstating the current situation.

>> * Core developers:
>>
>>   no existing Apache committer or Apache member
>
>
> That's the initial proposal.  The proposal was immediately was met with
> several volunteers.
>

It was indeed met with interest from several Apache committers, that doesn't
make them core developers though since they are not part of the current
development effort.
It does show a potential for community building.

>> Warning signs
>> =============
>>
>> * Orphaned products:
>>
>>   Apparently no
>
>
> I'm not certain what you are trying to say here.
>

Trying to express that the toolkit doesn't seem to be orphaned as it is probably
actively used by Zimbra other products.

>> * Homogenous developers/salaried developers:
>>
>>   Definitely yes, all work for 2 companies with strong hierarchical
>> ties in
>>   the proposed committer base
>
>
> Again, the proposal was immediately met with volunteers.  I will state
> that everybody involved fully understands that the current level of
> diversity certainly would not meet the incubator's exit criteria for a
> project - and everybody supports the goal of building a diverse community.
>

My point was more than given the huge number of initial committers I would
expect it to grow to at least 35-30 committers with all new committers from
external parties before such a community could be called "balanced".
Starting from scratch and getting to this level is a *huge* task, especially
if you don't have another established community as a userbase.

>
> To help you see it another way, take a look at the following link:
>
> http://ajaxian.com/archives/2005/12/apache_ajax_too.html
>
> AJAX is hot.  People outside are watching.  IBM and Zimbra will
> undoubtably get a lot of press people asking questions.  My experience
> has been that such people are well trained in saying "no comment", but
> the fact is that there is interest, and at some point it makes sense to
> meet such interest with facts.
>

I'm seeing and am actually actively looking because Ajax has some
critical impact on web applications and portals in particular.
One of the key comments I frequently see is:

Why does <this/that project> have to be in the ASF ?

and frankly I can't think of a good reason why the ASF would want to
kickstart a brand new AJAX community. Several other exists, are working
well and are compatible with our IP, why create something new within the
ASF rather than join those existing communities ?

>> As is, I can't see a single reason to support the proposal ans see
>> several to
>> vote a strong -1 on it in its current form :
>>
>> - The proposal is too large to incubate, it's hard enough to create a
>> community
>>   from scratch around a single well-defined goal and codebase, rolling 2
>>   together is suicide in my book.
>
>
> I don't mean to minimize the concern, but we have incubated larger.  As
> we have seen in this and other donations - IP lawyers are very
> interested in clearly delineating the precise origins of each component.
>  As such, we've overstressed the separate nature of these pieces.
>
> Just to be clear: the goal is to build one community.
>

Yes we have incubated larger but not always to very good results and
tackling something with as many different pieces is definitely a big
challenge.

>> - I don't see any benefit for the ASF and several drawbacks (more
>>   hard work and strain on resources, possible PR complications,
>> additionnal
>>   strain on friendly relations with other OSS groups like Eclipse)
>
>
> There definitely is interest in AJAX at the ASF.  If not Zimbra, then
> Dojo.  And as Sanjiva and Dims have eloquently put it
>
>     I have no patience for any kind of "this space is mine, you keep to
>     yours" type nonsense. I totally agree that the only discussion here
>     should be does ASF want to take this on or not, not on whether
>     Eclipse folks feel it "rightfully" belongs there or not.
>
> and
>
>     I really don't mind if Apache gets into Eclipse tools/plugins. We do
>     have Eclipse plugins in Axis2 project. We also have another plugin
>     for running Geronimo inside WTP. So it's not a new thing and the
>     proposal has my +1.  Please pardon me for being blunt, I don't
>     really care about what happens inside IBM/Eclipse or who said
>     what/when. All i know is that we have a proposal in front of us and
>     as a community we take it or leave it or ask for changes if we think
>     they are needed.
>

I personnally feel otherwise: one of the ASF pillar is open cooperation.
We do our best to make it happen within our communities and I feel we
should do our best to make it happen with external communities as well.
There are some reasons sometimes when ASF decides to start a project
that can be percieved as unecessarily competing with other established
groups, IP being the primary one, and I have no problem with that.
However, simply disregarding the opinions of other communities is to
me the opposite of open cooperation and consensus based approach we're
trying to promote.

I think it's a worthwhile goal of spreading our vision to newly incubated
communities but if it just makes us look as arrogant bastards from the
rest of the world, I definitely feel we should restrain.

>> - There's no mentor yet ! Bad sign...
>
>
> Again, two volunteers within moments of posting alone.
>

None of them qualified under the current incubation policy.

>
>> In summary I see this proposal as a high risk, low value offer to the ASF
>> and would definitely pass on it.
>
>
> I don't want to minimize the risk, but I do think you have
> underestimated the interest/value.
>

I think I understand the value and interest of AJAX. I just don't see
how this proposal brings value to the ASF. Can you tell me what you
see as benefits (for the ASF) for incubating this project ?

--
Raphaël Luta - raphael@...
Apache Portals - Enterprise Portal in Java
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[rajdavies]

I Also share these concerns - is there currently a process to have  
continuous reviews throughout the entire life-cycle of all new and  
existing projects - to ensure that everything under the 'apache'  
brand is and will continue to be 'worthy' ?

Sorry if there's already a process in place - I'm new :)

cheers,

Rob


On 21 Dec 2005, at 15:18, Mads Toftum wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 01:50:28AM -0800, Ted Leung wrote:
>> The merits of the particular proposal aside,  I wanted to comment on
>> this paragraph.   This year at ApacheCon I was surprised to find that
>> a number of people also feel that the ASF is growing far too
>> quickly.   I know that are some people who believe that the growth
>> that we are experiencing is indicative of our success.
>> Unfortunately, I don't agree with that.    I think that the
>> incubation process is setting an incredibly low bar for access to the
>> Apache brand name, and this is a bad thing.
>
> Very much agreed - I've been worried about the same for quite a while.
>
> vh
>
> Mads Toftum
> --
> `Darn it, who spiked my coffee with water?!' - lwall
>
>
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[robert burrell donkin-2]

On 12/21/05, Ted Leung <twleung@...> wrote:

>
> On Dec 20, 2005, at 12:19 PM, Sylvain Wallez wrote:
>
> > Sam Ruby wrote:
> >> Sylvain Wallez wrote:
> >>
> >> As a general rule, the ASF doesn't go out "inviting", people
> >> within the ASF either start a new project, or projects come to us.
> >
> > You're playing with words. Sure, there's no formal invitation
> > process. Now ASF members can approach projects they find
> > interesting and "suggest them to submit a proposal to the ASF", for
> > the greatest benefit of both the coming and existing ASF projects.
> >
> > Thinking more about it, the fact that the ASF isn't supposed to
> > invite projects seems to go against the ASF meritocratic rules. You
> > should not ask for being a committer: you are voted in when other
> > committers consider you deserve it. And you can reject the offer.
> > Same for membership. Why couldn't it also apply to projects that
> > already follow the Apache way and are of interest to the
> > Foundation's projects?
> >
> > On the other hand, proposals like this one, originating from
> > commercial entities, really look to me as "pushing the ASF door
> > open", even if the incubator is supposed to ensure community
> > diversity and healthiness before graduating as a real project.
>
> If we don't invite projects then we become driven by the projects
> that come to us, which have been overwhelmingly sponsored by
> corporate interests.   Saying we don't have an agenda is really
> saying that we're happy to accept someone else's agenda, which I am
> certainly not happy with.

one reason for not issuing formal invitations from the ASF is that
we'd need to create enough process to ensure this happens with
oversight and so on.

IMHO informal negotiations lead by interested members would be a
better approach. this is allowed ATM but perhaps isn't working too
well right now or maybe just takes longer...

- robert

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[robert burrell donkin-2]

On 12/21/05, Leo Simons <mail@...> wrote:

<snip>

> The ASF isn't very good at "saying no", at least not very loudly. All our
> processes are geared at "saying yes" the right way and only if we feel
> comfortable. It seems we have something to learn here, and its a bit scary
> since this may have further negative impact on the subject at hand (you can
> just imagine all the bile..."Man, this project really sucks! Even the ASF
> didn't want it, and they ship more crap than any other open source
> organisation!").

LOL

or maybe: "ASF has turned this project down! Must be great! We've
found the next JBoss." ;)

- robert

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[JAMES Nightly Build System]

> The merits of the particular proposal aside

We should always be judging the merits of each proposal.  Failing to do so
might well be part of the problem.

> I think that the incubation process is setting an incredibly
> low bar for access to the Apache brand name

And we require disclaimers and clear notice that projects ARE in the
Incubator.  Look at how the folks are complaining that we are trying to make
the projects look different by being in the Incubator.  They ARE different.
And they MUST be Incubator branded, and follow Incubation rules.

> Unless we are very careful, Incubator will become a much
> larger mess than the Jakarta project

Unlike, Jakarta, the Incubator scales better --- at least in theory ---
since we require at least one Member or Officer to be providing active
oversight of each project, and the Incubator PMC consists of all of those
mentors, plus others.  If that fails, we need to review the situation.  If
we cannot find a Member or Officer willing to provide that active oversight,
we won't be able to incubate that project.  This means that when some other
PMC votes for the ASF to Incubate a project, they must provide such a person
to perform the oversight.  Else we will not accept the project.  Voting for
us to accept a project, without providing that oversight, would be
irresponsible and won't be accepted.

We should also make sure that our projects understand the importance of
oversight, and notify the Incubator PMC if those providing oversight go
AWOL.  The PPMC should be a vital part of Incubation.

And we require quarterly reports from all of our projects to keep track of
what is happening, which addresses Rob's question.

        --- Noel


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[Jim Jagielski]

There is one thing that I think would be useful in
helping: That the Incubator PMC take an active role
in accepting new projects. Normally, if the Sponsor
says "Yes" a vote isn't even taken on the Incubator
side. I think that no matter what, unless overruled
by the board, the Incubator should vote.

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[JAMES Nightly Build System]

Jim Jagielski wrote:

> There is one thing that I think would be useful in
> helping: That the Incubator PMC take an active role
> in accepting new projects. Normally, if the Sponsor
> says "Yes" a vote isn't even taken on the Incubator
> side. I think that no matter what, unless overruled
> by the board, the Incubator should vote.

It was presented to the Incubator PMC that when another PMC has voted, we
don't have that option.  I'd like to see a determination from the Board if
that is to change.

I will still say that if another PMC has voted, that unless they also
provide a Member or Officer to provide oversight (not necessarily from that
PMC), that the request is invalid.

        --- Noel


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[Mads Toftum]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 11:38:52AM -0500, Jim Jagielski wrote:
> There is one thing that I think would be useful in
> helping: That the Incubator PMC take an active role
> in accepting new projects. Normally, if the Sponsor
> says "Yes" a vote isn't even taken on the Incubator
> side. I think that no matter what, unless overruled
> by the board, the Incubator should vote.
>
Absolutely! I'm surprised that this isn't the case already.

vh

Mads Toftum
--
`Darn it, who spiked my coffee with water?!' - lwall


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[dims]

Let's put htis to the board today

-- dims

On 12/21/05, Noel J. Bergman <noel@...> wrote:

> Jim Jagielski wrote:
>
> > There is one thing that I think would be useful in
> > helping: That the Incubator PMC take an active role
> > in accepting new projects. Normally, if the Sponsor
> > says "Yes" a vote isn't even taken on the Incubator
> > side. I think that no matter what, unless overruled
> > by the board, the Incubator should vote.
>
> It was presented to the Incubator PMC that when another PMC has voted, we
> don't have that option.  I'd like to see a determination from the Board if
> that is to change.
>
> I will still say that if another PMC has voted, that unless they also
> provide a Member or Officer to provide oversight (not necessarily from that
> PMC), that the request is invalid.
>
>         --- Noel
>
>
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>

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Davanum Srinivas : http://wso2.com/blogs/

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[Jim Jagielski]

On Dec 21, 2005, at 12:18 PM, Noel J. Bergman wrote:

> Jim Jagielski wrote:
>
>> There is one thing that I think would be useful in
>> helping: That the Incubator PMC take an active role
>> in accepting new projects. Normally, if the Sponsor
>> says "Yes" a vote isn't even taken on the Incubator
>> side. I think that no matter what, unless overruled
>> by the board, the Incubator should vote.
>
> It was presented to the Incubator PMC that when another PMC has  
> voted, we
> don't have that option.  I'd like to see a determination from the  
> Board if
> that is to change.
>
> I will still say that if another PMC has voted, that unless they also
> provide a Member or Officer to provide oversight (not necessarily  
> from that
> PMC), that the request is invalid.
>

I see the Incubator as a gatekeeper almost. PMCs,
in general, don't have an idea of the number of
podlings within the Incubator, the "load" that the
Incubator (and Infrastructure) is currently handling,
etc. They have no need to. I think the Incubator
would best serve the ASF if we/they had the
ultimate authority to vote on, even if the PMC
approves a proposed project, acceptance.

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