Top Reason to join the ASF (or not)

[Ted Husted <hu...@apache.org>]

On the incubator site, we mention the How, Who, and When of
incubation. I thought we might also want to discuss the "Why".

Toward that end, here's my own short list of reason why projects
should, or should not, apply for incubation.


Top three reasons why a project should join the ASF

1. A development community shares our core values of collaboration,
transparency, and responsiblity.

2. A development communtity wants to help manage and oversee the Foundation.

3. A development community wants to donate its source code and
documentation to the Foundation, to help ensure that a product
survives the interest of its original creators


Top three reasons why a project should *NOT* join the ASF

1. Visibility or brand recognition

2. Technical infrastructure

3. Less responsiblity


If *all* of the first three reasons do not apply, then please do *NOT*
apply for incubation.

If *any* of the second three reasons apply, please consider carefully
whether to apply. We welcome projects that want to help us, but we do
not need projects that simply want us to help them.

-- HTH, Ted.

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Re: Top Reason to join the ASF (or not)

["Alan D. Cabrera" <li...@toolazydogs.com>]

On Nov 10, 2006, at 12:04 PM, Eelco Hillenius wrote:

>> Top three reasons why a project should join the ASF
>
>> 2. A development communtity wants to help manage and oversee the  
>> Foundation.
>
> As in: a career move or plain idealism? ;) I mean, caring about ASF
> (and having been using it's projects almost since it's start, I do!)
> is a strange way to try to get a specific project to incubate. The
> issue that you care about ASF and want to play a role helping out, and
> the issue that you want a certain project to be part of ASF are imho
> different things.

This also strikes me as an odd reason to move a project to the ASF.   
Ted, can you explain?


Regards,
Alan



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Re: Top Reason to join the ASF (or not)

[Ted Husted <hu...@apache.org>]

On 11/13/06, Eelco Hillenius <ee...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What triggered me to write a response earlier in the first place
> however, was the negative vibe that pulsated from the message. Does
> Apache have grave problems finding enough volunteers? Is it felt too
> many projects incubated without trying to contribute to the 'greater
> cause'?

IMHO, yes.


> Or is it a matter of new incubators not being humble enough
> when expressing their views?

s/humble/helpful

> I guess you *could* stress more that joining ASF is not a free lunch.

+1

> However, rather than this atmosphere of deterrence that can be seen in
> this email and others, why not try to get a more positive message
> across? 'Hey, great you want to join this fabulous club, let us make
> the best of it, looking forward to working together with you blah
> blah'.

If they want to join because they want to help fulfill the ASF's
mission, then sure. But it is not our goal to have more projects for
the sake of having more projects.

-Ted.

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Re: Top Reason to join the ASF (or not)

[Eelco Hillenius <ee...@gmail.com>]

> By joining the foundation, we would hope that at least some of the
> project volunteers willl go on to become Members, and accept
> responsibility for the Foundation. But, up front, I'm not sure that we
> are communicating our implicit hope that every committer will become a
> Member, and that we all share responsiblity for the Foundation.

That was communicated very clearly by our mentors when we started
discussing whether we wanted to incubate, and it is also imo pretty
clear from reading the documents about Apache, incubation, etc.

What triggered me to write a response earlier in the first place
however, was the negative vibe that pulsated from the message. Does
Apache have grave problems finding enough volunteers? Is it felt too
many projects incubated without trying to contribute to the 'greater
cause'? Or is it a matter of new incubators not being humble enough
when expressing their views? To get back to the project level again:
of course, when people use your project it is clear that you hope at
least some of them will actively contribute to the project so that
they help it improve. That's how open source works. Surely the average
committer of projects that start incubating at Apache understand this
principle, and understand that Apache works with volunteers in the
same fashion.

I guess you *could* stress more that joining ASF is not a free lunch.
However, rather than this atmosphere of deterrence that can be seen in
this email and others, why not try to get a more positive message
across? 'Hey, great you want to join this fabulous club, let us make
the best of it, looking forward to working together with you blah
blah'.

Eelco

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Re: Top Reason to join the ASF (or not)

[Ted Husted <hu...@apache.org>]

On 11/10/06, Henri Yandell <fl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And yet it seems very attractive. Visibility makes it a lot easier for
> communities to grow. Maybe not for a SourceForge success story, but
> definitely for smaller projects. Brand recognition the same.

We have our share of projects with small (but active) communities. And
there are a lot of products outside of the ASF that are wildly
popular.

I'd say that the "ASF mystique" is a myth that would should avoid
propogating. I get the feeling that some people come here believing
that if they join the ASF, their backwater project will suddenly gain
recognition. It won't. It's not about the ASF brand, it's about the
character of the individual community.

As a three-time survivor of the incubator guantlet, I would say that
coming here and navigating the incubator can make a project stronger.
But, it's the project that does the work, not the ASF name.


> > > 2. Technical infrastructure
>
> Googleforge is limited. Sourceforge has a bad QoS record and I'll
> choose JIRA over their issue system any day. java.net is slow (a
> friend just got a project approved...after about 3 months) and I
> dislike how I have to log in to do a lot of things there. tigris is
> domain-focused. I don't know of opensymphony/objectweb/codehaus
> incubators, they're more word of mouth I think.
>
> If I need to share infra, Apache is high on the list. Instead of
> asking "Why would someone come to Apache?", we could ask "Why does
> Apache exist?". Shared resources would seem to be one of those
> answers.

Except that people expect infrastructure to be a free lunch, which,
here, it isn't.

We have an infrastructure because we need an infrastructure to
accomplish our core mission. But anyone who is coming here primarily
for the technical infrastructure should turn around now. That's not
what we are about. We're about the *cultural* infrastructure.

As it says in the FAQ, our mission is to "provide a foundation for
open, collaborative software development projects", the rest is a
means to that end.

My concern is that we might be failing to communicate to incubator
candidates that the point of joining the foundation is to help support
our mission --- not to be supported *by* our mission.

(Am I saying that its all about us? Yes, I am. There's no free lunch here.)


> > > 3. Less responsiblity
>
> Another reason to come here. We have shared legal responsibility (or
> at least it's perceived that way); if I'm on the up and up and I do
> something here, it's not just me being sued.

Anyone could setup a corporation to hold the copyright and act as a
legal shield. Other projects, like FreeMarker and Dojo have done
exactly that. Sure, it's a *fringe* benefit of joining the ASF. But it
should not be a prime motivator.

Legal exposure aside, responsibility is one of our core values. When
we +1 a release, we are not just saying the bits are joyful, we are
pledging to support the release, at least to the best of our ability.
Each PMC (not the ASF) is responsible for handling the day to day
management of the project, or for finding other individuals who can.
If a project dies, it's the fault of the PMC, not the ASF.

Likewise, the Members are responsible for the Foundation. We aren't
just "the help". The Members *are* the Foundation, and its our joint
responsibility to oversee everything that the Foundation does, at
least to the best of our individual abillities.

By joining the foundation, we would hope that at least some of the
project volunteers willl go on to become Members, and accept
responsibility for the Foundation. But, up front, I'm not sure that we
are communicating our implicit hope that every committer will become a
Member, and that we all share responsiblity for the Foundation.

-Ted.

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Re: Top Reason to join the ASF (or not)

[Henri Yandell <fl...@gmail.com>]

On 11/10/06, Eelco Hillenius <ee...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Top three reasons why a project should join the ASF
> >
> > 1. A development community shares our core values of collaboration,
> > transparency, and responsiblity.
>
> Yes. But a project hosted at say Sourceforge can share those values
> equally (or sometimes even better imo, as they don't have to cope with
> politics). So while this is a nice extra reason to join, there is no
> tangible value in it (neither of both parties really 'get' something
> out of it).

Agreed. This is a case of X not equalling NOT NOT X. The real bit here is:

"A development community should NOT join if they do not share our core
values of ...."

> > 2. A development communtity wants to help manage and oversee the Foundation.
>
> As in: a career move or plain idealism? ;) I mean, caring about ASF
> (and having been using it's projects almost since it's start, I do!)
> is a strange way to try to get a specific project to incubate. The
> issue that you care about ASF and want to play a role helping out, and
> the issue that you want a certain project to be part of ASF are imho
> different things.

This one does seem self-defining. Possibly true in the case of a
project that is heavily dependent on Foundation projects already -
mod_foobah etc.

> > 3. A development community wants to donate its source code and
> > documentation to the Foundation, to help ensure that a product
> > survives the interest of its original creators
>
> That's a good reason, but again, sourceforge ensures this too in that
> it guarantees the history etc will be available. ASF gives no real
> guarantee for a developer community that the project will be supported
> (development, answers on the mailing lists, etc).

Less a support issue and more an IP issue. If original author of XXX
vanishes, then in a sourceforge project you are very constrained by
what you can do with it. With an ASF project, the ASF itself needs to
dissapear for you to suffer the same constraints.

> > Top three reasons why a project should *NOT* join the ASF
> >
> > 1. Visibility or brand recognition

And yet it seems very attractive. Visibility makes it a lot easier for
communities to grow. Maybe not for a SourceForge success story, but
definitely for smaller projects. Brand recognition the same.

> > 2. Technical infrastructure

Googleforge is limited. Sourceforge has a bad QoS record and I'll
choose JIRA over their issue system any day. java.net is slow (a
friend just got a project approved...after about 3 months) and I
dislike how I have to log in to do a lot of things there. tigris is
domain-focused. I don't know of opensymphony/objectweb/codehaus
incubators, they're more word of mouth I think.

If I need to share infra, Apache is high on the list. Instead of
asking "Why would someone come to Apache?", we could ask "Why does
Apache exist?". Shared resources would seem to be one of those
answers.

> > 3. Less responsiblity

Another reason to come here. We have shared legal responsibility (or
at least it's perceived that way); if I'm on the up and up and I do
something here, it's not just me being sued.

---

You haven't mentioned legal process. One of the things with the brand
recognition is that people have more trust in our attention to detail
on things they deem a risk. Legal being a big one. "Come to Apache...
learn in the Incubator...have CEOs be happier using your product."

Another - access to a pool of developers. As well as more visibility,
you have much better visibility within Apache committers. That's like
a directed spam list rather than flailing around having lots of failed
hits.

Lastly - you and your committers become a part of the Apache space and
have simpler access to the projects at Apache because you're no longer
a stranger. There's an increased level of trust.

Hen

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Re: Top Reason to join the ASF (or not)

[Ted Husted <hu...@apache.org>]

On 11/10/06, Eelco Hillenius <ee...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes. But a project hosted at say Sourceforge can share those values
> equally (or sometimes even better imo, as they don't have to cope with
> politics).

Exactly!

It's important that we *discourage* dilettante applicants who decide
to join the ASF for the wrong reasons.

* The right reasons are because a community shares our values, our
mission, and our vision.

* The wrong reasons are because a community wants access to our brand,
our infrastructure, or our legal shield.

Once the "right" reasons are accepted, then the "wrong" reasons become
added value. The  right reasons are our functional requirements, and
the wrong reasons are our non-functional requirements.

We do not have an incubator because we are *trying* to grow the ASF. A
lot of Members are concerned about unbridled growth. We have the
incubator because the ASF is going to grow whether we like it or not,
and the incubator's job is to ensure that first, a new project belongs
here, and, then, that the community is indoctrinated to our culture.
(Including our culture of strict IP oversight.)

My concern is that applicants don't always grok that the ASF is a
volunteer organization run by the volunteers for the volunteers. I'm
not sure that people realizes that we expect everyone to roll up their
sleeves and chip in.  Unlike SourceForge, the ASF is *not* a free
ride. There is a heavy price to pay for being here, a price many of us
pay gladly, but applicants need to understand that there is a price
before they belly up to the bar.

IMHO, we should make it very plain that the ASF is *not* for everyone.
Projects should *not* apply for incubation unless they share our
values, mission, and vision. Projects should *only* apply if they are
willing to volunteer time and energy to the Foundation itself, and not
just to their own project.

-Ted.

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Re: Top Reason to join the ASF (or not)

[Eelco Hillenius <ee...@gmail.com>]

> Top three reasons why a project should join the ASF
>
> 1. A development community shares our core values of collaboration,
> transparency, and responsiblity.

Yes. But a project hosted at say Sourceforge can share those values
equally (or sometimes even better imo, as they don't have to cope with
politics). So while this is a nice extra reason to join, there is no
tangible value in it (neither of both parties really 'get' something
out of it).

> 2. A development communtity wants to help manage and oversee the Foundation.

As in: a career move or plain idealism? ;) I mean, caring about ASF
(and having been using it's projects almost since it's start, I do!)
is a strange way to try to get a specific project to incubate. The
issue that you care about ASF and want to play a role helping out, and
the issue that you want a certain project to be part of ASF are imho
different things.

> 3. A development community wants to donate its source code and
> documentation to the Foundation, to help ensure that a product
> survives the interest of its original creators

That's a good reason, but again, sourceforge ensures this too in that
it guarantees the history etc will be available. ASF gives no real
guarantee for a developer community that the project will be supported
(development, answers on the mailing lists, etc).


> Top three reasons why a project should *NOT* join the ASF
>
> 1. Visibility or brand recognition
>
> 2. Technical infrastructure
>
> 3. Less responsiblity

I agree with the last item, but why are 1 and 2 so bad? From the
perspective of the incubating project, these are good arguments to
want to join, while the three *good* reasons you give for projects to
join are all reasoned from ASF's perspective.

It is a simple fact that for two parties to agree on something there
must be some mutual benefit. So, if your negative points would be the
only reasons for a project to join, yes, that wouldn't be too pretty.
But in reality a developer community of a certain project is not
homogeneous and many motivations - either spoken or unspoken - will
play.

But hey, how about making a quiz using a lie-detector part of the
incubation process. Let's not forget to re-run that for all the
projects that are in either ;)

Eelco

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