Mentor assessment

[Joe Schaefer <jo...@yahoo.com>]

While I've spilled lots of ink venting on the performance of the Kato
mentors over on general@incubator, lemme just say that for the
most part I think their work here as a whole was above average for what
one could reasonably expect from an IPMC mentor.  For the first
year of this podling the mentors did a very admirable job of
general stewardship, steering the podling towards resolution
of graduation issues in a patient and friendly manner.

No reasonable read of the original Kato proposal would've suggested
to anyone what sort of stunt IBM would eventually pull here, and had
it not been snuck into the reporting cycle under the radar while
nobody was looking, it probably would've been picked up on by the
mentors.  It is certainly true that had the authors of the Kato proposal
even intimated that it planned to gate all work on Oracle's participation
at some point in the original proposal, the IPMC would've rejected it
outright.  Nobody had any reason to expect what was eventually coming,
certainly not the podling's mentors.  While their grasp of the very
clear distinction between private and public interests could use a little
retuning, it's not reasonable to put the responsibility for the ultimate
fate of this podling in their laps.   That honor goes to IBM, should
the reboot fail to attract sufficient interest.