all quiet on the western front?

[Brian Behlendorf <br...@hyperreal.org>]

If things seem slow on the discussion list this week, here's why.  The
Apache core developers (save for a few, some of whom are joining by phone)
are meeting in San Francisco this week to discuss a number of issues.  Such
a meeting has been long overdue; we've gone three years without some of us
ever meeting any of the others in person, and sometimes there is just a lot
of "bandwidth" missing in email conversations that you can get in
face-to-face communications.  Just meeting each other, sharing a few beers
and going on a long hike in Marin, has proven to be an invaluable experiance.

Our agenda includes a number of issues, predominantly incorporation, and
future development plans for Apache.  We hope that incorporation will
provide a tool we can use to help the Apache community to grow.  We have
three aspirations for this. First, we'd like to provide some legal safety
for Apache contributors, code copyrights, and Apache trademarks.  Second,
we'd like a way we could accept contributions (presumably tax exempt), so
we can fund some infrastruture, and allow us return a modicum of thanks
to individual contributors.  Maybe now we can give out some T-shirts and
lapel pins in return for contributions.  Third we would like to increase
the representation of other stakeholders in the community.

We didn't want to announce it ahead of time so we could keep the meetings
somewhat manageable, both in terms of publicity and mechanics. It's going
very very well, and we'll be posting a summary of the meetings in the near
future.

Many of us will be at a party at Sameer's on Saturday afternoon the 4th in
Berkeley - come on down at meet us (ask Sameer, sameer@c2.net, for
directions).

	Brian


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pure chewing satisfaction                                  brian@apache.org
                                                        brian@hyperreal.org