[Proposal] Compromise was: Re: ASF Membership Nomination

["Andrew C. Oliver" <ac...@apache.org>]

Tradeoffs with the old and new method:

1. doing it privately tends to perpetuate the closed mysterious nature 
of it (good ol boys club).  Another way of looking at this would be in 
relationship to the Cocoon project.  The less documented aspects of it 
are less used outside of the cocoon developer community and the 
undocumented nature of much of it prevents its widespead adoption in a 
number of locations.  However this has begun to change, the project 
information is starting to become shared through the efforts of people 
like Steven Noles. Secondly, a number of books have started to be 
written on the subject.  This has improved the project substantially 
IMHO and recent designs are starting to be better thought out and are 
including new ideas not before approached such as XMLForm by this fellow 
named Ivelin.  

2. doing it publically could result in hurt feelings and divisiveness 
and the instances Stefano gave...

Possible Compromise

1. Nominations could take place on the Community list.  Social contract 
be to only say nice things on the list and offer feedback to the 
members@ list if its negative.  Negative comments made on the community 
list are rebuked and noted as unproductive and in bad spirit.  Nothing 
nice said is probably a good indication of lack of support or everyone 
is busy ;-)

2. Voting and any negative discussion happens on the members@ list

Tradeoffs:
1. Still somewhat closed but still more open.  
2. The person proposed is hinted to be on their best behavior so they 
can't act like me ;-)
3. The person can just wonder who doesn't love them ;-)

I think 3 is moderated by the idea that I figure probably most folks are 
asked if they'd accept the nomination beforehand anyhow so I doubt they 
don't know in advance.

Any additional thoughts?

-Andy


Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:

> James Cox wrote:
>
>> >You make a lot of good points.  Let me be devil's
>> >advocate and make a couple explicit points that I
>> >think you imply above:
>> >
>> >1) ASF membership is very important
>> >2) ASF membership is more likely to be contentious
>> >than other decisions for that reason
>> >
>> >Perhaps some middle ground could be reached?  A public
>> >discussion on merits followed by a private debate?
>> >Leave the decision of whether or not to address the
>> >candidate directly to each member?  Maybe at the end
>> >of the day, the community list is the wrong place for
>> >the ultimate resolution of the process, but it may be
>> >a useful auxiliary tool.
>> >
>>
>> +1.
>>
>> Greg, you make -- as always -- some very fine points, however Morgan has
>> really pointed it out here. This is an important issue, but sometimes 
>> it's
>> nice to have a general forum to gauge opinion :)
>
>
> Don't know if you guys are familiar with the architectural concept of 
> 'Inversion of Control' (IoC).
>
> If not, please read
>
>  http://jakarta.apache.org/avalon/framework/guide-patterns-ioc.html
>
> This is also called 'the hollywood principle': don't call us, we call 
> you.
>
> The ASF adopts the pattern of IoC when proposing new members: that 
> means: one gets called only when voted in. Otherwise, life continues 
> with no problems.
>
> This allows, for example, resolutions like "I think he/she is not 
> ready yet". I would personally be very pissed if somebody told me that 
> I'm not ready *yet*, because if they assume I will be, then why don't 
> they vote me in now? and maybe that impatient attitude is exactly what 
> they want me to learn.
>
> I think Sam is mistaken thinking that openess = better and committers 
> nomination = members nomination always.
>
> So, I think we should stick with the old IoC nomination model of 
> members proposing a committer on members@apache.org, and, if voted in, 
> presented the membership here on community@ and, if voted out, keeping 
> this silent.
>
> But I might well be wrong.
>