Podling termination by the IPMC

[Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>]

Hi,

As requested by Dave. IMO This is going to happen infrequently and possibly never. I can only think of a couple of occasions when this has been discussed in the last five years. Things generally work out one way or another before this step needs to be taken.

The current IPMC policy[1] states:
"The Incubator PMC SHOULD notify a podling of any policy violations. It MAY consider the termination of a Podling if violations are not corrected."

I would think that the conditions that this would occur would be something like:
- Podling has been a long time in the Incubator.
- Podling has been repeatedly asked by the IPMC to correct policy violations, and they have not done so or had made little real progress. 
- Podling has refused to comply with directions given by the IPMC.
- Podling has required repeated intervention by the IPMC to correct policy violations and doesn't self-correct.
- The same or similar policy violations keep on coming up.
- The podling is reactive, not proactive in finding solutions to these policy violations.
- The issues are ongoing for a period of 3 or more months.
- It's unlikely that the podling will graduate even if the policy violations were fixed.
- It's likely that the policy violations would reoccur once the project is a TLP.
- The IPMC and Podlings Mentors agree this is the best course of action. (And hopefully, the PPMC agree as well, but that may not happen in all cases.)
.
But each situation it's going to be a little different, and it may be hard to come up with a set of guidelines that work in all situations. Given that I not sure we need to put the time and effort into defining what these are, but if someone wants to do so, go ahead. If you think my list above is too lenient or not forgiving enough please speak up.

I can think of some other actions the IPMC could take (depending on the situation) as well:
- Change the composition of the PPMC or committers
- Direct Infra to remove the podlings releases
- Involve branding/trademark/legal to issue a legal notice to remove infringing 3rd party releases

Hopefully, events like this will be the exception and rarely occur..

Generally what has happened previously, is before it reached this stage, the podling decides that the ASF is not a good fit for them and moves elsewhere.

Thanks,
Justin


1. https://incubator.apache.org/policy/incubation.html#termination
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