[DISCUSS] Preparing for the incubation finishing line?

[Christofer Dutz <ch...@c-ware.de>]

Hi all,

So I just verified that the pages:
https://whimsy.apache.org/roster/ppmc/plc4x
And
http://incubator.apache.org/projects/plc4x.html
Noticed that we sort of covered almost all the things we are required in order to become a Top-Level Project (TLP).

The only thing we can’t check off the list is:

  *   Ensure all initial PPMC and Committers have signed up to the dev and private lists
  *   Decision-making Guidelines

Not all being subscribed is mostly to the PPMC containing quite a number of people that have never participated
in the project at all. Reason for this was the way we started the whole project. When I setup things at codecentric
I publicly asked who wants to join and we added everyone that raised his/her hand. When entering incubation we
simply took that list and set that as initial PPMC and Committer list.

I would suggest that we should discuss and decide if we want to populate the Initial PPMC by only people actively
expressing interest. So if a PPMC member doesn’t raise his hand, I think we should not add them to the TLP PMC.
Of course, we could say there’s always an option for those late to the party to be added afterwards, but I guess
most will not be. What do you think?

Our Todos were:
Collaborative Development
·         Have all of the active long-term volunteers been identified and acknowledged as committers on the project?
·         Are there three or more independent committers? (The legal definition of independent is long and boring,
but basically it means that there is no binding relationship between the individuals, such as a shared employer,
that is capable of overriding their free will as individuals, directly or indirectly.)
·         Are project decisions being made in public by the committers?
·         Are the decision-making guidelines published and agreed to by all of the committers?
Licensing awareness
·         Are all licensing, trademark, credit issues being taken care of and acknowledged by all committers?


  *   I guess everyone who contributed has been added.
  *   We are definitely more than 3 active committers without any business relationship … the distribution of active PPMC
members is no longer that Codecentric employees have any dominance.
  *   We are deciding and discussing things on the list publicly. If we happen to meet and discuss things offline, we bring
the discussion results back to the list.

So seems the last thing we should do is agree and publish some decision making guidelines. Perhaps one/more of our
Mentors could guide us to some examples? Guess this has been done before and as it feels like being the same in almost
all Apache projects, I guess we could “adopt” or at least use some other projects guidelines as a starting point.

What do you think?

Chris

Re: [DISCUSS] Preparing for the incubation finishing line?

[Julian Feinauer <j....@pragmaticminds.de>]

Hi Chris,

I already thought about that when you listed as in your "Plan for this year".
I think we are pretty "fast" on schedule (with regards to other podlings) and I am lacking the feeling of our maturity (personally, I decided to never grow up, so I have no clue what this maturity thing is...).
But I agree with your "analysis" of our situation.
I think we are pretty disciplined with our decision making and keeping things on the list.

Regarding the initial PPMC situation, I fully agree with you and I think we should (if this is doable and not in conflict with Apache guidelines) restrict it to all "active" PPMCs where active could be defined as been active at one point in time.

Regarding the rather boring "independence" topic of committers I feel like this is something we should discuss. Currently, I see that PLC4X is mostly powered by two or three companies (codecentric, pragmatic industries and isb) aside from our private time.

@Justin: I would like to hear your thoughts on this. As we are in the lucky situation to have you as mentor, we could start some of the discussion here on the list before we move over to general@incubator

So overall I think that we "feel" professional and grown-up enough to go to TLP but I think some more time in incubator would not be a problem.
Perhaps, we should target a 1.0.0 release before starting the process. Not because it is necessary (I think it is not) but simply to have another release where we can integrate our latest new PPMCs (and the cpp support officially) and force ourselves to reflect about our guidelines.

But maybe I'm to academic about that... 
Julian

Am 06.02.19, 10:10 schrieb "Christofer Dutz" <ch...@c-ware.de>:

    Hi all,
    
    So I just verified that the pages:
    https://whimsy.apache.org/roster/ppmc/plc4x
    And
    http://incubator.apache.org/projects/plc4x.html
    Noticed that we sort of covered almost all the things we are required in order to become a Top-Level Project (TLP).
    
    The only thing we can’t check off the list is:
    
      *   Ensure all initial PPMC and Committers have signed up to the dev and private lists
      *   Decision-making Guidelines
    
    Not all being subscribed is mostly to the PPMC containing quite a number of people that have never participated
    in the project at all. Reason for this was the way we started the whole project. When I setup things at codecentric
    I publicly asked who wants to join and we added everyone that raised his/her hand. When entering incubation we
    simply took that list and set that as initial PPMC and Committer list.
    
    I would suggest that we should discuss and decide if we want to populate the Initial PPMC by only people actively
    expressing interest. So if a PPMC member doesn’t raise his hand, I think we should not add them to the TLP PMC.
    Of course, we could say there’s always an option for those late to the party to be added afterwards, but I guess
    most will not be. What do you think?
    
    Our Todos were:
    Collaborative Development
    ·         Have all of the active long-term volunteers been identified and acknowledged as committers on the project?
    ·         Are there three or more independent committers? (The legal definition of independent is long and boring,
    but basically it means that there is no binding relationship between the individuals, such as a shared employer,
    that is capable of overriding their free will as individuals, directly or indirectly.)
    ·         Are project decisions being made in public by the committers?
    ·         Are the decision-making guidelines published and agreed to by all of the committers?
    Licensing awareness
    ·         Are all licensing, trademark, credit issues being taken care of and acknowledged by all committers?
    
    
      *   I guess everyone who contributed has been added.
      *   We are definitely more than 3 active committers without any business relationship … the distribution of active PPMC
    members is no longer that Codecentric employees have any dominance.
      *   We are deciding and discussing things on the list publicly. If we happen to meet and discuss things offline, we bring
    the discussion results back to the list.
    
    So seems the last thing we should do is agree and publish some decision making guidelines. Perhaps one/more of our
    Mentors could guide us to some examples? Guess this has been done before and as it feels like being the same in almost
    all Apache projects, I guess we could “adopt” or at least use some other projects guidelines as a starting point.
    
    What do you think?
    
    Chris