Avalon in the news !

[Stephen McConnell <mc...@apache.org>]

In an initial post from Roy Fielding (Apache Board) <fi...@apache.org> on
the reorg list, the following comments were made:

 > Jakarta commons has a nice and valuable community -- that doesn't
 > mean the incubator can't have the same community (even the same people).
 > However, speaking as a board member, I cannot allow Jakarta to continue
 > to pile on more and more unsupervised projects.  It is busting at the
 > seams already.  Just look at the commons cvs -- there is code present
 > that was taken from another open source project, the license removed,
 > and replaced with the committer's own copyright alongside that of the
 > ASF.  That isn't just contrary to our guidelines; it is immoral!
 > And, it has been there for four months without anyone so much as
 > lifting a finger (not to mention deleting the module, which is what
 > I would have done).  If that isn't cause to terminate an entire project,
 > I don't know what is.

Earlier today, Roy corrected his statement in response to a direct question
from Rod Walhoff.

Roy T. Fielding wrote:
 > > Rod Waldhoff wrote:
 > > Let me ask this question straight out, since no one over on
 > > commons-dev@jakarta seems to have any idea what Roy's talking about.
 >
 > > Roy, what specific code does your message refer to?
 >
 > Sorry, I made a terrible mistake -- the code I was talking about was
 > in the jakarta-avalon-apps/enterprise repository and has been recently
 > "corrected", though I have no idea if we have the legal right to make
 > that change.  The Jakarta PMC can follow up on this:
 >
 > 
http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs/jakarta-avalon-apps/enterprise/orb/src/java/
 > org/apache/orb/ORB.java.diff?r1=1.9&r2=1.10&diff_format=h

While tracking what has been a really interesting discussion and debate
about the "Apache Way", I cam across the above message.  It effectively
destroyed what had turned out to be a rather pleasant day as it attributed
some rather heavy-weight faults towards myself - including amongst other
this the infringement of copyright law.  I have to confess that this
message made me feel less than comfortable both personally and as a
representative of the Avalon Community.  Late yesterday evening I sent a
response to the reorg list that included the following:

 > Roy:
 >
 > Your referencing content I'm closely associated with (wrote and
 > contributed the source to Apache myself earlier this year).  If I
 > recall correctly there were comments on this thread that the sources
 > in question were taken from somewhere else, license removed and an
 > Apache license added in its place (which is a heavy statement)!  I
 > CAN ASSURE EVERYONE THAT THIS CODE IS 100% WRITTEN BY MYSELF,
 > CONTRIBUTED TO APACHE MY MYSELF, AND IS TOTALLY OK.  There are
 > relating licensing questions that I have been addressing (not related
 > specifically to ORB package but within the enterprise package) which
 > (to be frank) is behind schedule - but these are questions that
 > require the assistance of members of the Jakarta PMC and perhaps the
 > Board.  The subject relates to code and binaries in related enterprise
 > packages.  I have already initiated actions on this with emails
 > yesterday to Costin and Andrew and was planning on shooting through
 > an summary of license issue that needs to be addressed and a outline
 > of the interests and community supporting this development to Sam Ruby,
 > the Jakarta PMC and the board. This will be supplied tomorrow.  In the
 > meantime I want to assure everyone that there is absolutely,
 > categorically - no misconduct or abuse of the actions here.  In fact
 > it is quite the opposite - but more on that in my email tomorrow.
 >
 > Steve.

While this timing of the whole "incident" is rather interesting given
our discussion on the "licensing issue revisited" thread initiated by Leo,
I intend to proceed as stated on the request for clarification and advise
concerning the license question that has been raised to the Jakarta PMC
as discussed yesterday. 

Given the Roy's engagement to the discussion (and the implications of the
statements made towards myself), I will be keeping the Apache Board in the
loop on these discussion.  In addition, I will address the orthogonal point
concerning the accusations that have been made and taking the actions
necessary to clear these) - frankly I'm not too concerned about
establishing the source - what's more important is the fact that this sort
of an situation has arrived.  That fact is that the Avalon Community is
damaged by these tactics.  Jakarta is damaged by these tactics. That is
fundamentally a terrible situation and something that concerns every single
member of this community.  We all know that there has been a degree of
tension here at Avalon for the last few months ... until earlier today I
thought that this was passing - but apparently not.  While its possible
to attribute this to "egos" or "personalities", I think that  such a
conclusion ignores the real issue - and that is that Avalon is not in a
possition to account for itself, let alone assume that Jakarta can account
for it. 

How is it that this has happened?  Avalon has grown - people like myself
with ideas, now opportunities, new ideas concerning the leverage and
exploitation of the Avalon Framework.  Avalon has grown to be the
framework, the utilities and containers in Excalibur, Phoniex over on the
edge, Cornerstone, and Avalon Apps - not only subprojects but subprojects
containing subprojects and in many cases very little control over the
quality and integrity of what we have.  Let me qualify that remark and say
that we have reasonably good control over the framework, Excalibur grows
more solid every day (but expands every day as well), and Phoenix appears to
be moving forward nicely.  But the Cornerstone and Avalon-Apps
sub-sub-projects are clearly inside the domain of non-accountability. 
Combine
this with the fact that have all seen our ability to have extrodonarily
verbose discussions and yet we have not shown an ability to take control
over our future, resolve our own problems, or build the community that
Avalon should be. 

All of these things demand a shift from Asset-Based Management to
Community-Management.  By Asset-Based Management I'm referring to
the playgrounds that individual committers have built (including
myself) - some more "open" that others. Yes there are things that I'm
passionate about - and there are other things that other committers are
passionate about - but at the end of the day, our failure to draw a
conclusion on the *real* issues we deal with means that we are
consciously saying to out community "our personal assets are more
important then you are". 

I don't want to be part of that scenario.

-- 

Stephen J. McConnell

OSM SARL
digital products for a global economy
mailto:mcconnell@osm.net
http://www.osm.net



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