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Posted to women@apache.org by Joe Schaefer <jo...@sunstarsys.com> on 2006/06/04 05:34:15 UTC

become a full project?

[please CC me on replies as I'm not a subscriber]

I think too much may be expected of this public 
list. Maybe it'd be better to use the full 
resources of the ASF to further your mission 
by becoming a full project.


Some advantages:

    1) women-private@ comes for free,

    2) the "women" project becomes responsible
       for producing a portion of the website.

       Initially I suggest 

         http://people.apache.org/women/

       because it'd be pretty low traffic, and
       people shouldn't feel intimidated about
       screwing up the site.


Some disadvantages:

    1) you'd have to make quarterly reports to
       the board on your progress.

    2) all lists are archived somewhere visible
       to ASF members.


The only thing novel you might need to do is leave
subscription to women-private@ open to (some 
portion of) the public.

Thoughts?

-- 
Joe Schaefer

Re: become a full project?

Posted by Joe Schaefer <jo...@sunstarsys.com>.
"Jean T. Anderson" <jt...@bristowhill.com> writes:

> Kathey Marsden wrote:
>> Joe Schaefer wrote:
>>> [please CC me on replies as I'm not a subscriber]
>
> <snip>
>
> I have viewed women@a.o as a parallel to community@a.o. I'm not sure
> that "full project" fits, but it's certainly worth considering.

I think "full project" doesn't fit yet, but I think it's the direction
you aught to be headed.  I say that based on the most recent thread
here,  which was a delight to read.  The frank discussion of personal
desires and experiences is something the simply cannot happen on 
community@.  That it happened here makes me think group-forming should
be taking place now.

The foundation has experience with such animals.  What the ASF lacks 
is a clear understanding of how things would work best for women.

So I think putting women in charge of solving the problem is a good
first step.  Modelling yourselves around a project is something I 
think the ASF could cope with.

The question is, would the group rather circle around its problem,
and continue to discuss innovations taking place elsewhere, or do
you want to take a crack at solving it here at the ASF, in your own way.


-- 
Joe Schaefer

Re: become a full project?

Posted by "Jean T. Anderson" <jt...@bristowhill.com>.
Kathey Marsden wrote:
> Joe Schaefer wrote:
>> [please CC me on replies as I'm not a subscriber]

<snip>

I have viewed women@a.o as a parallel to community@a.o. I'm not sure
that "full project" fits, but it's certainly worth considering.

> Official project or no, I think Joe is right that we need to start
> acting like an Apache project and first steps to further our mission
> would be:
> 
> 1) Define our mission /charter
>    Is this already spelled out somewhere?

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-women/200508.mbox/%3c4303F949.9060503@bristowhill.com%3e

The charter suffers from being buried in email archives instead of
visibly being on a web site.


> 2) Define tasks to achieve our mission that folks can act on.

<snip>

One idea would be to help improve the existing developers documentation
for contributors.

I've been thinking about something Noirin mentioned in her excellent
post at
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/www-women/200605.mbox/%3c20060521225909.GA20525@dochas.stdlib.net%3e
  :

> For example, a nonarchived list where someone could post along the lines of
> "Hey, if there's anyone from X Project who could look at the patch I submitted,
> I'd be really grateful" would be considerably more useful than having to go
> back to a public development list every few weeks and remind people that yes,
> you submitted a patch, and would they mind giving you some kind of feedback
> either way please. This is something that repeatedly had me on the verge of
> giving up on the ASF entirely - only the fact that I *had* a mentor who was
> already part of the Apache community kept me poking people - and I'm a
> committer now, so clearly, my contributions were something of value. I can see
> the ASF losing an awful lot of potential committers over this though.

What about improving the Contributor's Tech Guide at
http://www.apache.org/dev/contributors.html#patches ? The last paragraph
mentions the delay in getting patches committed, but we could
incorporate more encouragement and perhaps additional strategies --
ideas for more strategies, anyone?

And now that I'm looking at http://www.apache.org/dev/contributors.html,
I notice it hasn't been updated for svn (still mentions cvs). We could
hunt down those cvs references and submit patches that update the info
for svn.

And it's possible we might even be able to hang a women's page off of
www.apache.org/dev .

 -jean

Re: become a full project?

Posted by Joe Schaefer <jo...@sunstarsys.com>.
Kathey Marsden <km...@sbcglobal.net> writes:

> If they can't find what they need on our website when they are stuck or
> frustrated, they will ask questions on this list, get answers  and then
> contribute content back, which is of course how it works here at Apache.

Right.  The catchphrases that come to mind are:

  do-ocracy, bias for action, enlightened self-interest, etc.

> Becoming a full project could help make this a reality but as I said, I am
> concerned we don't qualify  since we are a general ASF community resource and
> we don't have a software deliverable.

If a "full project" isn't doable for technical reasons, a board
committee could be created instead.

-- 
Joe Schaefer

Re: become a full project?

Posted by Noirin Plunkett <no...@apache.org>.
On Sun, Jul 23, 2006 at 08:26:19PM -0700, Jean T. Anderson wrote:
> 
> Here are a few more details to provide discussion points... I'm
> interested in pursuing this for the following reasons:
> 
> 1) women@ needs a stable web site with content controlled by committers
> who are granted karma to a women svn repo. Others, including other
> Apache committers, are welcome to submit patches, which would be
> committed after review.

Definitely +1

> 2) The wiki is good to have, but it should be a secondary source of
> information, not the primary.

Also +1 

> 3) women@ needs a private list to ensure that any sensitive issues have
> a place to be handled.

+1 in theory. However, I'm not quite clear on how issues /can/ be
handled, or what can be done about them. 

> Every project needs volunteers who commit to manage it:
> 
> I'll volunteer. Who else would like to volunteer?
> 
Count me in

Noirin

Re: become a full project?

Posted by Geir Magnusson Jr <ge...@apache.org>.

Justin Erenkrantz wrote:
> On 7/23/06, Geir Magnusson Jr <ge...@apache.org> wrote:
>> The PRC is actually not a TLP, but a board subcommittee tasked with
>> management of the PR issues for the foundation.
> 
> Agreed.  (It's a 'Board Committee', but same thing.)

I know.  I wrote it that way first, but then got enchanted in the
literary sense with the parallel of a subcommittee of a subcommittee.
Lost my head there,  I suspect :)

geir


Re: become a full project?

Posted by Justin Erenkrantz <ju...@erenkrantz.com>.
On 7/23/06, Geir Magnusson Jr <ge...@apache.org> wrote:
> The PRC is actually not a TLP, but a board subcommittee tasked with
> management of the PR issues for the foundation.

Agreed.  (It's a 'Board Committee', but same thing.)

> I think it would be "mechanically" difficult for a board subcommittee to
> have a subcommittee itself, unless one could make a convincing argument
> that this is a PR function (which I don't believe it is - it's broader
> than that...)

Yes.  I think placing women@ under the PRC does a disservice to the
goals of this list: this has much more to do than publicity or
fundraising...

As I have mentioned to Jean over IRC, I think that after identifying
who is interested in participating from this list, the group can
approach the Board about determining the best structure for the group
(be it a Board Committee, President's Committee, or even a PMC).  I
wouldn't worry too much about how we structure the group per se right
now - trust that we'll create something that is appropriate and
empowers the group.  =)

BTW, hi everyone!  (I just subscribed.)  -- justin

Re: become a full project?

Posted by Geir Magnusson Jr <ge...@apache.org>.
The PRC is actually not a TLP, but a board subcommittee tasked with
management of the PR issues for the foundation.

I think it would be "mechanically" difficult for a board subcommittee to
have a subcommittee itself, unless one could make a convincing argument
that this is a PR function (which I don't believe it is - it's broader
than that...)

geir


Kathey Marsden wrote:
> Jean T. Anderson wrote:
> 
>> Jean T. Anderson wrote:
>> ...
>>  
>>
>>> I think it would valuable for women@ to be under a tlp, and the PRC
>>> seems ideal to me.
>>>
>>>   
> After a google search I found that this is the   Public Relations
> Committee which sounds like a great fit, but I could not find a prc
> website at http://prc.apache.org/ desribing their charter.  Is there one?
> 
> Kathey
> 
> 
> 

Re: become a full project?

Posted by Sally Khudairi <sa...@yahoo.com>.
Hello Kathey,

The PRC has yet to develop a dedicated site or section
of apache.org that details its charter and processes.

However, there are several team members who are
endeavoring to do so ... as the saying goes, watch
this space.

Cheers,
Sally

--- Kathey Marsden <km...@sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

> Jean T. Anderson wrote:
> 
> >Jean T. Anderson wrote:
> >...
> >  
> >
> >>I think it would valuable for women@ to be under a
> tlp, and the PRC
> >>seems ideal to me.
> >>
> >>    
> >>
> After a google search I found that this is the  
> Public Relations 
> Committee which sounds like a great fit, but I could
> not find a prc 
> website at http://prc.apache.org/ desribing their
> charter.  Is there one?
> 
> Kathey
> 
> 


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Re: become a full project?

Posted by Kathey Marsden <km...@sbcglobal.net>.
Jean T. Anderson wrote:

>Jean T. Anderson wrote:
>...
>  
>
>>I think it would valuable for women@ to be under a tlp, and the PRC
>>seems ideal to me.
>>
>>    
>>
After a google search I found that this is the   Public Relations 
Committee which sounds like a great fit, but I could not find a prc 
website at http://prc.apache.org/ desribing their charter.  Is there one?

Kathey


Re: become a full project?

Posted by "Jean T. Anderson" <jt...@bristowhill.com>.
Jean T. Anderson wrote:
...
> I think it would valuable for women@ to be under a tlp, and the PRC
> seems ideal to me.
> 
> Do people agree? disagree?
> 
> If I hear no disagreement, I'll email prc@a.o.

Here are a few more details to provide discussion points... I'm
interested in pursuing this for the following reasons:

1) women@ needs a stable web site with content controlled by committers
who are granted karma to a women svn repo. Others, including other
Apache committers, are welcome to submit patches, which would be
committed after review.

2) The wiki is good to have, but it should be a secondary source of
information, not the primary.

3) women@ needs a private list to ensure that any sensitive issues have
a place to be handled.

Every project needs volunteers who commit to manage it:

 - update the web site
 - review and commit patches submitted by others
 - respond to questions posted to the list
 - vote in more committers to the project
 - provide periodic status reports

I'll volunteer. Who else would like to volunteer?

 -jean



Re: become a full project?

Posted by "Jean T. Anderson" <jt...@apache.org>.
On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 16:50:06 -0400, Shane Curcuru wrote:
> Personally I don't see women@ becoming a TLP [1] - not having software
> deliverables, indeed!  Also, public participation here (which in some
> ways is an important measure of community health at the ASF) doesn't
> feel high enough to support that much process.
...
> Getting an ASF wiki springs to mind; easy to setup and administer.  The
> only real issue is ensuring proper oversight.  The ASF has a
> responsibility to ensure some formal group is keeping an eye on public
> pages and software we produce - would sending wikidiffs [2] to women@
> qualify as appropriate oversight, or would women@ need to get one of the
> existing PMCs to provide oversight?  (If so, approaching PRC [3] is one
> potential idea).

A wiki has been set up (thanks, Noirin!) and folks may have noticed
wikidiffs going to this list.

I think it would valuable for women@ to be under a tlp, and the PRC
seems ideal to me.

Do people agree? disagree?

If I hear no disagreement, I'll email prc@a.o.

 -jean



> - Shane
> 
> [1] Top Level Project
> [2] wikidiffs: whenever a wiki page is changed, email is sent to <some
> mailing list>.  That way, people reading the list can know if the wiki
> content is appropriate, or is being spammed, etc.
> [3] Public Relations Committee - PR, Press, Fundraising, etc. activities
> at the ASF - see prc@
> 
> 
> 


Re: become a full project?

Posted by Shane Curcuru <as...@shanecurcuru.org>.
Personally I don't see women@ becoming a TLP [1] - not having software 
deliverables, indeed!  Also, public participation here (which in some 
ways is an important measure of community health at the ASF) doesn't 
feel high enough to support that much process.

Kathey Marsden wrote:
> 1) Define our mission /charter
>    Is this already spelled out somewhere?
> 2) Define tasks to achieve our mission that folks can act on.
>    Not actually knowing our mission, but assuming it is something like 

I definitely agree with Kathey's points - those are key to work on 
operationally.  But even more important, it seems, is to give this 
community a publicly visible 'home'.

If some of the barriers to entry are really individual/social ones (i.e. 
some people are afraid to post because it's archived/visible to 
members/etc.), then having a publicly viewable resource where folks can 
more easily 'lurk' would be a key way to get the message out.

Getting an ASF wiki springs to mind; easy to setup and administer.  The 
only real issue is ensuring proper oversight.  The ASF has a 
responsibility to ensure some formal group is keeping an eye on public 
pages and software we produce - would sending wikidiffs [2] to women@ 
qualify as appropriate oversight, or would women@ need to get one of the 
existing PMCs to provide oversight?  (If so, approaching PRC [3] is one 
potential idea).

- Shane

[1] Top Level Project
[2] wikidiffs: whenever a wiki page is changed, email is sent to <some 
mailing list>.  That way, people reading the list can know if the wiki 
content is appropriate, or is being spammed, etc.
[3] Public Relations Committee - PR, Press, Fundraising, etc. activities 
at the ASF - see prc@




Re: become a full project?

Posted by Kathey Marsden <km...@sbcglobal.net>.
Joe Schaefer wrote:

>[please CC me on replies as I'm not a subscriber]
>
>I think too much may be expected of this public 
>list. Maybe it'd be better to use the full 
>resources of the ASF to further your mission 
>by becoming a full project.
>
>
>  
>
Wouldn't we need to deliver some software  to be a full project?
The infrastructure of website, Wiki, task database, etc would be very 
helpful I think but I don't think we qualify
as a  software development project.  It's funny you should mention this 
as an option because  I have been thinking
lately that we are kind of  like a  book club without the books.  
Instead I guess we are a software
development project without the  software #:)

Official project or no, I think Joe is right that we need to start 
acting like an Apache project and first steps to further our mission 
would be:

1) Define our mission /charter
    Is this already spelled out somewhere? 
 
2) Define tasks to achieve our mission that folks can act on.
    Not actually knowing our mission, but assuming it is something like 
"Encourage more women to get involved in Apache and facilitate 
participation in Apache projects",  I'll venture to say important first 
tasks are  setting up web infrastructure (Wiki) and getting content out 
there. e.g.  pages to:
       - Match  newcomers  to mentors for various projects.
       - Link to  project pages of interest to  newcomers  and students like
            http://wiki.apache.org/db-derby/ForNewDevelopers
       -  Provide tips and techniques to thrive in the Apache community
        - List various technical and non-technical resources.
 Other tasks might include talking about Apache projects at conferences 
like WITI, University outreach, setting up infrastructure to ask 
anonymous questions etc.

 Clearly defining our mission and tasks to achieve it will get folks 
busy and then we will have lots to talk about here on the list.   If we 
start work to help  grease the tracks here at Apache, folks will see 
that that is what we are for.  If they can't find what they need on our 
website when they are stuck or frustrated, they will ask questions on 
this list, get answers  and then contribute content back, which is of 
course how it works here at Apache.    Becoming a full project could 
help make this a reality but as I said, I am concerned we don't qualify  
since we are a general ASF community resource and we don't have a 
software deliverable.


Kathey