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Posted to cvs@cocoon.apache.org by cr...@apache.org on 2003/06/25 16:06:06 UTC
cvs commit: cocoon-site/src/documentation/content/xdocs incubation.xml index.xml
crossley 2003/06/25 07:06:06
Modified: src/documentation/content/xdocs index.xml
Added: src/documentation/content/xdocs incubation.xml
Log:
Added new doc to help explain incubation. Content gleaned from cocoon-dev:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-dev&m=105641055101484
Revision Changes Path
1.6 +5 -8 cocoon-site/src/documentation/content/xdocs/index.xml
Index: index.xml
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/cvs/cocoon-site/src/documentation/content/xdocs/index.xml,v
retrieving revision 1.5
retrieving revision 1.6
diff -u -r1.5 -r1.6
--- index.xml 25 Jun 2003 13:09:11 -0000 1.5
+++ index.xml 25 Jun 2003 14:06:06 -0000 1.6
@@ -21,14 +21,11 @@
<ul>
<li><link href="http://cocoon.apache.org/2.1/">Apache Cocoon</link>
- itself,</li>
+ itself.</li>
- <li><link href="http://cocoon.apache.org/lenya/">Lenya</link>, an incubating website content management
- framework based on Cocoon.</li>
-
- <!--
- <li>Linotype, a web logging toolkit</li>
- -->
+ <li><link href="http://cocoon.apache.org/lenya/">Lenya</link>, an
+ <link href="incubation.html">incubating</link>
+ website content management framework based on Cocoon.</li>
</ul>
</body>
-</document>
\ No newline at end of file
+</document>
1.1 cocoon-site/src/documentation/content/xdocs/incubation.xml
Index: incubation.xml
===================================================================
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE document PUBLIC "-//APACHE//DTD Documentation V1.2//EN"
"document-v12.dtd">
<document>
<header>
<title>The meaning of Cocoon sub-project incubation</title>
</header>
<body>
<p>
After years of software development and hundreds of developers coming in
and out, a concept crystallized around the ASF and it basically says:
</p>
<p>
<strong>A development community is more important than the software
that it develops</strong>
</p>
<p>
The reason for this is simple: Software does not evolve by itself.
Since software lives in an environment which is continously changing,
then software that is perfect for the job today, might not be so in
the future.
</p>
<p>
The existence of a healthy development community around code guarantees
that software evolution will evolve to fit the environmental constraints.
</p>
<p>
What does make a community "healthy"?
</p>
<p>
Again, after years of successes and failures, there is general consensus
that a development community is healthy if:
</p>
<p>
1) it exhibits diversity
</p>
<p>
2) it presents an open attitude toward confrontation, changes, and new
committers
</p>
<p>
Note that the above rules do *NOT* take into consideration technological
concepts: the ASF is *very* open to technological differences, so much
so, in fact, that technical considerations are left to the users or to
the markets, but are not filtered out by the Foundation itself.
</p>
<p>
The ASF cares *exclusively* about the quality of the communities
and the reason is mainly because a healthy community brings back more
energy to the foundation than it consumes (positive engine!), while
a non-healthy community is very likely to drain more energy from the
foundation than it is able to donate back.
</p>
<p>
The ASF can sustain its growth only if new efforts bring more energy
into the system than they use, thus contributing positively to the
entire energetic equation.
</p>
<p>
However building a community takes time and effort, expecially if it was
never done before.
</p>
<p>
For this reason, the ASF created the concept of "incubation" to allow
healthy communities to be bootstrapped.
</p>
<p>
A project under incubation is basically a project that is not yet
considered healthy enough to be able to give back to the Foundation
more energy that it consumes.
</p>
<p>
Many times incubation is done because lack of diversity. For example, if
one entity (company, group or individual) donates software to the
Foundation, but only people belonging to that entity work on it.
</p>
<p>
Diversity is important because it creates long-term stability. It has
happened in the past that, for example, a company goes bankrupt and all
the people who worked on the project are gone, leaving the project with
no development community. This is unacceptable because a project without
a working community drains an incredible amount of human resources and
energy from the foundation to fix things and normally much more than the
project is able to give back in the short term.
</p>
<p>
Incubation is a way to protect the ASF from the potential
negative impact of social problems happening inside the effort being
under incubation.
</p>
<p>
Projects under incubation can develop the community qualities that will
make them exit the incubation period, or can simply die out. In this
last case, the effort is simply cancelled or kept there in a limbo until
somebody else shows up some interest.
</p>
<p>
Incubated projects are to be considered not ready from a community
perspective. Importantly, this does *NOT* mean any judgement from a
technological perspective but only from a community perspective! This is
a of community infants that need mentoring by older communities to achieve
the long-term stability that is valued by both the ASF and by the users
who base their effort on the software the ASF produces.
</p>
</body>
</document>