Community Board Report - with suggested changes.

[Gavin McDonald <ga...@16degrees.com.au>]

Hi Folks, 

So here is the original report as submitted to the board, and I annotate inline the changes 
I suggested be considered.

As originally stated, please feel free to incorporate any or none of the changes at your leisure - 
I won’t be offended :)

The intent of my changes was to put a more positive angle to some aspects of the report - potential 
newcomers read these publicly published reports too, so some encouragement for possible 
contributions can be made there as well as on the mailing lists and wikis et al.

—begin report

> ## Description:
> Apache OpenOffice is an open-source, office-document productivity
> suite providing six productivity applications based around the
> OpenDocument Format (ODF). OpenOffice is released on multiple
> platforms and in dozens of languages.
> 
> ## Activity:
> 
> Andrea Pescetti resigned as Chair, and Jan Iversen was elected as
> new Chair, the change went as expected smoothly.


‘...After two and half years at the helm - since OpenOffice came to the
ASF, Andrea Pescetti has decided to step down as Chair and pass 
the baton on to someone new for this challenging yet rewarding role.
We thank Andrea for his time and effort as VP...’

> 
> The mailing lists for users and the development list are fairly
> active, while specialized lists see a lower, but steady, activity.
> 
> New volunteers for development show up regularly, but without
> mentors we have not been able to keep them motivated and on the
> project.

“…New volunteers for development show up regularly, but there is a 
need for other more experienced devs on the project to guide them
in the right direction and encourage contributions. Those contributions 
then need to be dealt with in a timely manner…”

> The level of commits on trunk remain low, only a few
> simple fixes have been committed.

“… The level of commits on trunk is running at a low pace, whilst 
patches that come in are being applied…”

> 
> Nobody has shown interest in becoming the new release manager,
> which have been missing for approx. last 5 months,

Very negative sentence here, I quite like :-

“… The search continues for someone to step up to the very challenging 
role as the next Release Manager (RM) for the next public release of 
Apache OpenOffice. This mammoth task requires dedication and commitment 
over a period of time. 

<optional> It may need someone with vision to rewrite the whole 
release process and simplify things to make future releases less of a burden 
than they currently are </optional> 

…”

> 
> The 2 MAC (buildbot) delivered Q3/14 from Infra are not operational,
> due to lack of a volunteer to install the AOO development platform.

“… A volunteer or two are still needed in order to make use of two 
MAC (buildbot slave) machines. We will send another note to both 
the dev and user lists to see if anyone is willing, accompanied by a 
description of what the role entails…”

> 
> Proof of concept for Digital Signing was made mid. 2014, no further
> work have been done.

“… Proof of concept for the ASF Digital Signing service was made mid 2014, 
and needs revisiting to take advantage…”

> 
> OpenOffice was present at FOSDEM (January 2015 in Brussels,
> Belgium), with talks as well as a table.
> 
> A BoF is being arranged for CSDN OSTC (March 2015, China).
> 
> 2 Volunteers took on preparing a AOO track for Austin, in the end, 
> no presentation was submitted (CFP). Traditionally Europe is 
> stronger for AOO so we look forward to Budapest.
> 
> ## Issues:
> 
> The current CMS discussion based on a proposal to decommission
> the tool and ask projects to find other solutions would cause a
> significant problem for AOO. The AOO Web pages depend on the
> features of CMS  that cannot be easily ported to other tools.
> If Infra is to stop the service, AOO will need to either only
> maintain only a few pages or run CMS on a project VM. The Board
> should remember to look at the total cost of this change, not
> only the Infra costs.
> 


> A major issue for AOO is the current activity level (practically
> no development) which combined with minimal interest in discussing
> solutions, are a potential problem, that might cause a community
> breakdown. The community only has a few developers left, which
> makes a bootstrap very complex. Please consider this as preliminary
> information, more will follow in the next board report.

“… Current activity remains low, with a few active Developers. The 
project is looking into ways to encourage more activity…”

> 
> ## PMC/Committership changes: 
>  - Currently 140 committers and 29 PMC members in the project. 
>  - New PMC members: 
>     - Jan Iversen was added to the PMC on Wed Feb 11 2015 
>     - Mechtilde Stehmann was added to the PMC on Sat Jan 03 2015 
>     - Dr. Michael Stehmann was added to the PMC on Sat Jan 03 2015 
>     - Dennis E. Hamilton was added to the PMC on Fri Feb 13 2015 
>  - Last committer addition was Tal Daniel at Tue Apr 29 2014 
>  
>   
> ## Releases: 
>  - Last release was 4.1.1 on Thu Aug 21 2014
> 


> Even though the project remains committed to bring out version
> 4.1.2, it is progressing very slowly. The planning phase is still
> ongoing and has been for approx. 5 months. It is decided this will
> be the first digitally signed release. It is still not decided
> which bugfixes should be included. Due to lack of  developers
> (to make the bugfixes) and a release manager no work is active.

“… Due to current activity levels, the next release of OpenOffice 
progresses at a slower pace than we’d like. This next release is 
to have extra value by looking into using the new ASF Digital 
Signing service - which adds some complexity to an already complex 
release process. As mentioned earlier in the report, a potential 
Release Manager (RM) needs to step up…”

The rest of the report below is fine.

Thanks for your consideration.

Gav…

>  
> 
> ## Mailing list activity:
>   - users@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 569 subscribers (down -16 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 917 emails sent to list (866 in previous quarter) 
>  - dev@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 500 subscribers (up 0 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 1377 emails sent to list (1195 in previous quarter) 
>  - private@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 507 emails sent to list (624 in previous quarter)
> 
> We are working on reducing the amount of unnecessary mails as
> it is too high for the private mailing list.
> 
>  - progetto-it@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 203 subscribers (up 4 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 6 emails sent to list (27 in previous quarter) 
>  - marketing@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 171 subscribers (down -3 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 22 emails sent to list (25 in previous quarter) 
>  - geral-ptbr@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 18 subscribers (up 0 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 0 emails sent to list (4 in previous quarter) 
>  - doc@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 149 subscribers (up 2 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 20 emails sent to list (36 in previous quarter) 
>  - forum-admin@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 3 subscribers (up 0 in the last 3 months) 
>  - utenti-it@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 356 subscribers (up 0 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 109 emails sent to list (51 in previous quarter) 
>  - announce@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 11334 subscribers (down -37 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 1 emails sent to list (0 in previous quarter) 
>  - general-ja@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 24 subscribers (up 0 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 1 emails sent to list (0 in previous quarter) 
>  - issues@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 97 subscribers (up 9 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 1698 emails sent to list (1919 in previous quarter) 
>  - general-es@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 87 subscribers (up 4 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 4 emails sent to list (21 in previous quarter) 
>  - l10n@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 251 subscribers (up 5 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 257 emails sent to list (118 in previous quarter) 
>  - qa@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 280 subscribers (down -5 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 57 emails sent to list (57 in previous quarter) 
>  - api@openoffice.apache.org <ma...@openoffice.apache.org>:  
>     - 155 subscribers (up 10 in the last 3 months): 
>     - 65 emails sent to list (38 in previous quarter)

—end report

> -----
> rgds
> jan i.

Re: Community Board Report - with suggested changes.

[Tim Williams <wi...@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Apr 5, 2015 at 5:23 AM, Gavin McDonald <ga...@16degrees.com.au> wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> So here is the original report as submitted to the board, and I annotate inline the changes
> I suggested be considered.
>
> As originally stated, please feel free to incorporate any or none of the changes at your leisure -
> I won’t be offended :)
>
> The intent of my changes was to put a more positive angle to some aspects of the report - potential
> newcomers read these publicly published reports too, so some encouragement for possible
> contributions can be made there as well as on the mailing lists and wikis et al.
>


As another commenter on the board report.... here is my original mail
to that list in full:

Thanks,
--tim

*************************

Hi Jan,
I hope you'll take a moment and re-read Gav's email.  It strikes me
that his constructive feedback is less about a board report and more
about leadership in general.  Beyond the board report, there's a
saying that a leader's attitude is contagious.  And, your PMC is the
leadership of your project.  Unfortunately, and to Gav's point, that
contagion works for both positive and negative attitudes; so while you
think you're giving an honest assessment, the negative tone with which
you do it may be fueling a downward spiral instead of helping turn it
around.  He offered good ways to get the gravity of the situation
across without causing harm.

Without speaking for him, when he said "I think that the community
that remains would rather see a more positive spin..." I think he
didn't mean to suggest literally the community was at odds or didn't
review what you sent - he meant the broader community would be better
off [i.e. healthier] with a more positive tone.  It's also helpful to
note that nothing that's been said has anything to do with being
direct or honest; it has to do with tact.

Anyway, I hope that you'll reconsider the tone of the report with the
positive energy I've known you to have in other challenging
situations.


--tim

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