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Posted to general@incubator.apache.org by Dirk-Willem van Gulik <di...@webweaving.org> on 2005/03/14 12:51:11 UTC
RE: What is a healthy community? WAS: log4net 1.2.9 beta release
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005, Ceki Gülcü wrote:
> What is so special about the number 3? What's wrong with 5 committers? With
> 4? With 2? With 1?
..
> Does "sustainable" necessarily mean 3 or more committers? Is a project with
> a single committer yet consistent committer less viable than a project with
> 30 disillusioned and inactive committters?
Well - with just one commiter
-> for sure no oversight.
-> for sure an issue if he or she gets hit by a bus, a baby,
whatever.
and it is very questionable if what that group produces is an ASF
community product.
Two is more than one - but it is at only three that group dynamics first
start to kick in. And it is that group dynamic which is vital in building
and maintaining a community.
Sure 5 or 15 is even better - but if you have to draw a line - 3 is as low
as you can go.
> a single committer yet consistent committer less viable than a project with
> 30 disillusioned and inactive committters?
Both should, and will, ultimately be garbage collected.
Dw
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Re: What is a healthy community? WAS: log4net 1.2.9 beta release
Posted by Jim Jagielski <ji...@jaguNET.com>.
IMO, one key aspect of incubation is to determine the health
of the community or, at least, to provide some clear indication
that the community, post-incubation, will grow and thrive.
We cannot guarantee that at all; it would be foolish to
believe we could.
A vote of +1 by 3 has always been a critical indication of
correctness and completeness. Personally, if there is
a community of 3 or 4, and they all vote +1, then that
implies more involvement that a community of 2 dozen
with "only" 3 votes.
Healthy does not always equate to growth in numbers, but rather
in the growth of code. The danger of "small" communities
is that the loss of a single developer can be more
detrimental to the codebase and increases the risk
of zombie projects. So obviously a project of a
single contributor has the most risk...
So the questions are really: is the code progressing? Is
there active development? Is there a user and developer
community evolving? Is it worthwhile? And are there
the votes?
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Incubation, healthy communities, and the Apache brand (long)
Posted by Cliff Schmidt <cl...@gmail.com>.
Here are my $0.02 on the reasons for the incubation process:
Thanks to those who came long before me (particularly the httpd
folks), the Apache brand is incredibly strong. There are literally
millions of users of Apache products who believe that they are making
a good choice by simply building on something from Apache. This brand
adds value to all ASF projects, which allows them to get increased
exposure and hopefully continue to attract developers to do more great
work here. However, as the number of projects at Apache grows, we are
faced with a very difficult challenge of keeping that brand strong.
Many of the users who decide to build their businesses on Apache
products are doing so with the belief that the product will "be there
tomorrow", which means that questions will be answered on the mailing
lists, bugs will eventually get fixed, and the product will release
future versions to keep up with the latest user requests (e.g.
interoperability with the latest standard). This is why community is
more important than code to Apache -- without a strong and diverse
community we can't live up to these expectations. If development is
driven solely by one person/vendor, Apache is taking a risk that
personal/business changes won't cause all development to come to a
halt.
IMO, the purpose of incubation is to allow new projects to get
familiar with the way things work at Apache, to ensure any legal
issues are adequately addressed, and to build a diverse user and
developer community that minimizes the brand risk of endorsing the
project under the Apache name, which happens only after graduation.
Over the last couple years, the Incubator community has tried to
quantify the standard for an acceptable community. We have the 3+
committers rule (which really should be from different organizations
-- a major reason for this rule is to allow a veto to prevent a single
person/company from making a self-serving decision that isn't in the
best interests of the overall community); we used to have a rule a
year ago that no more than 50% of the committers could be from any one
organization (which was both unnecessary and could be gamed by a
single vendor if it was the only hard requirement).
My personal belief (and as a single vote on the Incubator PMC) is that
a project is ready for graduation when it appears to be an acceptable
risk to the Apache brand. Ideally, this means that no single
individual/company could irrevocably damage the project by walking
away; however, if that's not quite the case but the project has grown
and diversified its community and has demonstrated an open process
that continues to invite others to participate, then it might be an
acceptable risk.
Cliff
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Re: What is a healthy community? WAS: log4net 1.2.9 beta release
Posted by Alex Karasulu <ao...@bellsouth.net>.
Rodent of Unusual Size wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>Ceki Gülcü wrote:
>
>
>>However, one core component of democracy is the separation of powers
>>and independence between the 3 branches of government.
>>
>>
>
>If you are referring to the U.S. model, that isn't a democracy either.
>It's a republic. Again, there are similar aspects but they are quite
>different.
>
>
>
Could not help but voice this opinion :).
A republic is a state that pays representatives to vote for you on your
behalf. In one extreme, a republic can almost approach a Democracy. In
the other end of the spectrum, a republic approaches an Aristocracy
according to jean-Jacques Rousseau ("When people rule by their wallets
..."). IMHO America is definately an Aristocracy even though we pretend
that money does not creep into the picture. Lobbies are proof that
money matters.
I don't want to compare Apache to what we "market" as Democracy here.
Personally I think of Apache more as a Technocratic Meritocracy. Here
you're knowledge of the currrent topic (Technocracy) in combination with
your energy input (Meritocracy) determines you're role in driving the
issues at hand. I like to think of passion and wisdom as our driving
human factors in governance rather than greed.
<snip/>
Oh and +1 on having a threshold/requirement of 3 or more peeps to a
project. It takes 3 to have a party (the fun kind).
My 0.02,
Alex
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Re: What is a healthy community? WAS: log4net 1.2.9 beta release
Posted by Rodent of Unusual Size <Ke...@Golux.Com>.
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Ceki Gülcü wrote:
>
> This may sound contrary democracy (rule of the people by the people.)
Apache is not a democracy. It is a meritocracy, which has aspects
which are similar but is not identical.
> However, one core component of democracy is the separation of powers
> and independence between the 3 branches of government.
If you are referring to the U.S. model, that isn't a democracy either.
It's a republic. Again, there are similar aspects but they are quite
different.
> What is a community product? If a community product is defined as a
> product produced by the collaboration of multiple committers, then you
> are right. However, if a community product is defined as the product
> developed by *one* or more developers with *input* from multiple
> constituents, be they simple users asking for help, developers
> submitting patches or making suggestions, then a project with one
> committer can produce a community product.
The former is the Apache definition. The latter is not.
> Can you give examples of group dynamics kicking in within a group of 3
> but not in a group of 2? The difference is not so obvious to me.
What is the point of this discussion? Are you challenging the way
Apache handles decision making? If so, why? Because you suspect it
may be flawed? Because others' interpretations are standing in the
way of something happening? Some other reason?
- --
#ken P-)}
Ken Coar, Sanagendamgagwedweinini http://Ken.Coar.Org/
Author, developer, opinionist http://Apache-Server.Com/
"Millennium hand and shrimp!"
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RE: What is a healthy community? WAS: log4net 1.2.9 beta release
Posted by Dirk-Willem van Gulik <di...@webweaving.org>.
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005, Ceki Gülcü wrote:
> At 12:51 PM 3/14/2005, Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote:
> body, as long as that developer agrees to submit to the decisions of
> the supervisory body. The number of supervised developers should not
..
Bear in mind that in essese that most of us do not see this as a
democracy; we delegate a lot down to the PCM's and even down to the
committer body when it comes to code - but at the same time; your vote
(binding or not) also means that you as a commiter are standing behind a
release on behalf of the ASF and are commited to its future.
You could make the argument that this means that aggregate PMC's are
simply not possible. Or you could make the argument that each code base
must grow its very own community.
Dw
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RE: What is a healthy community? WAS: log4net 1.2.9 beta
release
Posted by Ceki Gülcü <ce...@qos.ch>.
At 12:51 PM 3/14/2005, Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote:
>On Mon, 14 Mar 2005, Ceki Gülcü wrote:
>
> > What is so special about the number 3? What's wrong with 5 committers? With
> > 4? With 2? With 1?
>..
> > Does "sustainable" necessarily mean 3 or more committers? Is a project with
> > a single committer yet consistent committer less viable than a project with
> > 30 disillusioned and inactive committters?
>
>Well - with just one commiter
>
>-> for sure no oversight.
Why not? A single developer can be overseen by a higher supervisory
body, as long as that developer agrees to submit to the decisions of
the supervisory body. The number of supervised developers should not
matter. You are probably referring to a situation where the developers
supervise themselves. Social studies have shown that decisions made
collectively do not always yield better results. For one, groups have
a stronger tendency to persist in their commitment to manifestly bad
decisions, compared to the capacity of a single individual to reverse
his/her own bad decision. The capacity to reverse decisions (good or
bad!) improves dramatically when the person or group reversing a prior
decision is different than the person or entity that took the initial
decision. Humans have an often devastating tendency to escalate on
their initial (seemingly inconsequential) decisions. For example, most
investors have a hard time selling loosing stocks and keeping winners
-- the exact opposite of the optimal strategy -- because of their
committment to their initial decision to buy.
This may sound contrary democracy (rule of the people by the people.)
However, one core component of democracy is the separation of powers
and independence between the 3 branches of government. So instead of
"supervision of developers by the developers," another approach
consists of supervision of developers by an elected body of
supervisors, for example the PMC.
You could cite Jakarta as a counter example. However, we should not
forget that the scope of LS is much more restricted than that of
Jakarta. Moreover, LS has 3 sub-projects compared to the dozen or more
in Jakarta.
>-> for sure an issue if he or she gets hit by a bus, a baby,
> whatever.
>
>and it is very questionable if what that group produces is an ASF
>community product.
What is a community product? If a community product is defined as a
product produced by the collaboration of multiple committers, then you
are right. However, if a community product is defined as the product
developed by *one* or more developers with *input* from multiple
constituents, be they simple users asking for help, developers
submitting patches or making suggestions, then a project with one
committer can produce a community product.
This brings me to formulate the subject question "What is a healthy
community?" as "What is a community?"
>Two is more than one - but it is at only three that group dynamics first
>start to kick in. And it is that group dynamic which is vital in building
>and maintaining a community.
Can you give examples of group dynamics kicking in within a group of 3
but not in a group of 2? The difference is not so obvious to me.
Assuming that everyone votes, a group of 3 will always be able to
decide by majority vote, but that is true for all odd numbered
groups. Is the difference in group dynamics between groups of 2 and 3
solely due to the fact that 2 is pair and 3 is odd?
Many successful partnerships have 2 partners, not 3 or more.
If we consider a community as a partnership between committers and
take nature as a possible model to emulate, then 2 would win hands
down. Indeed, the vast majority of living plants and animals on our
planet are the result of the partnership between 2 parents, not 3.
>Sure 5 or 15 is even better - but if you have to draw a line - 3 is as low
>as you can go.
> > a single committer yet consistent committer less viable than a project with
> > 30 disillusioned and inactive committters?
>
>Both should, and will, ultimately be garbage collected.
If garbage collection is cheap, then why not take chances with
projects consisting of just one committer supervised by a distinct body?
>Dw
--
Ceki Gülcü
The complete log4j manual: http://www.qos.ch/log4j/
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