Re: Attempt to "reboot" Apache Pivot community

[Roger Whitcomb <ro...@rbwhitcomb.com>]

Hi Claude,
Apologies for taking so long to reply — it’s been quite busy for me last few weeks.  But, here’s a general idea of what’s on tap currently:
1. List of very technical things I would like to finish before the next release: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PIVOT-1050 Some are very mechanical (check style things), while others are quite challenging (IME support).
2. Our website is not very functional, relying on applets — need a whole new organization to be usable.
3. Need a third (or more) PMC member for votes, esp. for release voting.
4. Need help getting CI builds working again since the change in infrastructure.
5. I need help setting up signing keys for the release(s).
6. Need a lot of help deciding what to do post-applet support, since Pivot will not even build now with Java 16 b/c of JDK classes that are not present anymore.
7. Need updates not only for Nashorn scripting changes / support, but also post-Nashorn.
8. Ant build is pretty close to obsolete, although it works well.  Would be nice to have Gradle as well.
9. For some reason the Github mirror is about two years out of date — need to get git workflow going (again).

Thank you,
~Roger

On Aug 23, 2021, at 2:33 PM, Claude Edney <cl...@yahoo.com.INVALID>> wrote:

Hey Roger,Can you give some more detail about the project and recommended tasks you are looking to have engineers perform to complete the project? That way I can estimate the time values to see if I can join in and give a handThanks
Claude
   On Monday, August 23, 2021, 02:36:05 PM EDT, Craig Russell <ap...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Hi Rich,

This is the best advice I have seen in a long time for projects facing reduced activity.

It probably belongs in an FAQ to memorialize its wisdom.

Best,
Craig

On Aug 23, 2021, at 6:29 AM, Rich Bowen <rb...@rcbowen.com>> wrote:



On 8/20/21 1:11 PM, Roger Whitcomb wrote:
Hi all,
My name is Roger Whitcomb and I’m the current PMC Chair for the Apache Pivot project.  The Pivot community has been dwindling for a number of years, to where I am essentially the only one working / contributing to it for probably 5 years now.  Recently (well 6 months ago), the necessary 3rd (active) PMC member resigned, and so we are left with just two of us who have demonstrated any readiness to respond to votes, etc.  So, I have been, in my quarterly Board reports, raising awareness that we’re in trouble because of the lack of sufficient oversight.  The responses to my last report were to the effect that I should either contact ComDev to see if there were ideas / suggestions about rebooting or raising interest in the project, OR talk to the Attic folks about moving there.  Since I’m still actively working on the project, trying to reboot things still seems good, even though privately I have serious doubts that this could happen.
So, why am I contacting you?  Well, precisely to get thoughts / ideas / suggestions, if there are any, on how to at least raise interest to the point of recruiting another PMC member for oversight of the project.  Secondly, has anyone here been in this position before?  If so, what happened?  Any thoughts about alternatives?  I have thought about retiring the project to the Attic, but then forking to Github (or similar) to continue the work I’m doing.  However, that seems like a LOT of work (probably including changing names, changing all the packages, etc, etc.) and I’m not sure of the legal ramifications, since copyright (I assume) would remain with the ASF still. Anyway, I will have a separate conversation with Legal about this, I suppose.
Bottom line: anyone able to give some advice?


(Apologies if you have already tried all of these things, but ...)

The first thing I would recommend is to tell the users list about the concerns, and describe specific opportunities to contribute. In many (even most?) projects, the vast majority of users are content to consume, and never even think about contributing. If you communicate that the project is likely to be terminated if nobody steps up, you may see a handful of people who are willing to do so - particularly if they are at companies that rely on the project.

Identifying specific tasks that need to be done (including a PMC role) is always more effective than a general call for help.

This may also be the time to consider whether your requirements (written or not) for committer rights have been too high. Perhaps there are people out there who have contributed, over the years, but were not deemed worthy of committer rights. Over time, this leads to missing out on potential community members. Look back over the past few years and see who has sent in patches, or other non-code contributions, and approach them about their willingness to participate at a higher level.

Do you know of any companies/orgs that are relying on the project? I would encourage you to reach out to someone at those companies and tell them that the project is facing retirement, if nobody steps up to contribute and lead. That can also be very effective in finding some managers willing to give some of their employee time to sustain the project rather than having to retool.


--
Rich Bowen - rbowen@rcbowen.com<ma...@rcbowen.com> <ma...@rcbowen.com>
@rbowen

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@community.apache.org<ma...@community.apache.org> <ma...@community.apache.org>
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@community.apache.org<ma...@community.apache.org> <ma...@community.apache.org>
Craig L Russell
clr@apache.org<ma...@apache.org>