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From: Gary Gregory <garydgregory@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2016 23:11:44 -0800
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Subject: Re: [REPORT][DRAFT] Apache Commons Board Report for December 2016
To: Commons Developers List <dev@commons.apache.org>
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archived-at: Thu, 15 Dec 2016 07:11:51 -0000

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On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 10:09 PM, Gilles <gilles@harfang.homelinux.org>
wrote:

> Hi.
>
> On Wed, 14 Dec 2016 15:06:35 -0800, Gary Gregory wrote:
>
>> Hi All: I am requesting your feedback before I send this off.
>>
>> ## Description:
>> The Apache Commons project focuses on all aspects of reusable Java
>> components.
>>
>> The Apache Commons components are widely used in many projects, both
>> within
>> Apache and without. Any ASF committer can commit to Apache Commons.
>>
>> The last report was on September 13 2016.
>>
>> ## Issues:
>>  - There are no issues that requires the boards attention this quarter.
>>
>
> I'm not comfortable with the above statement because ...


Hi Gilles and All,

We all should be aware that if you ask the board's attention on an issue,
your are asking for a very large hammer to be applied to that issue.

In this case, regarding one component out of many in the Commons ecosystem
(we had six releases this quarter alone), my feeling is that we are not at
an impasse that requires the board's blunt action.

I would like to point out to the fact that you've been able to create a new
component in Commons RNG and that Commons Math now depends on said new
component. I believe this represents progress and evolution even if uneasy
and in fits and starts, not stuckness. My POV is still that Commons Math
and perhaps RNG still need a larger community to continue in a healthy
manner. I do notice that Commons Math in the last three months had 26
commits from 4 different people, which is more action that many of our
other components :-)

Growth and evolution is our job as a community to manage and grow, not the
board's. If you feel you'd like to board's or anyone's advice, you are
welcome to seek it out-of-band of this report but I do not believe that it
needs to be called out here. I do not think we need board action and
therefore we do not need to ask for it in that section. Commons Math is
discussed in another section. We can add more text there.

I'm curious as to other's opinions.


>
>
>> ## Activity:
>>  - The project is active with 6 releases this reporting period. We
>> released
>>  one new component Commons RNG 1.0. Commons Math still feels in semi-limbo
>> and
>>  now depends on Commons RNG in our repository. Commons RDF is making its
>>  way out of the incubator into Commons.
>>
>>  - The Commons community has decided to bring forth and maintain a new
>>  component, Commons RNG, out of the larger Commons Math code base, which
>> is
>>  has seen no activity in the last quarter. The future of Commons Math is
>>  still uncertain and being discussed from time to time. There are several
>>  proposals for fostering new communities in place of the dwindling
>>  Commons Math one, but that those are in limbo because no consensus
>>  has been reached yet.
>>
>
> ... of this state of affairs.
> My assessment is that some people take positions that, in effect,
> block (for good or bad reasons depending on the POVs), the (only)
> initiatives which others want to take in order to gradually move
> parts of CM out of "semi-limbo".
>

I've not seen -1 VOTEs on commits so "blocking" feels like too strong a
term. Yes, there has been the usual concerns over binary compatibility, jar
hell, and component evolution.


>
> I'd like the report to convey that "do-ocracy" is stalled here.

and that it may be interesting to have external advice based on
> last year's history (ML archive).
>

Again, I do not see how, as exemplified by the release of Commons RNG 1.0
and Common's Math commit history and the new dependency on Commons RNG.


> This report should also mention why some people (namely, James
> Carman) want to leave the project.
>
> I do not have the time to (re-)discuss any of this (and I won't
> have a connection for the next 5 days).
>

Perhaps someone will suggest additional text for this report.

Gary

>
>
> Thanks,
> Gilles
>
>
>
>> ## Health report:
>>  - Most components in Commons are mature, but are still actively
>>  maintained (6 releases). The dev list is active. JIRA is active. Speed of
>>  responses to users is reasonable in most cases. We have 1 new PMC member,
>>  and Commons is still open to any Apache Committer.
>>
>> Unedited reporter data follows.
>>
>> ## PMC changes:
>>
>>  - Currently 36 PMC members.
>>  - Bruno P. Kinoshita was added to the PMC on Wed Oct 26 2016
>>
>> ## Committer base changes:
>>
>>  - Currently 142 committers.
>>  - No new committers added in the last 3 months
>>  - Last committer addition was Eric Barnhill at Tue Sep 06 2016
>>
>> ## Releases:
>>
>>  - BEANUTILS-1.9.3 was released on Sat Sep 24 2016
>>  - BUILDPLUGIN 1.7 was released on Mon Nov 21 2016
>>  - JCS-2.0-beta-2 was released on Mon Oct 31 2016
>>  - LANG-3.5 was released on Thu Oct 13 2016
>>  - RNG-1.0 was released on Sun Dec 11 2016
>>  - WEAVER-1.3 was released on Mon Oct 17 2016
>>
>> ## Mailing list activity:
>>
>>  - TODO Please explain what the following statistics mean
>>    for the project. If there is nothing significant in the figures, omit
>> this
>>    section.
>>
>>  - dev@commons.apache.org:
>>     - 671 subscribers (down -8 in the last 3 months):
>>     - 1381 emails sent to list (1607 in previous quarter)
>>
>>  - issues@commons.apache.org:
>>     - 300 subscribers (down -2 in the last 3 months):
>>     - 1743 emails sent to list (1646 in previous quarter)
>>
>>  - notifications@commons.apache.org:
>>     - 12 subscribers (up 0 in the last 3 months):
>>     - 201 emails sent to list (247 in previous quarter)
>>
>>  - user@commons.apache.org:
>>     - 1231 subscribers (down -5 in the last 3 months):
>>     - 130 emails sent to list (83 in previous quarter)
>>
>>
>> ## JIRA activity:
>>
>>  - 177 JIRA tickets created in the last 3 months
>>  - 184 JIRA tickets closed/resolved in the last 3 months
>>
>>  Gary Gregory, Your Apache Commons PMC Chair.
>>
>>
>
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