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From: Ralph Goers <ralph.goers@dslextreme.com>
To: general@incubator.apache.org
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Subject: Re: Diversity as an insurance policy (Was: [VOTE] Graduation of
 Apache Pivot)
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 2009 08:21:49 -0700
References: <510143ac0908040210o2a03876br5e3903b33792de49@mail.gmail.com>
  <18034C03-6CFD-4E97-87BF-08BF2DCFCEA3@dslextreme.com>
 <510143ac0908050200k7cf27c5bxfceb140d1c605aa@mail.gmail.com>


On Aug 5, 2009, at 2:00 AM, Jukka Zitting wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 3:39 AM, Ralph  
> Goers<ralph.goers@dslextreme.com> wrote:
>> Using these projects as an example is perhaps not the best from a  
>> community
>> perspective because Ceki has no intention of running them like Apache
>> projects. But even if he did, by these standards the projects might  
>> never
>> make it out of the incubator. Even if those of us who would like  
>> them had
>> commit rights I can guarantee that 95% of the commits would still  
>> be Ceki's.
>
> I don't see it as a problem if the vast majority of commits comes from
> one person (or company) as long as the community operates normally
> *and* there are others who won't have to start learning how to build
> the codebase and do an "svn commit" if the key developer leaves.

You won't find the second part solely from the commit log. I would  
expect mentors to be monitoring the dev list. If it is filled with  
"can you fix this?" then there is a problem. But if it also has "why  
did you do this?", "can we do this?", "I don't understand this commit"  
type messages then I expect the second concern is adequately  
addressed. But you can't determine that from raw statistics.

>
> That's why I measure the "three independent committers" criteria by
> looking at the commit log instead of the asf-authorization file. And
> I'm not asking much, just a few code commits in the past few months is
> good enough for me.
>
> That's the criteria that I held Sling against, and that's also what's
> currently keeping UIMA from graduating (and apparently also for over a
> year before I signed up to help them). If the consensus is that this
> is a bit too hard a requirement, then I'll be happy to bring UIMA up
> for graduation in the next few months.
>

I'm suggesting that while that criteria makes sense for someone not  
involved in a project, it isn't necessarily the best way to determine  
how healthy the community is.  If mentors are mentoring then we should  
give heavy weight to their recommendation and judgment with respect to  
graduation. If a mentor needs these kinds of statistics to tell him/ 
her whether the project is healthy then I am very concerned.

Ralph 

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