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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 19:28:03 -0700
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On Aug 5, 2009, at 2:44 PM, Niall Pemberton wrote:

>>
>
> OK we have a similar example here at the ASF - when Craig McC. left
> Apache Shale it slowly died - and AFAIK become the first project to
> join the Attic. So Ceki decides to become a Yak farmer in patagonia
> and maybe the same thing happens to SLF4J. I'm in two minds about
> Pivot's graduation - but I do believe that for its long term health it
> needs to get more people actively working on the code.
>

Actually, if Ceki "moved on" there is no way SLF4J or Logback would  
die. They might have to move somewhere else so others could manage the  
source repository, mailing lists, etc., but there are too many other  
people involved in the community for it to die. That is precisely the  
point I was trying to make. I'm not using those projects as good  
examples of Apache projects - they aren't. But they are great examples  
of why you can't really judge the health of a project by how many  
people are committing code. In fact, if you look at the mailing lists  
and commit stats for SLF4J & Logback vs Commons Logging & Log4j you  
might be surprised at how much more active the former are than the  
latter.

As for Shale, my understanding is that it was sort of a proving ground  
for things that were eventually to be incorporated into JSF 2.0. That  
seems to be confirmed by http://blogs.jsfcentral.com/editorsdesk/entry/shale_in_the_attic 
. But Shale was a TLP, not an incubator project. Somehow the project  
managed to meet the requirements to become one. I don't know the  
details of how it went from a Struts subproject to a TLP and whether  
that was really warranted, but the one thing you haven't mentioned was  
anything about the community. The problem isn't projects with a single  
(or two) committer(s) with lots of community involvement. The problem,  
as this case illustrates, is a community with a single active  
participant and no one to take over if they leave.

Ralph

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