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From: "B. W. Fitzpatrick" <fitz@red-bean.com>
To: community@apache.org
Subject: Re: Apache Community (was Re: [VOTE] Open this list) 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 27 Oct 2002 08:57:42 EST."
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Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2002 21:38:03 -0600
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Sam Ruby <rubys@apache.org> writes:
> Now, take a look at the description of users on
> http://www.apache.org/foundation/roles.html

That brings up an interesting point. The section that Sam refers to is
this:

    The most important participants are the people who use our
    software. The majority of our developers start out as users and guide
    their development efforts from the user's perspective.
    
    Users contribute to the Apache projects by providing feedback to
    developers in the the form of bug reports and feature suggestions. As
    well, users participate in the Apache community by helping other users
    on mailing lists and user support forums.

Even under the assumption that the above text refers only to Users who
contribute back to Apache projects (by feedback and bug reports), that
does leave me (who voted to keep the list closed) with a bit of a
dilemma: 

Do we leave the list open to committers only (and alienate part of our
community). 

or 

Do we open it to the world (which includes non "users" too) and have
to put up with the potential difficulties of communicating in a
completely public forum (public scrutiny, more list noise, postings
from non-invested parties, etc).

or how about

Limit the list to committers (with no public archive or posting
ability) but allow committers to nominate "users" who have contributed
to the Apache community, but not in a developer role (or users could
ask to be added)? It seems to me that this would satisfy concerns
about dividing community. Or is it enough?


Thanks for making me think about this a bit, Sam.

-Fitz