[Incubator] Project Status Template
Daniel Brookshier
dbrookshier at collab.net
Wed Apr 5 16:55:41 EDT 2006
First on incubation and odds of success. Some open source projects
have remained under a 1.0 release for years, only to get a burst of
energy and create several quality releases. There are indeed also
projects that have petered out before or after a release.
The number one constant is the there are no constants. People have
ever shifting priorities and available time to work on these
projects. It is also damn hard to get a sustaining developer base to
keep a project viable.
The beauty of the Apache style incubator is that we help this process
along. The forms, procedures, and monitoring of project status helps
projects think about how to succeed.
Allowing a project to start work in the incubator should only be
about the process of doing the up front work like completing a
project questionnaire and being assigned to a rep from the incubation
committee. Success will then depend on the merits of the idea and the
ability of the project owners to either create the code or rally others.
More answers inline below
Daniel Brookshier | Community Manager | CollabNet, Inc.
8000 Marina Blvd. Suite 600 | Brisbane, CA 94005 | USA
O 972.422.5261 | C 214.207.6614 | dbrookshier at collab.net
On Apr 5, 2006, at 11:16 AM, Paul Spencer wrote:
> Frank, I don't have a strong opinion about this either way but I
> think the committee/board needs to be able to justify the decision
> one way or the other and I don't see a compelling argument (yet) to
> believe that we should refuse project incubation on the basis that
> they may not graduate.
>
> I do believe that incubator projects need to be presented
> differently. The most expedient way to accomplish this would be to
> have the project web site checked out under http://
> incubator.osgeo.org/<projectname>. When a project is accepted, the
> web site can be moved to http://<projectname>.osgeo.org/ with very
> little effort.
I would keep this to the wiki or project tracker if the form works
well enough for us. Once a project is approved we can parent it in
various ways to both projects and categories.
>
> It may also be relatively simple to have an SVN/CVS location for
> incubator projects that is separate from official projects. I
> can't imagine that it would be difficult to move an SVN tree when a
> project becomes official.
It is not difficult, but it is troublesome. That's why CollabNet is
structured by project. It allows the project owner full control of
their tools. If you do a sort of big svn with multiple projects there
is a bunch of nastiness with read/write roles that you have to add.
If you don't you will be trying to figure out why 20 projects
disappeared because of the new guy experimenting with deletes.
Another problem is the way the tools are connected. For instance you
can subscribe to the commits list to see svn commits, but there is no
way to subscribe to just one branch. Thus another reason to be under
a specific project as the first step.
Finally is email lists in general. The tool does not let you move a
list archive around. Even it it did, the addresses would need to be
changed and there is no facility for that either. If the incubator
project has its list from day one, no problem.
>
> It also should not be too difficult to offer an alternate download
> site for incubator projects.
Best to look at this by project again. We can create a page that
might have this, but someone has to manage the page. The wiki is a
good solution, but it may still be problematic. The tool does help by
letting you look at a list by category. For instance:
https://incubator-list.osgeo.org/
or
https://committee-projects.osgeo.org/
To summarize, give a project its space as soon as it meets the
minimum requirements. We can mange the system so that incubated
projects are slightly out of the mainstream. We do want to be sure
that they are visible enough to attract other developers and beta users.
If a project does go completely dead, we can delete it or put it in a
cemetery category. I just delete them if nothing happens in the svn
for 6 months or so. I email the owner first and about 1 out of 5
email back that they have just made a commit of a beta release :o)
>
> DanielB, could you chime in with some comments on my assumptions -
> anything I can do myself I assume is easy :)
>
> Sean, in joining late I seem to have missed how you and Frank
> differ on incubation. Could you summarize your differences?
>
> Cheers
>
> Paul
> On 5-Apr-06, at 10:27 AM, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
>
>> Paul Spencer wrote:
>>> Frank ...
>>> If there is a possibility that a project can be rejected then it
>>> may be unwise to port the project's infrastructure into the osgeo
>>> infrastructure since that may cause more work for the project if
>>> they are rejected and migrate out.
>>
>> Paul,
>>
>> Well, if the approval is in doubt it would be prudent for a
>> project to
>> avoid the most expensive/disruptive types of migration.
>>
>>> Should we:
>>> * make this possibility known and leave it to the project to decide
>>
>> This is the current approach.
>>
>>> * have the project pass an Incubator Committee vote on whether
>>> its probability of success is high enough to warrant use of the
>>> osgeo infrastructure (and how do we assess this)
>>
>> Well, I'm not too keen on this. *But* I don't think we should even
>> be accepting projects into incubation unless we believe they are
>> likely
>> to pass incubation. I think this is one of the points that Sean has
>> a different opinion that I do, I believe.
>>
>>> * have a parallel infrastructure for incubation projects, or
>>> possibly just a parallel of a portion of the infrastructure such
>>> as http://incubator.osgeo.org/<projectname>
>>
>> What would the benefit of this parallel infrastructure be? I'm not
>> keen on any extra complication, nor for having to do further
>> migration
>> (other than updating a few status items) when transitioning from
>> incubation to full membership.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> --
>> ---------------------------------------
>> +--------------------------------------
>> I set the clouds in motion - turn up | Frank Warmerdam,
>> warmerdam at pobox.com
>> light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
>> and watch the world go round - Rush | President OSGF, http://
>> osgeo.org
>>
>>
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>
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