Bjorn,
The “inactive” status isn’t entirely accurate
for projects/components that are new (i.e. it’s possible that committers
haven’t committed anything yet because the project /component was only
recently provisioned). It seems that Dash has the information to make this
distinction (based on the shaded cells that appear in the active committers
report); could the new portal box be modified to reflect this distinction?
Another observation is that the election participation
information isn’t as useful for projects with components since not every
committer is eligible to vote in every election (mind you, this will be addressed
if/when the proposed changes to the development process are approved; when do
you expect that might happen, by the way?).
Thanks,
Kenn
Hussey
Program Manager, EA/Studio
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From:
eclipse.org-project-leadership-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse.org-project-leadership-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bjorn
Freeman-Benson
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 7:50 PM
To: eclipse.org-project-leadership@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [eclipse.org-project-leadership] Time to trim inactive
committers
Project Leaders,
We've been muddling along for three years now with a large set of inactive
committers but the time has come to take bold action and trim the committer
lists. The latest data I have from the commits explorer is that only 50% of
listed committers have written any code at all in the last twelve months - zero
lines of code in a year which is pretty darn inactive.
We have built a new portal box to help you with "decommitterizing"
your inactive committers. Project leaders (such as yourselves), have an
additional [decommitterize] action in their project boxes on the portal:
When you press that button, you get a list of all your project's committers
along with two pieces of activity information: (1) the number of committer
elections the person has participated in in the last year and (2) a
red-yellow-green activity indicator for source code commits. The activity
indicator follows the activity determinations on the standard project
information pages which is: active = commits within the last three months,
participating = nothing in the last three months but commits within the last
nine months, inactive = no commits in more than nine months.
For each person you determine to be an inactive committer, simply press on
[remove] for that person and fill out the form. (Of course you can see the
whole process with the "explore" button.)
Eclipse Projects are predicated on having active committers and the top-level
project Charters reflect that:
- "Active participation in the user newsgroup
and the appropriate developer mailing lists is a responsibility of all
Committers, and is critical to the success of the Project."
- "Committers are required to monitor the
developer mailing list associated with all Projects and components for
which they have commit privileges. This is a condition of being granted
commit rights to the Project or component. It is mandatory because
committers must participate in votes ... and must respond to the mailing
list in a timely fashion in order to facilitate the smooth operation of
the Project. When a Committer is granted commit rights they will be added
to the appropriate mailing lists. A Committer must not be unsubscribed
from a developer mailing list unless their associated commit privileges
are also removed."
- "At times, Committers may go inactive for a
variety of reasons. The decision making process of the Project relies on
active committers who respond to discussions and votes in a constructive
and timely manner. ... A Committer that is disruptive, does not
participate actively, or has been inactive for an extended period
may have his or her commit status removed by the PMC"
Thus it is clear that inactive committers must be removed
from the projects' committer lists.
One thing that a couple of people have mentioned is that they have left some
people on the lists to acknowledge their past contributions even though they
are currently not active. For example: John Weigand. While this is admirable,
it is not allowed by the project Charters - but all is not lost! - we have
added a new "Committer Emeritus" feature to the project information
pages (bug
222350). The [decommitterization] form has a checkbox for you to nominate
significant past contributors for Emeritus status. There is no limit to the
number of Committers Emeritus a project can have, but this role should be a
honor reserved for significant contributors.
Obviously, if someone appears inactive in the limited stats I have collected
but you know them to be an active committer (maybe they answer newsgroup posts
or write tutorials or ??), then you are not required to decommitterize them.
The decisions are yours to make, but I encourage you to trim more rather than
less as "Active participation ... is critical to the success of the
Project."
I know you're busy, but it is important for the entire Eclipse community to
keep the committer list clean and active. Among other reasons, keeping the
committer list clean raises the value of being an Eclipse Committer so it's in
all of our best interest for you to take a few minutes, go to the portal, and use the [decommitterization]
tool to clean up your project's committer list.
Thank you.
