Re: [technology-pmc] Asking for Approval of Jubula 1.0.0 Graduation/Rele

[Markus Knauer <mknauer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have to say: A very interesting discussion with many valid points. Many of them I've discussed with other projects that I am mentoring, most of them were based on commercial products.

The key point here is the first impression that you leave on your download page. How can you explain to your existing customers that they paid money in the past for a code base that has <1.0 quality? How can you explain to your management/marketing that you need to downgrade your version number?

To me there are some hard requirements for finally removing the 'incubation' string from all downloads and release something with a version number >=1.0: The code must be IP clean (that's the legal aspect), it has to conform to the coding standards and to the code quality of Eclipse (code aspect), and there must be a hope that the team can turn the project into a lively open source project in the near future (community aspect). In that case the wording 'incubation' and the <1.0 version are just counterproductive for the future development of the project.

I am not sure that we need a third category in between 'incubation' and a 'mature' project status that allows projects to release IP clean high quality software with versions >=1.0, but I am very sure that we cannot explain to the end users and customers that this software cannot be 1.0 just because there are not enough external mails and questions on mailing lists and newsgroups. Customers and end users just wouldn't listen to our complicated explanations and would go on to search for alternatives. And I know of at least two other projects that will have the same problem within the Indigo time frame.


Thanks,
Markus

On 12 May 2011 22:24, Konstantin Komissarchik <konstantin.komissarchik@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

A negative vote on graduation should not be taken as implying the project is
in bad shape. It is simply a statement that more work is required in
developing open source process maturity, which is what the incubation phase
is for.

Is there a particular reason that rushing graduation is warranted in this
case? A project can do releases while in incubation, it can contribute to
the release train, etc. Rushing graduation simply to be able to do a 1.0
release does not seem to be in spirit of EDP.

- Konstantin



-----Original Message-----
From: technology-pmc-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx

[mailto:technology-pmc-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Gunnar Wagenknecht
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2011 1:06 PM

To: Technology PMC
Subject: Re: [technology-pmc] Asking for Approval of Jubula 1.0.0
Graduation/Release review

Hi All,

It seems that we are in the middle of a great discussion. I love to see
such an amount of activity on our list.

Frankly, I think there are many things to consider for making a
decision. Converting an existing commercial project into an open source
project is a tough but the right thing to do. From my experience it's a
tremendous amount of effort (if not impossible) to also convert an
existing community.

Judging project openness from the traffic on a dev list and newsgroups
isn't the right approach in this case. Eclipse is about community. But
Eclipse is also about commercial adoption. IMHO is just natural that any
user base which uses commercial support won't post to any open
forum/newsgroup but call/mail their support contact. Thus, I think it's
fair to say that the forum/newsgroup will likely represent only those
users which use the open source project (either converted from a
commercial version or really new users).

The dev list could likely need some love by sending regular meeting
minutes. I'm not sure that this has to be on a daily base. There are
many major Eclipse projects which don't publish regular meeting minutes.

BTW, there is a great article on community development here:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Community_Development_for_Eclipse_Projects

Am 10.05.2011 14:01, schrieb Achim Lörke:
> we are planning to release the 1.0.0 of Jubula (...) as part of
> the Indigo release train. With this release we also want to
> leave the Incubation state.

Reading through the article referenced above I don't think that Jubula
is in such a bad shape that it justifies a negative vote. Over time the
Jubula team has demonstrated some very good progress in understanding
and adopting the Eclipse processes. The amount of
information/documentation they have on the website, wiki and in Bugzilla
is quite good (IMHO).

Their code base definitely deserves a 1.0 release. The rules are that
this also requires graduation. Graduation does not, however, mean
project mentors are gone. Especially for graduating projects staying in
Technology we will be their to answer questions.

Oh and we'll also do project reviews. If in a year from now the silence
on the dev list still exists, then we can reconsider our options.

Thoughts?

-Gunnar



--
Gunnar Wagenknecht
gunnar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://wagenknecht.org/
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