I am troubled by the recent events in the incubator project
with regards to rejection of proposed committers. I think it sets a tone that
is not in line with the purpose of that project. It could help for PMC to
clarify operational expectations around the incubator project. While having
such a document may not necessarily have prevented what has occurred as every
committer is free to exercise their own personal judgement per EDP, it would at
least better describe the expected social norms.
Another thing to look at is to establish some lifecycle
expectations for the components housed inside the incubator. We are now in a
situation where there are some quite long-lived components that for one reason
or another haven’t quite reached the point where they are ready to
graduate. Their needs to “guard” their code aren’t in line with
needs of fresh contributors coming to incubator looking for a playground to
experiment on ideas. One approach is to set a timeline for the component to
either graduate into an existing project or to spin-off into a separate project
where it can continue in incubation stage.
The other thing that would be necessary is some way to phase
out commit rights, especially as components leave the incubator. An ever-growing
list of committers in the incubator creates problems under the “one -1
vote sinks the ship” rules established by EDP for committer elections and
dispute resolution. Of course, phasing out of committer rights needs to be done
in a way that doesn’t completely rob the project of committers…
Just some food for thought. I am sure that the next PMC
meeting will be lively. :)
- Konstantin