r1 - 04 Dec 2003 - 13:53:11 - MitchellBakerYou are here: OSAF >  Journal Web  >  MeetingNotes > StaffMeetingNotes > StaffMeetingNotes20031202
All Hands Dec. 4 2003

A. Working Groups

We discussed the information about working groups found in the management committee meeting notes from Dec. 2 2003.

B. Community topics. We kicked off a new set or periodic disucssions about community and open source topics, since this is a big element of our development process. In this first session, Ted Leung gave an overview of basic tenets of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).

1. ASF is a not-for-profit foundation. But doesn't have paid employees, staff developers or management project. Apache is best known for web server project, now has many projects.

2. Key principles of the ASF

a. Licensing: Apache uses a BSD-style license. Not like the GPL. This licensing model has been very successful, encourages companies to participate, contribute developer time.

ASF does almost everything by volunteers and donated facilities, included co-lo, management of manchines. Unclear how many full-time funded developers there are.

b. Consensus based development. Building community is as important as building code. Community is a part of world of all developers, it's not a separate responsibility.

c. The Meritocracy -- people get involved by submitting bug fixes, then functionality. After a period of review of the quality of the patches there is a vote of existing "committers" to see if someone is ready for "write access" to CVS, and be a "committer" for that project. Projects vary somewhat in how this is implemented. Committers vote on what happens to the project -- feature development, time-frames, etc. Often use a "lazy consensus" model. On a technical matter, can't veto unless one proposes a solution, not supposed to veto on the grounds that "I don't like it."

Votes are clearly needed: big changes in architecture, solid release plans. Other things are less clear, and often there's not a vote required.

Becoming a committer requires signing a legal file. Large contributions require a copyright assignment.

d. "Members." Members elect the Board and are responsible for day-to-day operation of the foundation. Elected based on technical achievement and contribution to the project. About 113 now.

e. ASF has grown a lot recently, transmission of culture requires more effort now.

f. New top level projects need Board approval. Many new project start in the "incubator." Goal of the incubator is to do the IP vetting, and tht community concerns are taken care of. If a company wants to contribute a chunk of code, then ASF requires a showing that a community can be built.

g. Each project has a project management committee. These report to the Board. Projects communicate with each other regarding changes that affect multiple projects, but there is no formal management structure governing this.

h. Communication: primarily email so as to be asynchronous, given the multitude of timezones. Startng to use IRC and telecom. But don't make decisions here; send log of IRC chats, transcript of IRC logs to mail, where decisions can be made.

-- MitchellBaker - 04 Dec 2003

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