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The objective of this page is to give Mentors guidance on situations that podlings find themselves in and how they might be addressed. Each project is different, so the outcomes or how you deal with any given podlings situation may be different from your podling. What is a good fit for one project may not be a good fit for another.

Possible values include charity, community, consensus decisionmaking, flat structure, governance, individual contributions, independence, merit, open communication, oversight, security, transparency.

Added so far:

Unsure When to Recognise Committers
Video Meetings
External Website
Seeking Early Graduation
Missing Reports
Missing IPMC Release Votes
Too Many Release Candidates
Author Tags in Code

Help wanted to expand on these points:

Discussions are happening off-list.
Too much talk is happening on the private list.
Users questions are going unanswered on the mailing list.
There is little or no activity on the mailing list.
There is a lot of GitHub or version control notifications on the mailing list.
The project has trouble making its first release.
Building the project is challenging.
Getting the LICENSE and NOTICE correct is difficult.
The PPMC is making releases without voting on them.
The PPMC members are not looking after the projects name and brand.
No PPMC members have been elected.
No committers have been elected.
The podling is having trouble attracting contributors.
PPMC members not signed up to the private mailing list.
The project has a benevolent dictator.
A single company is controlling the direction of the project.
Releases are not being placed in the ASF mirror system.
Other mentors have gone missing.
The podling is voting on too many things.
Having trouble getting software transferred to ASF.
Having trouble getting ICLA signed from all committers.
Unsure if ICLA or SGA or CCLA is needed.
Mentors or PPMC members have a conflict of interest.
The podling is ready to graduate but is having trouble doing so.
Conversations on the mailing list are mainly occurring in a language other than English.
Only a few core people from one company are contributing code.
The podling is making progress on the code, but has no website.
Incubator reports contain meaningless statistics.
Project website encourages users to go to GitHub.

Also feel free to add your own to the above list or take one and expand on it below.

Unsure When to Recognise Committers

Situation

The project is unsure when how much a contributor needs to do, before being made a committer.

Suggested Action

Encourage the podling to discuss what it means to be a committer and document it on their website. Encourage them to keep the committer bar low and recognise all forms of contribution, not just code contributions. If committer = PMC then perhaps suggest breaking into those two groups, so it's easier to appoint committers. Encourage the PPMC members to look out for committers that slowly commit over time as well as the ones who are more easily recognisable.

Reasoning

For the project to have a long term future, it's essential to have new committers and PMC members. A podling that sets the committer bar too high or only recognises certain forms of contribution, can discourage involvement. Having new people with different backgrounds will inject fresh ideas and will make the project flourish in unexpected ways.

Values

merit, flat structure, community

Video Meetings

Situation

The project wants to have regular video meetings to work out project direction.

Suggested Action

Try to discourage the project from having these meetings and encourage discussion to take place on the mailing list. If they insist, then make sure that anything discussed at the meeting is brought back to the mailing list. Make it clear that decisions are not made in those meetings, but discussions are brought back to the list to involve the entire community.

Reasoning

Not everyone lives in the same timezone or even if they do can attend meetings if you work on the project outside of your day job. Synchronous communications can also disadvantage people who can only contribute part-time to the project. Having meetings like this may mean that project knowledge may not be written down or shared, and that puts up barriers to people unfamiliar with this cultural knowledge.

Values

independence, open communication, community, consensus decisionmaking

External Website

Situation

The project has an external web site managed by some people in the project and not under the control of the podling PPMC.

Suggested Action

Encourage the project to migrate the website to ASF infrastructure, redirect the existing domain to Apache, and donate the domain name to the ASF.

Reasoning

The PPMC must have control of their website, and not a 3rd party or subgroup of the PPMC. Having the site hosted on ASF infrastructure ensures that it will exist as long as the project does and that all the community can work on it.

Values

governance, independence, community, flat structure, security

Seeking Early Graduation

Situation

The project had proposed graduation, but it has not demonstrated the ability to self govern.

Suggested Action

Provide detailed feedback on the podlings' incubator report if they indicate they are nearing graduation. Encourage the podling to discuss and fill out the maturity model and reflect honestly on where they are on their path to graduation.

Reasoning

Projects often think they are ready to graduate before they are independent of their mentors' help. Reflecting on where they are in that journey might show some gaps and areas where they need to improve before graduating.

Values

governance, community, open communication, consensus decisionmaking, oversight

Missing Reports

Situation

The project missed an incubator report.

Suggested Action

Encourage the podling to discuss the report on list or create and collaborate on the report on their wiki a week or two before the due date. Reminders are often sent to the dev list or private list, lack of responses to those reminders, might indicate that PPMC members are not signed up to list.

Reasoning

Working on the report in the open encourages everyone to contribute and feel that are part of the project. Once the project graduates they will need to submit reports to the board. PPMC members need to be signed up to and read the project's mailing lists to provide required oversight.

Values

governance, community, open communication, consensus decisionmaking, oversight

Missing IPMC Release Votes

Situation

The podling is having trouble getting 3 IPMC votes for a release.

Suggested Action

Make a checklist for community members to assess a release so that it is easy to verify. Over time add common mistakes to this checklist. Before presenting the release for an IPMC vote, ask all mentors to vote on the release, even if this extends the typical voting period. If the vote is taking too long, kindly remind the mentors or other IPMC member to vote.

Reasoning

All mentors should be engaged in helping the podling understand the release process.

Values

community, governance, consensus decisionmaking, oversight

Too Many Release Candidates

Situation

The podling needs to make multiple release candidates before a good release candidate is created.

Suggested Action

Slow down and take time for the community (including the users) to thoroughly review the release. Make a checklist for the community to assess a release so that it is easy to verify. Complete the checklist even if an issue is found. In your vote emails include a summary of what you have checked and the platform you checked it on. Clearly document your release process and keep it up to date.

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