RE: [technology-pmc] RE: [alf-dev] Is ALF alive?

[Wayne Beaton <wayne@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I would like to see as much of this effort done as transparently as
possible. I understand that there is some sensitivity when contacting
potential partners, but I'd still like to see the progress captured,
ideally, in the alf-dev list.

Wayne

On Mon, 2008-08-04 at 09:17 -0700, Brian Carroll wrote:
> Dear Technology PMC's
>  
> I request we postpone the conversation on ALF's future until late
> September.   There is a good rationale for this request for extension,
> which I explain here.
>  
> When the ALF project received the original notice of a request for a
> review by the Technology PMCs to determine whether ALF was alive,  I
> alerted the parties that have supported and contributed to ALF.  As
> noted in the my previous email, due to vacations and scheduling, it
> took a while for that initial conversation among the parties that have
> supported and funded ALF to occur.  That initial conversation has just
> happend.  While we don't yet have a recommendation to the PMC on
> whether we can increase the level of investment and broaden support
> for ALF, we do have movement, focus, and activity that will resut in a
> recommendation to the PMC.  We should note that the PMC's notice and
> the ensuing discussion has had the beneficial effect of focusing
> awareness on ALF and the need to either make it successful or
> terminate it.  
>  
> Since one of the issues with ALF has been the lack of activity by a
> diverse community, the healthy portion of the discussion is centered
> on working with partners to determine wheher we can revitalize the
> community and get ALF back on track.  We expect it to take a maximum
> of 4 to 6 weeks to contract potential partners, determine their level
> of interest and support, and determine whether Serena will make the
> additional investment to reinvigorate ALF.  To allow that assessment
> to take place, I request that we postpone the Technology PMC
> discussion until the end of September.
>  
> As noted previously, the Technology PMC's notice to ALF to review its
> status and whether it should be closed, has had a very positive effect
> in focusing attention and discussion on ALF (and what would be needed
> to reinvigorate it.)  Creating awareness that ALF should not continue
> at its present level of participation, by itself, has
> been significant.  At this point, I perceive two possible outcomes:
>   1. That we identify partners who are willing to contribute to ALF
> and make the necessary investment.  This would reinvigorate ALF and
> put it back on track as a viable Eclipse project, or
>   2. We determine that interest is not sufficient and we recommend to
> the PMC that it terminate the project.  For this scenario, we will
> also be investigating transferring the code assets (along with a
> committment of committers/contributors) to another Eclipse project
> that has expressed interest in adopting and enhancing the code assets
> ALF has created.
>  
> Both of these outcomes increases the value of ALF and its codebase to
> the Eclipse community.  But it will take that additional time to the
> end of Septermber to assess, coordinate, and determine our
> recommendation to the PMC to ensure that ALF s potential value is
> realized.  As ALF Project Lead, I believe delaying the discussion on
> closing ALF with the PMCs will result in increased value to the
> Eclipse community, no matter which outcome is determined to be
> appropriate.
>  
> Sincerely,
> Brian
>  
>    Brian Carroll | Eclipse ALF Project Lead | Serena Fellow
>    (O) (503) 617-2436 (C) (503) 318-2017
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
> From: Brian Carroll 
> Sent: Monday, July 07, 2008 11:54 AM
> To: Technology PMC
> Subject: RE: [technology-pmc] RE: [alf-dev] Is ALF alive?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dear technology PMC's,
>  
> I would like to request we schedule the conversation on the future of
> ALF at your convenience during the week of August 11th.  The original
> email called for a review by the end of July, but due to summer
> vacations and existing schedules, getting all the interested parties
> coordinated has taken somewhat longer than expected.  This two-week
> shift will allow us to better address the concerns that have
> been expressed.
>  
> Regards,
> Brian
>  
>    Brian Carroll | Eclipse ALF Project Lead | Serena Fellow
>    (O) (503) 617-2436 (C) (503) 318-2017
> 
> Serena Software - The Mashups are here!
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________________________
> From: technology-pmc-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:technology-pmc-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bjorn
> Freeman-Benson
> Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 10:13 AM
> To: Technology PMC
> Cc: ALF Developer Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [technology-pmc] RE: [alf-dev] Is ALF alive?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Brian,
> > One thing we may be able to start with sooner is a discussion on
> > interpreting the CVS statistics, as of all the measures of a
> > project, we felt the best about the changes to the codebase, in the
> > sense that substantial improvements and enhancements were made over
> > the last 6 months.  Our sense is that real progress was made on the
> > codebase, especially in the areas of security/SSO and the Event
> > Manager, although we also did trivial across-the-board updates to
> > update the copyright notice.  We suspect the observations in your
> > first note may have reflected spot checks to portions of the code
> > that received no effort except for the trivial IP protection
> > updates.  
> That is correct - I just did a spot check - sorry if I spot checked
> the wrong files :-(
> 
> In general, however, the PMC is more concerned about the lack of
> community: no developers talking on the dev mailing list, no users
> talking on the mailing list, the website not being update (for
> example, the most recent date on "ALF in the News" in August 2006),
> etc.
> 
> - Bjorn
> -- 
> [end of message] 
> 
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