This was extracted (@ 2025-02-19 17:10) from a list of minutes
which have been approved by the Board.
Please Note
The Board typically approves the minutes of the previous meeting at the
beginning of every Board meeting; therefore, the list below does not
normally contain details from the minutes of the most recent Board meeting.
WARNING: these pages may omit some original contents of the minutes.
Meeting times vary, the exact schedule is available to ASF Members and Officers, search for "calendar" in the Foundation's private index page (svn:foundation/private-index.html).
Ross: Expect to see growth greater than now. e.g. Microsoft sees the importance of open source. The Linux Foundation, the Eclipse Foundation, and Apache all face challenges. Phil: Demand for Apache products will continue. We need to maintain what we are doing. The bigger problem is managing what we are doing. We still need to absorb the growth we have already seen. Rich: The challenge is to find the next generation of people to keep the organization running as it has been. Ross: We see today the github generation. Young people think Apache is old-fashioned. Jim: The Linux Foundation is driving what people think of as open source. We need to teach our members and outsiders who we are. We need to take our leadership position seriously. Phil: We need to start thinking about the context of what we accept into Apache. The industry cannot survive on instant gratification. Apache strength is in collaboration. We should not try to attract people based on immediate gratification. Rather, we should try to attract engineers who "get it". Ross: We should change expectations of new members. For example, don't just vote +1 if you're not willing to help. And members should vote or leave. Kevin: Should we consider charging a membership fee to discourage non-participants? Ted: The incubator is where we should instill values. It takes three or so releases before most projects "get it". Incubation should be six months to a year. Shane: How do we get projects to understand what Apache is? We need both members and podlings to understand. Phil: Should we consider dividing the membership? Roy's advice is to include everyone in membership who "has a stake" in the foundation by contributing. But not all members contribute to the ongoing foundation operations, just to their own projects. So we now have a big growth in membership. Chris: The symptom is a lot of inactive members. Ross: One problem is that members are not expected to do anything. They show up at the incubator and mentor projects without understanding themselves what Apache is. At this point we probably don't even know most of the proposed members. Tom: How do we get new members to successfully onboard? Should we make new members attend a webinar? Shane: We do need to set expectations for new members. It's obviously not enough just to send them email with links. Jim: We are failing to instill our values into people during the incubation process. Bertrand: We could ask members to actively mentor existing projects, not just wait until there is some crisis. Brett: We cannot make expectations equal requirements. Ted: Perhaps we should charge the IPMC with after-graduation mentoring. Rich: We tried to have Community Development take that task and got pushback. Jim: The incubator is an experiment that has failed to produce projects that really get "The Apache Way". Possible Action Items: Develop a new member onboarding process with expectations Provide active mentoring for new projects