[fab] New project formation is out of control

[Paul W. Frields]

On Mon, 2006-06-05 at 18:22 -0500, Patrick W. Barnes wrote:
> I'm a little concerned by a recent chain of events.  Damien Durand recently 
> decided that running interviews of Fedora contributors was a worthy project 
> and began working, without support, to make it a reality.  This, in itself, 
> is good.  We need people who take initiative.  The problem is the subsequent 
> announcement and adoption without review, and this is just a symptom of a 
> larger, standing issue.
> 
> As soon as Damien put up a page and interviewed Chitlesh Goorah, he sent an 
> announcement to fedora-marketing-list and made a post in his blog.  Then, 
> Thomas included the announcement in the Fedora Weekly News report.  The 
> problem is that this program has had no peer review and doesn't have any 
> support within the Fedora Project.  I had instructed Damien to make a post to 
> fedora-marketing-list to let the Marketing team know what he was working on 
> and to ask for feedback, not to provide a formal announcement.
> 
> My concern with this particular project is that it is doing something that is 
> already being done and for which a new venue is not needed.  RHM already has 
> a column that features contributor interviews, and assorted other sources 
> already allow contributors to be introduced to the community.  Without the 
> interest and resources going into Fedora Interview, I'm not sure it can 
> really succeed.  If the Marketing team adopted the idea and decided to 
> support it, then we could have given more consideration into what we would 
> throw behind the program.  Another issue is the fact that Damien has not had 
> the time to correct the issues that have already been pointed out.  Moving to 
> a public announcement was premature.
> 
> This really only highlights and underlying problem.  We have a number of new 
> or inexperienced contributors who are in a hurry to start up their own 
> initiatives.  We already have a significant number of projects that need more 
> attention, not separation.  These new contributors take advantage of the 
> freedom they are given to stake out grounds without peer support.  This is 
> fracturing our community and leaving all kinds of loose and dead ends.
> 
> Another fine example of this issue is Clair Shaw's Word of Mouth program.  
> Many of these initiatives are popping up under Ambassadors and Marketing, 
> simply because the Ambassadors have an immediate sense of involvement and 
> power, but this problem spreads well beyond those projects.  We need to be 
> flexible in allowing the formation of new programs, but allowing the creation 
> and branding of new programs without any controls in place will soon dilute 
> the standings of existing projects and will introduce confusion.
> 
> With these small, unsupported programs popping up everywhere, projects are 
> fracturing and initiatives are failing.  We need to work on tightening 
> controls and focusing the contributor energy where it is needed.  It's time 
> to consider establishing policies and practices for the formation of new 
> projects and programs.  This needs to happen at two levels.  We need policies 
> for the creation or promotion of projects at the top level, and individual 
> projects need policies for the formation of sub-projects.  If we don't exert 
> control now, we'll have a hard time regaining it in the future.

Is it my imagination, or has this just happened again?

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-announce-list/2006-August/msg00006.html
(and others)

No mailing list discussions that I can find, 
IIRC, The last discussion on this issue petered out with most of the
discussion centering on whether "Project" should be "Program," or
"Team," or "Collective," or "Arbeitgruppe," or whatever.  Two
"coopetitive" views were put out, I think:

1.  The more the merrier, and let evolution weed 'em out.
2.  Contributors need to prove they have what it takes to carry the
Fedora banner.

No one has said much about Patrick's wiki page:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DefiningProjects 

I agreed to drive this project definition problem... My personal
viewpoint is that, like logo usage, we want to be generous but
protective about the Fedora name.  I prefer that the "Ideas" listed in
this page be promoted to "SIGs" since not only do we have a couple, but
"Ideas" sounds a little dismissive.  "SIG" gives the contributors an
immediate feeling of group ownership.  Once a SIG has more plans they
can be owned by an official subproject until they are ready to move on,
if that's necessary.  Input please?

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
       Fedora Project Board: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Board
    Fedora Docs Project:  http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
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