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             <h2 id='rules+for+revolutionaries'><img src="../images/redarrow.gif" />rules for revolutionaries</h2>
 <div class="section-content">
 <div class="note">
 <note>
         <strong>As Sent on 13 Jan 2000.</strong>© 1995-2002, James Duncan Davidson.
         <br />
         <em>Note: This message was written at a specific place and time in
 response to a specific situtation. It does not address several
 important issues like what happens when revolutions do not totally
 succeed. It also doesn't address the issues of responsiblity. The
 Apache Jakarta PMC (and PMCs in general) have responsiblities that
 aren't detailed here.  With that said...</em>
       </note>
 </div>
 <ul>
         <li><strong>Date: </strong>Thu, 13 Jan 2000 15:46:41 -0800</li>
         <li><strong>Subject: </strong>RESET: Proposal for Revolutionaries and Evolutionaries</li>
         <li><strong>From: </strong>James Duncan Davidson</li>
         <li><strong>To: </strong>&lt;general@jakarta.apache.org&gt;</li>
         <li><strong>Cc: </strong>&lt;tomcat-dev@jakarta.apache.org&gt;</li>
         <li><a href="http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/jakarta-general/200001.mbox/%3cB4A3A3E0.C73%25james.davidson@eng.sun.com%3e">Link to this message in mod_mbox archive</a></li>
       </ul>
 <pre>Ok, the logical place for this is general@jakarta, but I'm including
 tomcat-dev@jakarta so that the people who are there and not on general can see
 it. Please do not discuss on tomcat-dev, please only discuss on general.

 In a closed source project where you've got a set team, you make decisions
 about where the entire team goes and somebody takes the lead of deciding what
 gets done when. In the discussions about Craig's long term plan, this metric
 was applied by several of us in thoughts about where to go next.

 After pondering this for a while, it's (re)become obvious to me that there's no
 way that anybody can expect an open source organization to work the same way
 that a team in a corporate setting can. Ok, so this is pretty freaking obvious,
 but I've been watching people that are not from Sun and who have been doing
 open source for a while talking and proposing things that come from this line
 of thought as well. Its not just people from Sun or people from any particular
 entity.

 So -- in any software development project there is a natural tension between
 revolution and evolution. In a closed source environment, you make the call at
 any particular time on whether you are in revolutionary mode or evolutionary
 mode. For example, JSDK was in evolutionary mode for years. Then in Nov 98, We
 made a decision to go revolutionary. Of course, at the time the project team
 was composed of 1 person -- me, so it was an easy decision. After that
 revolution was over in Jan 99, Tomcat was in evolutionary mode getting JSP
 bolted in and working with J2EE. We (Sun folks) could do that because that was
 what suited the goals best at the time.

 However, Open source is chaotic. With its special magic comes a different
 reality. This is:

 1) People work on their own time (even people paid by a company
    can be considered to be working on their own time in this
    situtation as each company is going to have different cycles
    and things they want)

 2) People work on what they want to. If you are working on your
    own time, you are going to do what you want or you do something
    else.

 3) Some people are evolutionaries, other are revolutionaries, and
    some are both at different times.

 4) Both approaches are important and need to be cultured.

 5) You really can't afford to alienate any part of your developer
    community. Innovation can come from anywhere.

 To allow this to happen, to allow revolutionaries to co-exist with
 evolutionaries, I'm proposing the following as official Jakarta policy:

 1) Any committer has the right to go start a revolution. They can establish a
 branch or seperate whiteboard directory in which to go experiment with new code
 seperate from the main trunk. The only responsibility a committer has when they
 do this is to inform the developer group what their intent is, to keep the
 group updated on their progress, and allowing others who want to help out to do
 so. The committer, and the group of people who he/she has a attracted are free
 to take any approaches they want to free of interference.

 2) When a revolution is ready for prime time, the committer proposes a merge to
 the -dev list. At that time, the overall community evaluates whether or not the
 code is ready to become part of, or to potentially replace the, trunk.
 Suggestions may be made, changes may be required. Once all issues have been
 taken care of and the merge is approved, the new code becomes the trunk.

 3) A revolution branch is unversioned. It doesn't have any official version
 standing. This allows several parallel tracks of development to occur with the
 final authority of what eventually ends up on the trunk laying with the entire
 community of committers.

 4) The trunk is the official versioned line of the project. All evolutionary
 minded people are welcome to work on it to improve it. Evolutionary work is
 important and should not stop as it is always unclear when any particular
 revolution will be ready for prime time or whether it will be officially
 accepted.

 What does this mean?

 In practice, this means that Craig and Hans and anybody else that wants to run
 with that revolution is welcome to do so. The only change is that it's not
 called Tomcat.next -- it's the RED branch or GOOGLE branch or whatever they
 want to call it.

 Whenever Craig (or anybody else working on that codebase) wants to bring stuff
 into the trunk, they propose it here and we evaluate it on it's merits.

 If somebody disagrees with Craig's approach (for the sake of argument here),
 they are free to create a BLUE whiteboard and work out what they think is a
 good solution. At that point, the community will have to evaluate both
 approaches. But since this is a populist society, with such a structure it is
 hoped that it becomes clear which is the preferred approach by the community by
 their participation and voting. Or maybe the best solution is something in the
 middle and the two parties work together to merge. Irregardless, the point is
 to allow solutions to happen without being stalled out in the formative stages.

 An important point is that no one revolution is declared to be the official
 .next until it's ready to be accepted for that.

 There is the side effect that we could potentially end up with too many
 revolutions happening, but I'd rather rely upon the natural inclination of
 developers to gravitate towards one solution to control this than to try to
 control it through any policy statement.

 When would this be official?

 Well, if this is well recieved, we'd want to word it up and make it a bylaw
 (with approval by the PMC -- this is one of the areas in which the PMC has
 authority). Hopefully soon.

 Comments?  Suggestions?

 James Davidson                                  ...
 Java + XML / Portable Code + Portable Data      !try; do()
 </pre>
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	<h2 id='rules+for+revolutionaries'><img src="../images/redarrow.gif" />rules for revolutionaries</h2>
	<div class="section-content">
	<div class="note">
	<note>
	<strong>As Sent on 13 Jan 2000.</strong>© 1995-2002, James Duncan Davidson.
	<br />
	<em>Note: This message was written at a specific place and time in
	response to a specific situtation. It does not address several
	important issues like what happens when revolutions do not totally
	succeed. It also doesn't address the issues of responsiblity. The
	Apache Jakarta PMC (and PMCs in general) have responsiblities that
	aren't detailed here. With that said...</em>
	</note>
	</div>
	<ul>
	<li><strong>Date: </strong>Thu, 13 Jan 2000 15:46:41 -0800</li>
	<li><strong>Subject: </strong>RESET: Proposal for Revolutionaries and Evolutionaries</li>
	<li><strong>From: </strong>James Duncan Davidson</li>
	<li><strong>To: </strong><general@jakarta.apache.org></li>
	<li><strong>Cc: </strong><tomcat-dev@jakarta.apache.org></li>
	<li><a href="http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/jakarta-general/200001.mbox/%3cB4A3A3E0.C73%25james.davidson@eng.sun.com%3e">Link to this message in mod_mbox archive</a></li>
	</ul>
	<pre>Ok, the logical place for this is general@jakarta, but I'm including
	tomcat-dev@jakarta so that the people who are there and not on general can see
	it. Please do not discuss on tomcat-dev, please only discuss on general.

	In a closed source project where you've got a set team, you make decisions
	about where the entire team goes and somebody takes the lead of deciding what
	gets done when. In the discussions about Craig's long term plan, this metric
	was applied by several of us in thoughts about where to go next.

	After pondering this for a while, it's (re)become obvious to me that there's no
	way that anybody can expect an open source organization to work the same way
	that a team in a corporate setting can. Ok, so this is pretty freaking obvious,
	but I've been watching people that are not from Sun and who have been doing
	open source for a while talking and proposing things that come from this line
	of thought as well. Its not just people from Sun or people from any particular
	entity.

	So -- in any software development project there is a natural tension between
	revolution and evolution. In a closed source environment, you make the call at
	any particular time on whether you are in revolutionary mode or evolutionary
	mode. For example, JSDK was in evolutionary mode for years. Then in Nov 98, We
	made a decision to go revolutionary. Of course, at the time the project team
	was composed of 1 person -- me, so it was an easy decision. After that
	revolution was over in Jan 99, Tomcat was in evolutionary mode getting JSP
	bolted in and working with J2EE. We (Sun folks) could do that because that was
	what suited the goals best at the time.

	However, Open source is chaotic. With its special magic comes a different
	reality. This is:

	1) People work on their own time (even people paid by a company
	can be considered to be working on their own time in this
	situtation as each company is going to have different cycles
	and things they want)

	2) People work on what they want to. If you are working on your
	own time, you are going to do what you want or you do something
	else.

	3) Some people are evolutionaries, other are revolutionaries, and
	some are both at different times.

	4) Both approaches are important and need to be cultured.

	5) You really can't afford to alienate any part of your developer
	community. Innovation can come from anywhere.

	To allow this to happen, to allow revolutionaries to co-exist with
	evolutionaries, I'm proposing the following as official Jakarta policy:

	1) Any committer has the right to go start a revolution. They can establish a
	branch or seperate whiteboard directory in which to go experiment with new code
	seperate from the main trunk. The only responsibility a committer has when they
	do this is to inform the developer group what their intent is, to keep the
	group updated on their progress, and allowing others who want to help out to do
	so. The committer, and the group of people who he/she has a attracted are free
	to take any approaches they want to free of interference.

	2) When a revolution is ready for prime time, the committer proposes a merge to
	the -dev list. At that time, the overall community evaluates whether or not the
	code is ready to become part of, or to potentially replace the, trunk.
	Suggestions may be made, changes may be required. Once all issues have been
	taken care of and the merge is approved, the new code becomes the trunk.

	3) A revolution branch is unversioned. It doesn't have any official version
	standing. This allows several parallel tracks of development to occur with the
	final authority of what eventually ends up on the trunk laying with the entire
	community of committers.

	4) The trunk is the official versioned line of the project. All evolutionary
	minded people are welcome to work on it to improve it. Evolutionary work is
	important and should not stop as it is always unclear when any particular
	revolution will be ready for prime time or whether it will be officially
	accepted.

	What does this mean?

	In practice, this means that Craig and Hans and anybody else that wants to run
	with that revolution is welcome to do so. The only change is that it's not
	called Tomcat.next -- it's the RED branch or GOOGLE branch or whatever they
	want to call it.

	Whenever Craig (or anybody else working on that codebase) wants to bring stuff
	into the trunk, they propose it here and we evaluate it on it's merits.

	If somebody disagrees with Craig's approach (for the sake of argument here),
	they are free to create a BLUE whiteboard and work out what they think is a
	good solution. At that point, the community will have to evaluate both
	approaches. But since this is a populist society, with such a structure it is
	hoped that it becomes clear which is the preferred approach by the community by
	their participation and voting. Or maybe the best solution is something in the
	middle and the two parties work together to merge. Irregardless, the point is
	to allow solutions to happen without being stalled out in the formative stages.

	An important point is that no one revolution is declared to be the official
	.next until it's ready to be accepted for that.

	There is the side effect that we could potentially end up with too many
	revolutions happening, but I'd rather rely upon the natural inclination of
	developers to gravitate towards one solution to control this than to try to
	control it through any policy statement.

	When would this be official?

	Well, if this is well recieved, we'd want to word it up and make it a bylaw
	(with approval by the PMC -- this is one of the areas in which the PMC has
	authority). Hopefully soon.

	Comments? Suggestions?

	James Davidson ...
	Java + XML / Portable Code + Portable Data !try; do()
	</pre>
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