Gav's Blog

This is a followup email that went out today to prompt new leadership of the Sahana PHP project.

In my long email nearly a week ago, I suggested that we dissolve the existing PMC. I would now like to start community discussion about forming a new PMC to provide the leadership that the PHP project requires, and has not received for a long time.

A brief reminder why I think the PMC should be dissolved
No, actually, it is the leadership of the PHP project’s fault, and as one of the members of the PMC, I have to shoulder some of that blame like many other people here. Fran et al raised many issues in 2008 about not only the core framework of Sahana PHP, but also infrastructure. He and others tried to work within the PHP project, BUT NOTHING EVER HAPPENED. He tried to work within the rules but the PHP PMC failed him completely. In the end, Fran et al did exactly the right thing to do with open source software and fork/recode. The PHP PMC never ever made any decisions to modernise or improve the core framework. We never responded to Fran’s issues, and now, nearly a whole year later, we still have not made much progress on project infrastructure. It is entirely the PHP PMC’s fault for showing a lack of leadership, and not getting things done. I am honestly at the point where I believe the current PHP PMC is dysfunctional, and I would like to see a brand new leadership team form by those that want to take the reigns of Sahana (PHP). The only thing that Fran et al did wrong was to use the Sahana brand without permission.
Likewise, there have been many stunning contributions to Sahana (PHP) both in bug fixing and adding new features. These developers have also been caught up in the complete lack of leadership provided by the Sahana (PHP) PMC.

Tearing the old PMC down
If I had been off the mark in my original comments, I would have expected a lot of replies in the negative. I received none – neither publicly or privately. So, I can only assume that you agree with what I said, or you didn’t read my email

I would like to put forward the following proposals to the community – this would effectively close down the existing PMC.
1. That the existing pmc@ email alias be closed down.
2. That we capture for historical and recognition purposes all the members of the PMC and record this on sahanafoundation.org

Do we need a new PMC? Can’t we just do it on maindev?
I would like to think that we can do everything in the open this time, e.g. the new PMC shouldn’t have a separate and private email list. Most of the reasons that the PMC was private originally are now being managed by the Board anyway. We need people to stand up and put their names behind the project, set direction, and lead. Being a part of the new PMC is about taking responsibility and publicly stating that you’re prepared to step up and lead the PHP project, and putting your name behind it.

Standing up a new PMC
I would also like discussion about how we could create a new PMC structure for the PHP project. I believe the membership of the PMC should follow a very different model to the old PMC. The old PMC was based around committership – which this is appropriate in a developer-led project (e.g. Apache HTTPD) with traditional CVS. I don’t believe it is an appropriate model where we are producing a domain-specific application. At the same time, as we move to a distributed CVS, the concept of commitership becomes far less important, and it all becomes about responsibility for merges back into the main repository.

I see there are two key areas that a new PMC needs:
1. It needs domain leadership – I would like to see people from the likes of CUNY and NIH be a part of leading the project from a domain perspective. They have some of our best end-user interaction, and having them on the PMC will be a key means of getting end-user feedback incorporated at a strategic level in the project.
2. It needs technical leadership – to act quickly and responsively to ideas and requests from the community around the likes of PHP framework choice, infrastructure, merges, and release management process (recognising that releases also need to be linked to the domain and end-user needs).

I think there are two simple membership rules (in concept) required for the new PMC.
1. Anyone that is prepared to take a leadership role in the project can join.
2. Anyone that becomes inactive or fails to ‘get things done’ is removed from the PMC (e.g. lack of participation in voting)

The PMC has to be about ‘getting things done’ and should no longer be a part of a coder>committer>PMC pathway. As this is not a developer-led project, but rather a domain-led project, the traditional developer pathway makes no sense.

First Actions for the new PMC
There are some urgent actions required by members of a new PHP PMC.
* Developing project and mentor capacity for GSOC 2010
* Consider tagging 0.6.2 as a dead branch (in terms of focusing volunteers at least)
* Identify the trunk for future development focus (I believe we should adopt the RELIEF branch)
* Future direction
* Oversee the PHP framework discussion
* Can PHP be differentiated from Python
* Is it an effective use of volunteer resource to move Sahana PHP to a modern PHP framework, or is it more effective to adopt Sahana Python (given they are already a solid 15 months ahead)

Implications for GSOC
If the Sahana Software Foundation is announced as a GSOC mentoring organisation later this week, and we don’t have an active leadership team for the PHP project, then it will be a lot harder to justify GSOC slots going to the PHP project. Remember that this year each project is going to be responsible for managing project selection, mentors etc. As a GSOC Admin for the Sahana Software Foundation – I (and David) need to see strong leadership and support available within the project to be able to make slots available to the project.

Want PHP to succeed? Then it’s time to step up?
Who is prepared to take responsibility and lead the PHP project forward? There are many names that come to mind given recent discussions – Kethees, Chad, Greg, Glenn, Chamindra. Please consider forming a new and active PMC this week as there is a lot that needs to happen. It is critically important that a leadership team is formed quickly and able to start coordinating some of the actions outlined above.

The future of the PHP project is in your hands – if you want it to succeed, now is the time to step up and play your part.

Cheers Gavin