The Future - couchdb-user-archive

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Message from discussion The Future
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Subject: Re: The Future
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From: Mikeal Rogers <mikeal.rog...@gmail.com>
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Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 12:08:44 -0800
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To: d...@couchdb.apache.org

The title of this reply is "Tough Love".

On Jan 6, 2012, at January 6, 20129:08 AM, Noah Slater wrote:

> Dear Community,
>=20
> As some of you may have already read, Damien Katz, Apache CouchDB=92s
> original developer, has publicly announced that he intends to focus =
his
> time exclusively on developing other products for his company. Damien =
has
> had very little involvement in the CouchDB project for a year or more =
now,
> so, for many people, this is confirmation of what they already knew. =
We=92re
> sorry to see him go, and wish him all the best in his new direction. =
We all
> owe him a huge debt of thanks for all the hard work he has put in over =
the
> years, and for his original vision of the project.

Yes, Damien has been pretty inactive for over a year, and has that gone =
unnoticed? How many releases in that time? How much new adoption?

For the last year CouchDB has suffered a vacuum of leadership. This is a =
thriving community, it can survive a loss like this, but only if =
people(s) step up and take responsibility. Having a lot of discussions =
and process around decisions leaves the flavor of meritocracy in =
everyones mouth but the viewable result of this has been a gigantic loss =
in momentum as the projects publicly viewable changes and advances have =
been close to zero.

>=20
> Our biggest strength has always been the breadth and depth of our =
community
> of developers and users. In the very near future, we=92ll be voting in =
a new
> committer, appointing a new PMC member, sprucing up the website,

Sprucing up the website. *sigh* This is a great example, I've been =
hearing this for over a year with no noticeable change.

There have been countless false starts and arguments about direction =
ending in a stalemate. Maybe we all think this kind of discussion is =
just a healthy bi-product of a consensus based process but to the public =
it looks like it's output: nothing. Nothing piled upon nothing, and =
we've gotten comfortable with that.

> and making
> a major new release. We=92re happy to confirm that Cloudant has also =
publicly
> made a commitment to help contribute BigCouch to the CouchDB project.
> BigCouch, for those of you who have not had the pleasure of using it
> already, is a fault-tolerant, horizontally scalable clustering =
framework
> purpose-built for CouchDB.

I challenge the idea that this is a positive development. Not because =
BigCouch isn't awesome, it definitely is, but the Couch community is =
much larger and more diverse than Apache CouchDB and many of the fringe =
projects have thrived without the Apache process to hold them back while =
CouchDB struggles to move forward in spite of it.

>=20
> Here=92s to our future!

I'm sure I'll get lots of upset emails and some of those people are =
still clinging to the idea that this process is more important that =
being productive while at the same time in their other projects see =
frequent releases and contributions because they take responsibility for =
them.

I rely on Apache CouchDB tremendously and the reason I picked it a long =
time ago over alternatives was because the community was so great. Other =
projects, and even some of my own, have thrived after the loss of their =
creator because people were clamoring to step up and take =
responsibility. But what's happened here is that the leader has become =
fed up with the process, publicly pronounced it and moved on, and not =
only is everyone sticking with business as usual and not challenging the =
process, nobody is wiling to take responsibility for the projects future =
either.

>=20
> Relax,

I'm trying, I really am.

>=20
> Noah Slater
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