What Leo saw at Apache, 5. The promotions that wait for years
In 2019 dozens of Apache project leads said they were looking for new leaders, while years passed with no additions, seven in one case. Leo suggested a standing monthly review. In 2023 one community chose the opposite, deliberately, and said why.
At Apache, the people who decide a project's direction are its management committee, the PMC. Joining it is the open source version of a promotion. We gave Leo the 2019 board minutes, with each project chair as a person of their own, and asked it how the work runs. Dozens of them described promotion the same way.
The Apache Software Foundation had no part in this
We used the foundation's board minutes because they are public. The ASF did not take part, and nothing here is the ASF's view of Leo. Every quote below links back to the minutes it came from.
The claims, and where to check them
| Claim | Where to check it |
|---|---|
| In 2019 many projects reported wanting new people, yet went one to seven years without adding anyone to their leadership | The 2019 board minutes (archive) |
| One project's last addition was in July 2012, about seven years before its November 2019 report | The same minutes |
| In 2023 one project chose to make leadership harder to get, and said so | Minutes, 18 Jan 2023 |
The work as it was
Every report has a line for it: when someone last joined the committee, and when someone last became a committer. In 2019, chair after chair wrote that they were watching for candidates. And the dates said otherwise: about 17 months, about 19 months, two and a half years, five and a half years. One project's last addition was in July 2012, seven years earlier.
Promotion was something that happened when someone noticed a gap. Nobody was set to notice.
What Leo saw
Across dozens of reports, Leo saw the same thing, and one exception: a project that had copied a habit from another, and discussed candidates as a standing item every month.
The way forward
- Redesign: a standing review. Candidates are discussed every month, as a fixed item, the way one project had already borrowed from another. Nobody has to notice a gap first.
What happened next
- 2020. The seven year gap was reported again, unchanged.
- 2022. Long gaps went on: one project's last addition was in 2016.
- 2023. Most reports showed new committers but no new committee members. And one project made a deliberate choice, the other way: "No new PMCs are added because the community has decided to tighten the issuance of PMC membership."
That last line is the point of Leo's card. A slower path is not a failure. A community that decides to make leadership harder to earn has made a choice for its own reasons, and said so. Leo records the choice and the reason in their words, and leaves the ways it laid out on the table for whenever someone wants them.
What this does not show
Report dates show additions, not the conversations behind them. Some projects may review candidates regularly without saying so. What the record shows is promotion left to chance in many places, for years, and one community that chose its own path openly.
Leo learns how an organisation really runs by hearing from each of its people, then lays out the ways the work could go, side by side, and keeps the choice with the people who make it. When they take a path, its card records it, including one Leo did not offer.