May 2009 Incubator Board Report

["Noel J. Bergman" <no...@devtech.com>]

This past month, particularly recently, has seen good progress with
Incubator projects.  Sling has started a graduation vote, and Pivot is
seriously considering graduation.  Click wanted to graduate, but the
consensus was that it needs to do some community development first.  Two or
three other projects appear ripe to be suspended, although I hope that one
will be revived.

Other projects are keen to enter Incubation.  SocialSite and ACE entered
Incubation, and have reported (below).  Apache Wink would provide JAX-RS
based REST style web services.  Apache VXQuery would provide an
implementation of XQuery.

One issue is that Apache JSecurity/Apache Ki is having trouble finding a
name without someone claiming trademark rights.  The Ki name is the latest
victim, and during that process, the project felt a bit let down by the
legal PMC and the PRC.

----

= Ace =

Apache Ace is a software distribution framework that allows you to centrally
manage and distribute software components, configuration data and other
artifacts to target systems.

Ace just started incubation, on April 24th 2009.

There are currently no issues requiring board or Incubator PMC attention.

Community:
 * In the process of setting up infrastructure, as tracked in Jira here:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ACE-1

Software:
 * Still working on the donation of the initial codebase and documentation.

Licensing and other issues:
 * None at the moment, no code has been committed yet.


= Bluesky =

BlueSky has been incubating since 01-12-2008. It is an e-learning solution
designed to help solve the disparity in availability of qualified education
between well-developed cities and poorer regions of China.

Recent Activity:
After we finished the second code view, we finally filled up IP Clearance,
though wo miss something and had to filled it again, and sent it to ASF. We
have kept on learning Theora and Vorbis, however, little had us achieved. We
have sent a mail to Theora community to call for their help. We wish that
good news would come soon.

  *Examine through the source code to make sure everything is OK before we
upload it to SVN repository.
  *Commit source code to SVN repository after the last check.
  *Continue to learn Theora and Vorbis.


= Chemistry =

Apache Chemistry is an effort to provide a Java (and possibly others, like
!JavaScript) implementation of the upcoming CMIS specification. Chemistry
entered incubation on April 30th, 2009.

The Chemistry project has just entered incubation and we've been busy
getting started with everything. Most of the project infrastructure is
already in place, all the CLAs have been received, and the initial codebases
are now in Apache svn.

Many Chemistry developers had a chance to meet in person in the CMIS
!PlugFest at the end of April, and the resulting energy has been visible
also on the new Chemistry mailing lists. Among the results are updates to
the core Chemistry codebase, a new JavaScript-based CMIS client codebase,
and a proposal to contribute a Flex/Air-based CMIS explorer.

Issues before graduation:

  * Stabilize the general interest and energy into a sustainable development
community
  * Make sure that license headers and other details conform with Apache
policies
  * Create an Apache release of the Chemistry codebase


= Droids =

Droids is an Incubator project arrived from Apache Labs. Droids entered
incubation on October, 2009.

It's an intelligent standalone robot framework that allows one to
create and extend existing web robots.

Things are charging along in Droids. The presentations had been successfully
seeded interest in Droids at both
BarCamp and Lightning Talks at ApacheCon EU. In the weeks after the
ApacheCon more people subsrcibed to the mailing list
and we received quite a lot of patches from Mingfai Ma. The patches had been
incooperated in our repository already.
One of the initial 3 committers has gone inactive.

Now the focus is on evolving the design and building a larger community.

= Lokahi =

Did not report, and will most likely be suspended this month.


= PDFBox =

Apache PDFBox is an open source Java library for working with PDF documents.
PDFBox entered incubation on February 7th, 2008.

The PDFBox project continues doing well. We released new versions of the
JempBox and FontBox libraries, and will likely soon make a release of the
main PDFBox library. The development activity is increasing and the
community is diverse. PDFBox will soon be ready to graduate from the
Incubator.

Issues before graduation:

   * Resolve remaining issues found during the license review
   * Release PDFBox 0.8.0-incubating


= PhotArk =

Apache PhotArk will be a complete open source photo gallery application
including a content repository for the images, a display piece, an access
control layer, and upload capabilities.

  * PhotArk was accepted for Incubation on August 19, 2008.
  * Issues before graduation :
      * Grow community
      * Releases

  * The community has not changed over the last month, although we have
started to see more people collaborating on the mailing list.
  * Couple students had showed interest to participate in the PhotArk
project during Google Summer of Code 2009 program. Although their project
ideas were not selected, we are working with these students to see if we can
still get them to join the community.
  * M1 release candidates are being produced and evaluated by community
members. It is the hope of the current community that having a release will
help attract other contributors.


= Pivot =

Pivot is an open-source platform for building rich internet applications in
Java. It has been in incubation since January 2009.

 * Pivot 1.1 was released in April. The team is actively working on version
1.2.
 * Christopher Brind and Sandro Martini were added as PPMC members in May.
 * All demos are now compliant with ASF licensing and have been moved back
into the ASF SVN repository, with the following exceptions:
  * JFree, which still lives on Google Code due to license incompatibilities
  * Google Contacts, which was deleted
  * AMF client, which had a license incompatibility and was also deleted
 * The following articles were published:
  * http://www.insideria.com/2009/04/announcing-apache-pivot-11.html
Announcing Apache Pivot 1.1
  * http://www.insideria.com/2009/04/exploring-apache-pivot-11-part.html
Exploring Apache Pivot 1.1, Part 1
  * http://www.insideria.com/2009/05/exploring-apache-pivot-11-part-1.html
Exploring Apache Pivot 1.1, Part 2
  * http://www.insideria.com/2009/05/exploring-apache-pivot-11-part-2.html
Exploring Apache Pivot 1.1, Part 3
  * http://java.dzone.com/news/building-simple-rss-client Building a Simple
RSS Client in Pivot
  * http://java.dzone.com/articles/table-row-editing-apache-pivot Table Row
Editing in Apache Pivot

Top 3 issues prior to graduation:

 * Seeking feedback on community; if no significant issues are raised,
aiming for graduation in July.


= Sling =

Sling is an OSGI-based scriptable web framework that uses a Java Content
Repository, such as Apache Jackrabbit, to store and manage content.

Sling entered incubation on September 5th, 2007.

There are no issues which require Incubator PMC or board attention at the
moment.

Community

    * Lots of interest around Sling at ApacheCon in March, including
fruitful discussions with people from the Sakai community who are starting
to use Sling for a new version of their software, and starting to actively
participate on our mailing lists. Meeting people from the Apache Felix and
ServiceMix projects has helped build more community bridges around OSGi.
    * Vidar Ramdal was elected as a committer and PPMC member.
    * Juan Jose Vazquez Delgado, Sling committer since the start of
incubation, became more active, contributed a pipelining module based on
Cocoon 3, and is working on improved OSGi testing frameworks.
    * Mike Mueller was granted write access to our wiki as a "documentation
committer", iCLA on file.
    * In general, steadily increasing community activity with more
contributions, discussions and patches. Mailing list stats
(http://people.apache.org/~coar/mlists.html) also show a steady increase in
subscribers, now at 130 subscribers and average of 17 posts/day on the sling
dev list (there's no user list at the moment).

Software

    * Sling 5 has been released as of May, 13th, 2009.
    * Continuous integration builds have been activated on
hudson.zones.apache.org.

Issues before graduation

    * Sustained activity from at least two non-Day committers, along with
the new release and increased community interest and engagement, seems to
indicate that Sling should graduate soon.

Licensing and other issues

    * none


= SocialSite =

SocialSite is an open source Social Networking Service based on Apache
Shindig (incubating). The software is not simply a "canned" Social Network
or Facebook-in-a-box type of web application; it's something different.
SocialSite is designed to add social networking features to existing web
applications and web sites. SocialSite is made up of two parts: 1) a social
data server that supports the OpenSocial APIs and extensions and 2) a set of
OpenSocial gadgets that provide a complete user-interface for social
networking.

SocialSite is in the process of entering the incubator. Status page and SVN
space have been created but no user accounts. Committers are sending in
ICLAs and we're waiting on Sun to deliver the code grant.


= Stonehenge =

Stonehenge has been incubating since December 2008. Stonehenge a set of
example applications for Service Oriented Architecture that spans languages
and platforms and demonstrates best practices and interoperability by using
currently defined W3C OASIS standard protocols.

In the month of April, the growing Stonehenge community has been very active
delivering on fixes for the PHP, Java and .NET implementations of a sample
app called stocktrader. Stocktrader is meant to be the first sample app that
demonstrates interoperability in Stonehenge.

Admin: The community is still learning the ropes of apache processes. A PPMC
is currently being setup to allow the nomination of several active
developers. Legal headers and logos have been updated in all code bases to
reflect Apache's brand. All code bases now pass the RAT tool.

Community: Two new developers have joined. The current community has
intensified its effort around enabling a smooth installation experience of
the sample apps. Documentation has  been authored and iterated upon.

Code: The community has identified and resolved many fixes towards the first
release. The first release, which is being voted on right now, is aimed
towards producing code and docs that enable a smooth interop experience
between the .NET, PHP and Java implementations of the StockTrader
application.

Graduation map:
 * M1 should be released any day now.
 * Another iteration of improvements for stocktraded would constitute the
second release (M2)
 * A third release would be either adding more interop functionality to
stocktrader, or implementing a new sample application - M3


Neither M2 or M3 are discussed yet. As soon as M1 is complete the community
will discuss options for releases.


= VCL =

VCL has been incubating since December 2008. VCL is a framework for cloud
management of physical and virtual machines.

Project Name:
 * Discussion about using the name VCL has continued but the issue has not
been resolved.
 * A question was posed on the legal discussion list regarding the use of
the VCL name A response was givin indicating that NCSU should make it
obvious that both the VCL name and code are donated to the ASF.
 * NCSU is working to make it obvious on its website that VCL is developed
at the ASF.
 * The development community is working to remove references to NCSU from
the VCL code.
 * More guidance is required from the project mentors or others from ASF in
order to resolve this issue.

Development:
 * Code development has continued and many commits have been made to the ASF
VCL repository.
 * The vcl-dev list is actively being used to discuss development issues.
 * The Jira issue system is being used for tracking and to plan the first
release.

Release Preparation:
 * The development community is researching the ASF release process.
 * Work is being done to complete a few Jira issues before creating release.

Documentation:
 * The community decided to use a Confluence wiki for the project
documentation.
 * Work has been done to organize project documentation.
 * Documentation is actively being contributed to wiki.
 * Questions were asked of the mentors regarding the rules governing wiki
contributions from individuals who have not signed the CLA. It is the
community's understanding that a separate wiki will be needed - one for
official documentation included with releases and one containing
contributions from individual who have not signed the CLA.
 * A request has been made to one of the mentors who had offered to create a
2nd wiki instance.

= WSRP4J =

Did not report.  Still tied on on IP issues, we believe.


= XAP =

Advice of the Mentors is that there is no activity, and it should likely be
suspended.



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