July 2010 Incubator Board Report

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

The Incubator added several new PMC members since the last report: Chris
Hostetter, Norman Maurer, Owen O'Malley and Senaka Fernando.

A project entered Incubation:

  Nuvem - an open application programming interface for common cloud
application services

And several more are preparing to enter Incubation, a couple of them being
sub-projects from existing Apache projects, where they have asked to come
through the Incubator before going for TLP status.

All projects except for JSPWiki filed their reports.

	--- Noel

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= Ace =

Community:

 * Angelo van der Sijpt was present at the Second London Java Community
Unconference, organized with the ASF, talking about ACE.
 * Karl Pauls and Marcel Offermans repeated their tutorial on, amongst other
things, ACE at SkillsMatter in London.
 * ACE will also be present at the ApacheCon NA in Altanta in November.

Software:

 * More work on the Maven build has been done.
 * Upgraded the UI to the latest GWT libraries.
 * Finished migration of all existing unit tests.

Licensing and other issues:

 * None at the moment.

Things to resolve prior to graduation:

 * Make a release.
 * Grow the community some more.


= Amber =

Amber is a project to develop a Java library which provides an API
specification for, and an unconditionally compliant implementation of the
OAuth v1.0, v1.0a and v2.0 specifications. OAuth is a mechanism that allows
users to authenticate and authorise access by another party to resources
they control while avoiding the need to share their username and password
credentials.

The most important issues that must be addressed before graduation are:

 * attract new users and developers
 * making a release

Latest activity:

 * The initial developers are discussing about API definition, modules'
design and build process.
 * Code from Amber lab and Pid's OAuth contribution has been committed.
 * A short talk has been given about OAuth and Amber at the London Java
Community Unconference.

Next steps:

 * apply the API definition choices approved by the community
 * implementation of different specification versions (client and server)

Community:

 * The community is in the first stages of formation and solely consists of
the developers, though a few users start to appear on the mailing lists.


= BeanValidation =

Apache Bean Validation will deliver an implementation of the JSR303 Bean
Validation 1.0 specification. BVAL entered incubation on March 1, 2010.

A list of the three most important issues to address in the move towards
graduation.

 * First release of artifacts - Done
 * Grow the community and committer base - ongoing
 * Decide on graduation target of TLP or subproject - TBD

Any issues that the Incubator PMC or ASF Board might wish/need to be aware
of?

 * None at this time.

How has the community developed since the last report?

 * PPMC membership was extended and accepted by Carlos Vara.
 * Committer offer was extended and accepted by David Jencks.
 * Growing activity on the dev list for two potential committers.

How has the project developed since the last report?

 * Started discussions about potential content for a 0.2-incubating release.
 * Bean Validation benchmark app contributed by Carlos Vara to help with
performance testing against the Hibernate RI.


= 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.

Recently, developer NanHongzhen had committed the IPv6 and Satelite patch of
RealClass in BlueSky jira. I've download the modules and tested them(only
IPv6 module,'cause i don't have an enviroment with satelite.). It functions
but those files are not well orgnized and probably not legal in certain
config files. I need to clean the files first and then commit them to repos.

 * accept IPv6 and Satelite patch of RealClass;

next step:

 * clean IPV6 and Satelite module source files.
 * commit IPV6 and Satellite module to repos.


= Chemistry =

Apache Chemistry is an effort to provide an implementation of the CMIS
(Content Management Interoperability Services) specification in Java,
Python, PHP, JavaScript (and possibly other languages). Chemistry entered
incubation on April 30th, 2009.

Issues to address in the move towards graduation:

 * First Java release (an attempt has been made but there were issues).
 * First non-Java release

Community development since the last report:

 * PHP library added, with Richard McKnight as new committer.

Project development since the last report:

 * Oasis CMIS 1.0 spec is final.
 * Code merge OpenCMIS / Chemistry completed, only one Java code base now.
 * Improvement / stabilization of the client API.
 * Improvement of the online documentation in the wiki.
 * Enhanced query integration in OpenCMIS.
 * First prototyping around the proposed browser binding (JSON protocol) in
the sandbox.
 * More license documentations to make release candidate ASF compliant.
 * Preparations for a first release 0.1.


= Deltacloud =

Deltacloud defines a web service API for interacting with cloud service
providers and resources in those clouds in a unified manner. In addition, it
consists of a number of implementations of this API for the most popular
clouds.

Deltacloud entered the incubator in 2010-05-17.

- Project basically setup  (info for 3 people still being worked to get ICLA
correctly listed) - Code has been imported. - Working to get Code Grant on
file - Project active, commits and mail list discussions have started. - The
website has not been setup yet.


= Empire-db =

Empire-db is a relational data persistence component that aims to overcome
the difficulties, pitfalls and restrictions inherent in traditional Object
Relational Management (ORM) approaches. Empire-db is on the Apache Incubator
since July 2008.

Issues to address in the move towards graduation:

We are still aware of the fact that we need to do more advertising of
Empire-db on major development forums like e.g. http://TheServerSide.com in
order to raise attention for the project.

Community development since the last report

The community has remained stable and several users questions have been
answered on the user list. We still receive positive feedback from users but
had no contributions from new users in the past quarter.

Project development since the last report

After having received approvement from the incubator PMC we have published
our 2.0.6 release and updated our website accordingly. There are plans for
improvements and open issues on our list but all committers were too busy to
make significant contributions in the past quarter. We hope that we can
deliver improvements to the projects in the upcoming quarter.


= Imperius =

Imperius has been incubating since November 2007.

Imperius is a rule-based policy evaluation engine based on the CIM-SPL
language from Distributed Management Task Force (dtmf.org).

The voting for the first release of Imperius was passed on Jan 18, 2010.
The release was initially made available on April 12, 2010 via the Imperius
website and mirrors.

Communication continues to be intermittent, although there seem to be one to
two new people on the mailing list this quarter.   Most recent interest
seems to be in the use of CIM-SPL binding as opposed to the Java binding.
Some enhancements have been made to improve information on parse errors.  No
real progress has been made or steps taken towards graduating the project.

Things to resolve prior to graduation:
* Grow the community
* Next steps and future of Imperius at Apache.


= Nuvem =
Apache Nuvem will define an open application programming interface for
common cloud application services, allowing applications to be easily ported
across the most popular cloud platforms.

Nuvem was accepted for Incubation on June, 2010.

Currently Nuvem is working on creating necessary infrastructure for
kicking-off the project at Apache.


= Olio =

Olio has been incubating since September 2008.

Olio is a web 2.0 toolkit to help developers evaluate the suitability,
functionality and performance of various web technologies by implementing a
reasonably complex application in several different technologies.

Most users are now using the 0.2 release. A few bugs have been found in this
release as more users are now using it, but none of them are major.

We have several new users of Olio this quarter with all 3 versions of the
application being used.
Olio seems to be the workload of choice for testing virtual machines.
Several researchers as well VMware are using Olio for this purpose.

Graduation From Incubation:
Diversity of committers is the primary issue with the project - although we
are adding users, we haven't been successful in converting them to
committers. We have a few users sending patches for bugs they file.

We could use the PMC and Board's help in spreading the word about Olio to
get better traction.


= Shiro =

Shiro is a powerful and flexible open-source application security framework
that cleanly handles authentication, authorization, enterprise session
management and cryptography.

Shiro has been incubating since June 2008.

The team is pleased to report the project made its first incubation release,
version 1.0.0-incubating. The release was made following the best practices
of an Apache  release process. The team encountered only minor issues during
the process and  the release vote demonstrated strong support from the
community.

Prior to the release, the team made a concentrated effort to clean up the
codebase, updated the Javadocs and close out any remaining JIRA issues. The
project website  and wiki-based user documentation was greatly improved.

The project also designed new logos and chose a new one for the project in a
community vote that was met with enthusiasm.

Kalle Korhonen was voted in to join the PPMC. Existing PPMC members
identified  a new potential committer and discussed the matter but no vote
was held yet. Some  concern was expressed about the small number of active
committers.

The team feels confident about the mid-term roadmap. Progress is made
towards making a 1.0.1 maintenance release as well as a new 1.1.0 minor
release. The project is  targeting graduation by October.

The status is being maintained at
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/shiro/STATUS


= Socialsite =

There has been no activity in the SocialSite community and no progress in
getting Oracle to come through on Sun's unwritten commitment to donate the
Project SocialSite codebase to Apache. There's still a chance that Oracle
will come through so perhaps this podling should be put into some sort of
mothballed state if there is such a thing or terminated if there is not.


= Tashi =

Tashi has been incubating since September 2008.

The Tashi project aims to build a software infrastructure for cloud
computing  on massive internet-scale datasets (what we call Big Data). The
idea is to  build a cluster management system that enables the Big Data that
are stored in  a cluster/data center to be accessed, shared, manipulated,
and computed on by  remote users in a convenient, efficient, and safe
manner.

Tashi has previously encompassed just the tools to manage virtual machines
using Xen and KVM, but is gaining the facility to hand out physical machines
as well.

Development activities have included fixes to conform to new python
programming standards, support for VHD virtual disks in Xen, configurable
vlan bridge templates for Xen, along with expansion of documentation.

The project is still working toward building a larger user and development
community. User groups have been identified in Ireland and Korea, and the
developers are trying to reach out to them.

Items to be resolved before graduation:

 * Prepare and review a release candidate
 * Develop community diversity (currently Intel and CMU committers)


= Thrift =

Thrift is a software framework for scalable cross-language services
development. It combines a software stack with a code generation engine to
build services that work efficiently and seamlessly between a variety of
programming languages. Thrift entered the Apache Incubator in May 2008.

 * Ongoing feature additions and bugfixes
 * Bryan Duxbury appointed as release manager last report cycle
 * Vote currently pending for release candidate 0.3.0-rc5, waiting on two
more IPMC votes


= VXQuery =
The VXQuery Project implements a standard compliant XML Query processor. It
has been in incubation since 2009-07-06.

Recent activities:

 * progressing slowly towards running the complete XQTS (XQuery Test Suite)

Top issues before graduation:

 * Increase development speed
 * Build community (developer and users)
 * Create a release

= Whirr =

Whirr provides code for running a variety of software services on cloud
infrastructure.

Whirr was accepted into the incubator on 11 May 2010. Status information is
available at http://incubator.apache.org/projects/whirr.html.

Progress since the last report: There has been steady development, with 17
JIRA issues having been resolved since the last report. A cloud hackathon
held at Cloudera's offices attracted a number of people interested in Whirr
development. The next step is to make a release of Whirr.

Plans for the next period:

 * Do an initial 0.1.0 release.
 * Set up the website.

Top three items to resolve before graduation:

 * Increase community involvement in the project
 * Make several incubating releases
 * Support at least three services on Whirr


= Zeta Components =

Zeta Components is a high-quality library of loosely-coupled PHP components.
It has entered incubation on 2010-05-21. Therefore the project is still in
ramp up phase.

In the past month,

 * all Apache accounts have been created
 * Jira has been created
 * SVN repository is prepared for the import.

The 3 most important issues to be tackled are:

 * Create initial incubating infrastructure.
 * Move project and community to ASF.
 * Get developement based in ASF moving again.

At the moment the SVN export needs to be signed of from the eZ management.
Once this is done, SVN can move.



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