September 2008 Incubator Board Report

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

The Incubator continues to run smoothly.  In the large, we have good
participation and oversight from the PMC.

PhotArk and Etch are in the process of getting started.  Qpid and UIMA are
working on putting out new releases.  CouchDB is in search of new/additional
Mentors.

As mentioned in the August report, we continue to have concerns about
BlueSky, which failed to formally report again this month.  However, there
is an e-mail on their list that indicates that they are hearing our
concerns, and are starting to take some steps towards improvement and
resolution on the issues, q.v.,
http://www.mail-archive.com/bluesky-dev@incubator.apache.org/msg00245.html.

*** The PMC is reminding all Incubator projects that an important item for
the report is what needs to be done to satisfy graduation requirements. ***

------------------------------------------------------

=== BlueSky ===

Did not report.  From the developer mailing list, we have the following
status comments:

  - Two modules of the project,that is DTU and Tserver, have been
    modified by using stlport to replace gpl based c++ code
    expected for some minor mistakes.

  - The official website has been updated and formal reports are added.

  -  We strive hard to learn the related contents of how to incubate
successfully.


=== JSecurity ===

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

JSecurity has been incubating since June 2008.

Since last month, a new external release has been issued (0.9.0-RC2), and
some
bug fixes, and discussion about the configuration format.

The code source should be injected to the Apache repository soon, when the
external 0.9.0 release will be out. It's a matter of days, may be a week,
accordingly to the latest discussion on the mailing list.

JIRA is set up, but it should be used.

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


=== log4php ===

log4php is a port of the log4j package for PHP.

Very limited activity over the last 3 months. 3 external patches, provided
via JIRA were submitted in September, and these are in the process of being
vetted and will likely be committed. There are external users but almost no
activity on the mailing lists.

Incubating since 07/2007


=== Pig ===

Pig is a platform for analyzing large data sets that consists of a
high-level language for expressing data analysis programs, coupled with
infrastructure for evaluating these programs. The salient property of Pig
programs is that their structure is amenable to substantial parallelization,
which in turns enables them to handle very large data sets.

 * Pig's infrastructure is in good shape. We just announced our first
release from the incubator Pig 0.1.0! In addition, a major system redesign
is underway that introduces type system, improves performance, and provides
better platform for future work. The rework is expected to complete in
October 2008.

 * The development community is growing with addition of Daniel Dai as a new
committer. More work needed to attract developers to the project.

 * The user community is also growing with more activity on the user mailing
list. In addition, a tutorial and user function repository were added to
help users to come up to speed on the product. Also there is ongoing work on
the user documentation.

Incubating since: October 2007


=== RAT ===

Did not report.


=== River ===

River is aimed at the development and advancement of the Jini technology
core infrastructure. Jini technology is a service oriented architecture that
defines a programming model which both exploits and extends Java technology
to enable the construction of secure, distributed systems which are adaptive
to change.

This reporting period showed almost no activity, which is quite
disappointing. Based on the question by one of our mentors "What's up with
River" it became clear some active committers were forced to downsize their
participation due to being drowned by other activities, in case of many of
the Sun committers this is due to a change of jobs.

There are however signs that others, well known in the Jini community, want
to lend their hand and help with getting out our next release.

Things that needs to be done before graduation:

    * the API in the {{{com.sun}}} namespace must be changed to
{{{org.apache}}}, probably has to await the incorporation of patches
lingering around and after our automated test framework is in place
    * overall participation of non Sun committers must increase and we
should grow our community by getting more people involved

Incubating since: December 2006


=== Shindig ===

Shindig is a reference implementation of the !OpenSocial and gadgets stack.

Incubating since: 2007-12-06

High-level status summary: Shindig preparing for an incubation release of
the v0.8 !OpenSocial spec

    * On track for an incubation release of Shindig on September 30,
compliant to !OpenSocial v0.8.1
    * Active community, code base is maturing well, and is in use by many
very large sites
    * Apache-provided Zone is up and running
    * 2 new committers, actively seeking more
    * Top 2 things to resolve prior to graduation:
          * Improve diversity of committers (progress, but on-going)
          * Run through at least one release (0.8 release will be a good
one)


=== Hama ===

Hama is a parallel matrix computational package based on Hadoop.

Incubating since: 19 May 2008

 * The Hama website was published.
 * The automated CI server for Hama integration builds was installed.
 * The users were beginning to evaluate/report the function and perfomance
of the Hama.

We need to make a guide for the users and developers.


=== Empire-db ===

Apache Empire-db is an Open Source relational data persistence component
which allows database vendor independent dynamic query definition as well as
safe and simple data retrieval and updating. Empire-db entered the incubator
on July 8th, 2008

 - we've finalized migration from sf.net to apache
 - commits are coming in
 - issue tracker is being used
 - first release tries to go through the incubator
 - no new additions to the committer roster or ppmc


=== 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 has been accepted for Incubation in August 19.  SVN, the mailing
Lists and Committer accounts are ready.  The Community is just starting to
work on website and initial code.



---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscribe@incubator.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: general-help@incubator.apache.org