Incubator Board Report October 2010

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

Things are going well, with no apparent need for Board intervention.  Marcel
Offermans has joined the Incubator PMC, which is the only change in PMC
composition.

During the discussion of the Alois project, there was extensive and good
discussion about real-time communication versus the ASF's requirement that
decisions be made on mailing lists.  Similarly, there was discussion
about -dev and -user mailing lists for Incubator projects.  Finally, in
terms of Apache Way discussions, there was further discussion of why NOT git
until (and if) the ASF Infrastructure Team provides it.

There was discussion regarding process for how patches might be accepted,
e.g., posted to JIRA, reviewed on mailing lists, CTR, RTC, when a CLA is
necessary.

Alois, log collection and correlation software with reporting and alarming
functionalities, has begun Incubation.

Gora, an ORM framework for column stores such as Apache HBase and Apache
Cassandra with a specific focus on Hadoop, was voted for Incubation.

You can also say "hello Kitty" (sorry, it had to be said) to Kitty: a
lightweight, production-class Java application server performance diagnostic
& administration utility.

We've also discussed Celix, which is intended to be an OSGi like
implementation in C with a distinct focus on
interoperability with Java-OSGi, but there needs to be follow through if
they want to Incubate.

SocialSite, for which a code grant was never received, has been locked and
put into dormant state.

The Imperius community has been making little to no progress towards
graduating, despite repeated nudges from their mentors.  Unless there is
progress prior to its next board report, a recommendation has been put forth
to stop the incubation process for Imperius.


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

= 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 started incubation on April 24th 2009.

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

Community

There have been active conversations about how to best document building and
running ACE as we're finalizing the transition to Maven. Several committers
of ACE will be present and talking at ApacheCon NA 2010.

Software

Toni has done initial testing with Maven 3, making some changes to the build
system to support it. Premek Brada, a researcher and software engineering
lecturer at University of West Bohemia, Czech Republic, has been researching
component compatibility methods and their applications to industrial
technologies, in particular OSGi. He is considering donating software to
analyze changes in code and what their impact should be on versioning
changes.

Licensing and other issues

None at the moment.

Things to resolve prior to graduation

Make a release. Grow the community some more.


= ALOIS =

ALOIS stands for "Advanced Logging and Intrusion Detection System" and is
meant to be a fully implemented open source SIEM security information and
event management) system.

ALOIS is incubating since 22nd September 2010.

Things that are already done:

 * Enabled Mailinglists for ALOIS
 * Enabled JIRA for ALOIS

First steps todo will be:

 * Create user accounts - CLAs are on file
 * Prepare sourcecode for public (review code, add licensing and more
comments)
 * Ensure required libraries/dependencies are available for public
 * Publish sourcecode to Apache infrastructure
 * Publishing internal bugreports to https://issues.apache.org/jira/


= 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.

The team is improving RealClass -- one of the two major subsystems of
BlueSky -- meanwhile we will discuss the next version of RealClass which
would related to web browser.

 * committed QT version of Tserver;

next step:

 * To cut down the code quantity, replace Tserver with QT's lib, especially
the communication part;
 * Gradually commit the source code of modified DTU/Teacher/Student;
 * Discuss the next version of RealClass;


= 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 non-Java release (PHP, Python).

Issues for Incubator PMC or ASF Board:

 * None.

Community development since the last report:

 * None.

Project development since the last report:

 * A first release of the Java subproject (OpenCMIS 0.1) was done.
 * Work to refine the Java APIs continues.
 * Continued work on the draft browser binding (JSON protocol) in the
sandbox.


= Chukwa =

Chukwa is a distributed log collection and processing system built on top of
Hadoop. Jiaqi Tan has been voted to be a committer by Chukwa community.
Chukwa is transforming to use HBase for storing data to reduce data latency,
the existing data collection on Hadoop and map/reduce is still supported.

Chukwa entered incubation on August 5th, 2010.


= 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 still have not tackled the fact that we need to do more advertising of
Empire-db on major development forums/sites/blogs.

Community development since the last report

New names pop up on the user list/jira which indicates a (slow) growth of
our user community.

Project development since the last report

We're trying to work towards a new release before the end of the year as
several issues have been fixed/new features have been implemented.


= Gora =

Gora is an ORM framework for column stores such as Apache HBase and Apache
Cassandra with a specific focus on Hadoop.

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

 1. Port Gora code and license headers into ASF license headers
 1. Develop a strong community with organizational diversity and with
infection into existing ASF projects like Nutch and Hadoop
 1. At least one Gora incubating release

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

No, not at this time.

How has the community developed since the last report?

There was a lot of positive interest from the Incubator community during the
Gora proposal and voting process. Most of the existing Github community is
in the process of moving over to the ASF. Mailing lists were *just* set up,
so we expect the community to continue to blossom as we can now begin to
effectively communicate out in the open.

How has the project developed since the last report?

Gora was voted into the Incubator by the IPMC on September 26, 2010.

We've got mailing lists setup (INFRA-3017), SVN space (INFRA-3018), JIRA
(INFRA-3019), and Confluence (INFRA-3020) thanks to Henry Saputra. Enis
Soztutar just completed the code drop (see r1006024 and INFRA-3038) and
created GORA-1 to track the issue. Enis also created GORA-2 to track
standing up the Gora website. Enis and Andrzej Bialecki went through the
Software Grant process, which was received and ACK'ed by Craig Russell in
r25057, r25058, r25060, r25061, r25070, r25071, r25072, and r25073 of the
foundation repository. Full steam ahead.


= Imperius =

2010-October Imperius Incubator status report

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).

Communication continues to be intermittent or non-existent.

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


= Isis =

Isis is an ASL 2.0 licensed implementation of the Naked Objects pattern.  It
is based on contributions of the original Naked Objects Framework along with
a number of sister projects that were developed for the recent book, "Domain
Driven Design using Naked Objects".

Isis was accepted into the Incubator in 2010, September 7th.

Last quarter, we have worked on the following items:

 * Podling setup activities.
 * Collecting the CCLA from Naked Objects Group Ltd for its contribution of
the Naked Objects framework.
 * Collecting all iCLA(s) from all committers (this includes the sister
projects)
 * Setting up SVN committership, Wiki and JIRA accounts for the initial
committers
 * Uploading code from the existing Subversion repositories (residing on
Sourceforge) and converting over the package names and Maven POM
groupId/artifactIds.  At the time of writing this is still in progress
(Naked Objects codebase uploaded, awaiting siter projects to be uploaded).
 * Due diligence on IP clearance progressing

Top 3 Issues to address in move towards graduation

 * putting good documentation site out as start-off to building larger
community
 * getting first release out to demonstrate credibility
 * ensuring existing committers all happy with transition to Apache

None of these issues requires Board attention.

Community Development (first report)

 * mailing list got setup and shows increased usage; committers are moving
onto it from the old mailing list
 * first pages being created on Isis wiki, contributions from several in
community
 * interview at http://jaxenter.com/apache-isis-interview-30780.html.
 * session accepted at JFokus 2011 conference, hoping for v0.1 out in time
for that.
 * 2 expressions of interest to contribute on isis-dev

Project Development (first report)

 * imported the SVN history from the old projects into a
''contrib/initial-imports'' area in SVN.
 * performed initial converted over package names and Maven POM
groupId/artifactIds.
 * performed further work refining new module structure and corresponding
DocBook guides to be carved out from existing material
 * Started moving code that has passed IP clearance into trunk



= JSPWiki =

JSPWiki has been incubating since September 2007.

JSPWiki is a JSP-based wiki program.

Only a few minor bugs were fixed.

No progress in the incubation process. The project still needs to make an
official Apache release.

Things have slowed down the last few months for an unknown reason.  Also the
mailing lists are very quiet.

There is still considerable interest in the project. The developer list
currently has 90 subscribers, no change; and the user list has 195
subscribers, no change.


= Lucy =

Lucy will be a loose port of the Lucene search engine library, written in C
and targeted at dynamic language users.

Lucy was voted into the Incubator on July 22, 2010.

Issues for Incubator PMC or ASF Board:

 * License issues have been resolved with legal-internal. We are currently
doing a code grant for Kinosearch so that we can move forward with a code
drop. Marvin has already uploaded the code drop to LUCY-122.

Progress since the last report:

 * Software grant prepared. Marvin led the charge and put together a form
email to send out to all the individuals that were part of the grant. Since
there are so many parties involved, there have been many commits in the
foundation repository (e.g., r25096, r25097, r25098, r25099, r25100, r25101,
etc.).

 * We now have confirmed SGAs from all but two of the major copyright
holders and Marvin will contact both of them directly again on Monday
October 11, 2010.

 * Some development discussion regarding FieldType default properties helped
to flush out some Lucy design. Marvin Humphrey, Peter Karman and Simon
Willnauer participated in the discussion.


= NPanday =

NPanday allows projects using the .NET framework to be built with Apache
Maven. NPanday allows .NET projects to be converted into Maven projects thus
allowing them to fully utilize the other technologies driven by Maven.
NPanday has been incubating since August 2010.

The development of NPanday started at Apache on September 8, 2010 when the
source code was successfully imported to
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/npanday/.

The issues from the previous issue tracker in Codeplex was also successfully
imported and the new issue tracker for NPanday can be found here:
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NPANDAY. There has been quite a number
of newly filed issues and a few people have submitted patches as well.

NPanday's development is gearing up for version 2.0. Two branches were
created in https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/npanday/branches/ for
the major issues that would be included in the next major release of
NPanday:

 * removal of the uac
(https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/npanday/branches/npanday-uac-rem
oved/)

 * support for VS 2010 and .Net Framework
(https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/npanday/branches/npanday-vs2010-
support/)

The NPanday website was deployed to http://incubator.apache.org/npanday/ and
the PPMC has been established.

The top priorities towards graduation are:

 * create initial status file and update incubator web site

 * work through IP clearance and other items from status file

 * work on creating an initial release

There are no issues for the Incubator PMC or board at this time.


= 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.

The Nuvem Project is slowly getting started. The community is discussing
project Roadmap. We presented at JavaOne 2010 and had a completely full
room. We showed couple demos using Apache Nuvem and we are already seeing
couple people from the session showing up on the mailing lists.

Top things to resolve prior to graduation: Increase the number of active
committers.


= Olio =

2010-October Olio Incubator status report 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.

Things have been fairly quiet on both the user and developer list this
quarter. Olio is being used as part of VMmark2.0 (VMWare's benchmark).

Graduation From Incubation:

Diversity of committers is no longer an issue - we now have committers in 3
organizations.  However, the user base is not showing a strong growth. Since
this is a test application/workload, it is being used as such for short-term
projects.


= 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 the Apache Software Foundation Board of
Directors has accepted Shiro's Top Level Project graduation proposal during
their Wednesday, September 22nd 2010 board meeting.  Apache Shiro has
officially graduated from the Incubator to become an Apache Top Level
project!

This will be the last Incubator board report made by the Apache Shiro team
to the Apache Incubator PMC. The process to remove Shiro from the reporting
schedule will be complete by the time the Incubator reviews this report.

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


= Socialsite =

Officially dormant.  Will no longer report.


= 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 assimilation of adopted code to Zoni
(Tashi's physical machine reservation system), inclusion of support for
controlling APC brand switched rack PDUs, addition of DNS CNAME management,
and bug fixes.

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. Connections have also been made
with Georgia Tech.

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.

 * Thrift 0.3 released
 * Thrift 0.4 released
 * Thrift 0.5 RC currently under voting
 * Graduation process underway, resolution drafted, Bryan Duxbury to chair
the project
 * Anthony Molinaro and Roger Meier granted committership
 * Various build improvements, continued feature development and bugfixing


= VXQuery =

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

Recent activities:

 * progress has been slow due to the small team/community size and external
commitments of the current developers

Top issues before graduation:

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



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