Incubation Questions

[Scott Merrill <sk...@skippy.net>]

Hello everyone.

I am a participant with a project that is discussing applying for
incubation. We've been around for several years, and have a
non-trivial amount of established infrastructure, including wiki, bug
tracker, and mailing lists. We have a number of questions related to
these services insofar as successful incubation would be concerned.

Our wiki is open to anyone who wants to make an account. The wiki is
the primary point of collaboration for the end-user manual we
distribute with our project. The Incubation guidelines state

   "In particular, care must be taken to ensure that access to the wiki used to
   create documentation is restricted to only those with filed CLAs. The PPMC
   MUST review all changes and ensure that trust is not abused."

We're not totally keen on that restriction, though we understand the
intent. One possible work around would be two wikis: a public wiki
open for participation by any interested party, and a "restricted"
wiki for "officially sanctioned contributions". A member of the
project could cull contributions from the public wiki and move them to
the restricted wiki. This begs the question, though: would such a
public wiki be permissible within the Incubation-provided
infrastructure?

Are we permitted to maintain our own wiki, on our current
infrastructure, during the incubation process?
Are we permitted to maintain our own bug tracker, on our current
infrastructure, during the incubation process?
I realize that both of the above fly in the face of some of the point
of incubation, but we'd like to make sure we're exploring all the
possible options before we lock into potentially major changes.

We currently use Launchpad (https://launchpad.net/) to facilitate
end-user contributions to our translation efforts. Would it be
permissible to keep using Launchpad? Would people contributing
translations be required to sign a CLA? Note that we currently do not
distribute translations with the releases. We don't have a clear sense
yet on whether want to change this practice.

The Incubation documentation states that "incubator projects are not
permitted to issue an official Release. Test snapshots (however good
the quality) and Release plans are OK." Is that just a semantic issue?
We haven't yet released a version 1.0 of our project: could we simply
label our next intended release (currently 0.7) as a "test snapshot"
and carry on as normal?

Thank you very much in advance for any insight you can share.

Cheers,
Scott

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Re: Incubation Questions

[Felix Meschberger <fm...@gmail.com>]

Hi Scott,

Scott Merrill schrieb:
> Hello everyone.
> 
> I am a participant with a project that is discussing applying for
> incubation. We've been around for several years, and have a
> non-trivial amount of established infrastructure, including wiki, bug
> tracker, and mailing lists. We have a number of questions related to
> these services insofar as successful incubation would be concerned.
> 
> Our wiki is open to anyone who wants to make an account. The wiki is
> the primary point of collaboration for the end-user manual we
> distribute with our project. The Incubation guidelines state
> 
>    "In particular, care must be taken to ensure that access to the wiki used to
>    create documentation is restricted to only those with filed CLAs. The PPMC
>    MUST review all changes and ensure that trust is not abused."
> 
> We're not totally keen on that restriction, though we understand the
> intent. One possible work around would be two wikis: a public wiki
> open for participation by any interested party, and a "restricted"
> wiki for "officially sanctioned contributions". A member of the
> project could cull contributions from the public wiki and move them to
> the restricted wiki. This begs the question, though: would such a
> public wiki be permissible within the Incubation-provided
> infrastructure?

Yes, in Apache Sling we do exactly this. We have a SLINGxSITE space
which is the basis for the official site and which is access protected
and we have the SLING space, which is open but is not the "official"
documentation of Sling -- though, of course, we pay close attention, too.

> 
> Are we permitted to maintain our own wiki, on our current
> infrastructure, during the incubation process?
> Are we permitted to maintain our own bug tracker, on our current
> infrastructure, during the incubation process?
> I realize that both of the above fly in the face of some of the point
> of incubation, but we'd like to make sure we're exploring all the
> possible options before we lock into potentially major changes.

Hmm, others must reply to this one. But I think at least during the
lifetime in incubation the migration into the ASF infrastructure should
be accomplished.

Maybe someone from Wicket which also had a community before its Apache
life could answer here and provide some experience.

> 
> We currently use Launchpad (https://launchpad.net/) to facilitate
> end-user contributions to our translation efforts. Would it be
> permissible to keep using Launchpad? Would people contributing
> translations be required to sign a CLA? Note that we currently do not
> distribute translations with the releases. We don't have a clear sense
> yet on whether want to change this practice.
> 
> The Incubation documentation states that "incubator projects are not
> permitted to issue an official Release. Test snapshots (however good
> the quality) and Release plans are OK." Is that just a semantic issue?
> We haven't yet released a version 1.0 of our project: could we simply
> label our next intended release (currently 0.7) as a "test snapshot"
> and carry on as normal?

True to some extent. Incubator project releases are not fully sanctioned
releases, though they go through the same procedure checking for
compliance with ASF rules. As an indication of this fact, all releases
of incubating projects may have the word "incubator" (or "incubating"
IIRC) in its version.

To be honest, though, to most downstream users, the difference between
an incubator release and a real ASF release is kind of subtle.

For example in Apache Sling (which I know best since I am a member of
this incubating project) we have a Release 3-incubator. This is fully
functional but the "incubator" tag marks this as a release of a project
in the Incubator.

Regards
Felix

> 
> Thank you very much in advance for any insight you can share.
> 
> Cheers,
> Scott
> 
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> 

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Re: Incubation Questions

[Martijn Dashorst <ma...@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 8:28 PM, Scott Merrill <sk...@skippy.net> wrote:
> Our wiki is open to anyone who wants to make an account. The wiki is
> the primary point of collaboration for the end-user manual we
> distribute with our project. The Incubation guidelines state
>
>   "In particular, care must be taken to ensure that access to the wiki used to
>   create documentation is restricted to only those with filed CLAs. The PPMC
>   MUST review all changes and ensure that trust is not abused."
>
> We're not totally keen on that restriction, though we understand the
> intent.

It is for legal issues: we (The ASF) are not allowed to distribute IP
without proper licensing. Anything that is not covered by a CLA (or an
acceptable license) can not be distributed by The ASF. Wiki content is
difficult, as the modifications made by folks are clearly meant to be
shared, but until they sign a CLA, we can't redistribute and repackage
it, i.e. bundle the docs in a release.

> One possible work around would be two wikis: a public wiki
> open for participation by any interested party, and a "restricted"
> wiki for "officially sanctioned contributions". A member of the
> project could cull contributions from the public wiki and move them to
> the restricted wiki.

Only if those contributions are covered by a CLA.

> This begs the question, though: would such a
> public wiki be permissible within the Incubation-provided
> infrastructure?

Yes, see http://cwiki.apache.org/WICKET and http://cwiki.apache.org/WICKETxSITE

> Are we permitted to maintain our own wiki, on our current
> infrastructure, during the incubation process?
> Are we permitted to maintain our own bug tracker, on our current
> infrastructure, during the incubation process?

You have to migrate during incubation to Apache hardware. Anything not
hosted on Apache hardware is not part of your project.

> I realize that both of the above fly in the face of some of the point
> of incubation, but we'd like to make sure we're exploring all the
> possible options before we lock into potentially major changes.

If you choose to incubate, go all the way. Otherwise you're in for a
long time in the incubator. The faster you learn how The ASF works
(including infrastructure) the faster you're out of the incubator.

> We currently use Launchpad (https://launchpad.net/) to facilitate
> end-user contributions to our translation efforts. Would it be
> permissible to keep using Launchpad?

IMO: not advisable. People submitting translations in launchpad have
to resubmit them through JIRA (or bugzilla).

> Would people contributing
> translations be required to sign a CLA?

Small contributions can be ticked off in the JIRA issue that takes in
the contribution–there's a checkbox that allows us to redistribute the
IP with releases. A CLA is preferred though, especially with recurring
contributions.

Martijn

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