Fwd: March 2009 Incubator Board Report

[Samul Kevin <lo...@gmail.com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Noel J. Bergman <no...@devtech.com>
Date: 2009/3/17
Subject: March 2009 Incubator Board Report
To: board@apache.org
Cc: general@incubator.apache.org


After last month's report, the Incubator has started the process of
recognizing the dormant status of projects that are in that condition.

The most serious issue that happened this past month is recorded in the
Empire-DB report, the gist of which is that a Committer had provided a
third-party with his SVN credentials.  That issue is covered in detail
below.

BlueSky, Cassanda, Log4PHP, and Shindig all failed to report.  Comments are
below, in-line with each project.

----

Individual Project Status:

= Bluesky =

Bluesky failed to report.

Reviewing their mailing list, there is activity in the project, just no
report.

= Cassandra =

Caasandra failed to report.  They did recognize and discuss the need for a
report, but failed to provide one, anyway.

The Cassandra Project is a distributed storage system for managing
structured/unstructured data while providing reliability at a massive scale.


= Click =

Click is a page and component oriented Java web framework.

Click has been incubating since July 2008.

Tasks completed since December:
 * Replaced all incompatible licensed libraries
 * Click 2.0.1 was released from the Apache Incubator
 * New JIRA was created and issues imported from old version

Top priorities:
 * Review the current diversity in the developer community


= Empire-db =

This is an out of schedule board report, that the Incubator PMC asked us to
provide due to the following incident:

=== The situation ===

A committer "C" of Empire-db had the idea to create and provide an example
application that demonstrates how to use Apache Empire-db together with
Apache CXF. Initially he intended to write the code himself, but then he
found himself too busy and never really got around doing it. So he decided
to ask a student S instead to write the code for him using his templates and
ideas. S then wrote the code with a little aid of C and he got paid for it.
The work contract S had with C said that all rights over the code would
exclusively belong to C.

When the coding was finished, C asked S to submit the code using his Apache
SVN account. For that C temporarily logged S in from within Eclipse to SVN
on one of C's computers (Please note: the login was performed by C the
password itself was not given to S). C then also asked S subscribe and write
to the Empire-db-dev mailing list to resolve problems he had with the Maven
project layout. C believed that all actions taken were legitimate and in the
best interest of the project and the ASF.

=== The issues ===

When a Mentor of the Empire-db project became aware of this transaction, he
raised strong concerns regarding the following two issues:
 1. Legal concerns that an ICLA from S would be required for the code that
was contributed.
 2. Security concerns, whether access to the SVN could have been abused by S
or the password for the SVN account for C could have been revealed by S.
Furthermore he pointed out, that sharing an account - even temporarily - is
not approved by the community and hence must under no circumstances be
repeated.

These concerns were also forwarded to the Incubator private mailing list,
where the actions taken by C also upset many people. There was a clear
verdict, that the mentor's concerns and disapproval were shared by everyone
else.

C was surprised by the reaction of the Incubator PMC and defended himself
with the following arguments:
 1. Since C is the exclusive legal owner of all rights over the code that
was submitted, only he could contribute it to the ASF anyway. Hence an ICLA
for S is from a legal point of view not required, even though he might be
the originator.
 2. It is very unlikely and there is absolutely no reason to believe that
the account has been abused or compromised by S in any way, since the login
was only valid for the actual Eclipse session. For people of the same
company, working in the same LAN, there might be technically easier ways of
compromising an account. Even so he takes full responsibility for everything
that is or was done under his account.

C posted his statements on the Empire-db private mailing list and it is
unclear whether all people interested in this subject had the opportunity to
read these arguments.

The respondents were not all convinced by these arguments and the legal
issue still has not been fully resolved. However, still there is a strong
common agreement on the disapproval of account sharing.

=== The resolve ===

C acknowledges and respects the opinion of the community. As far as the
sharing of this account is concerned, he publicly assures not to repeat it
with any of this Apache accounts.

In order to resolve any remaining concerns the following actions were taken
by C and S as requested from the Incubator board:
 1. S has signed and submitted an ICLA to the ASF.
 2. C has changed this SVN password


= ESME =

Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment (ESME) is a secure and highly
scalable microsharing and micromessaging platform that allows people to
discover and meet one another and get controlled access to other sources of
information, all in a business process context.

ESME entered the incubator in 2008-12-02.

Community:
 * Additional community members have submitted their iCLA with the aim of
becoming more involved
 * Siemens press release about ESME, reviewed by the Apache PRC and
published at http://url.ie/1bjo

Development:
 * Somewhat reduced activity last month, and questioning as to why this is
happening.
 * Good progress on the Twitter API, implementation nearly finished.

Top 2 or 3 things to resolve prior to graduation

 * Move all collaboration to the esme-dev mailing list
 * Increase community involvement in the project
 * Provide instructions for people to build, install and evaluate EMSE by
themselves


= Etch =

Etch was accepted into Incubator on 2 September 2008.

Etch is a cross-platform, language- and transport-independent framework for
building and consuming network services. The Etch toolset includes a network
service description language, a compiler, and binding libraries for a
variety of programming languages.

We've prepared a bug fix release (1.0.2) which has been submitted for an
incubator vote. The 1.0.2 release also includes updated licensing
information in compliance with Apache standards. A 1.1 release with proper
package and namespace changes is being prepared as well. The 1.1 release
will also include experimental code for a c and python binding.

Our problem with finding a home for our continuous build continues. Various
plans have been proposed and failed due to lack of a Windows-friendly c#
build environment. While we will continue for awhile to host this build at
Cisco, we need to find a more neutral and open place to do public builds.

Cisco folks continue to be the primary source of discussion and commits.
There are some external nibbles, but none that are ready to pitch-in in a
serious way yet. More work needs to be done on the web site to make steps to
participation more evident. Work also needs to be done on the build
environment to make it a bit more forgiving.

Outstanding items:
 * Check and make sure that the papers that transfer rights to the ASF been
received...
 * Check and make sure that the files that have been donated have been
updated to reflect the new ASF copyright...
 * Check and make sure that for all code included with the distribution that
is not under the Apache license...
 * Check and make sure that all source code distributed by the project is
covered by one or more of the following approved licenses...


= Hama =

Hama has been incubating since 19 May, 2008. It is a parallel matrix
computational package based on Hadoop Map/Reduce.

Recent developments:

 * We constructed interfaces of matrix and vector.
 * We implemented sparse/dense matrix-matrix multiplication and dot
products.
 * We implemented shell and user can use shell to manage matrices.
 * We start implementation of the sparse matrix and sparse graph which is a
graph with sparse matrix.

Required before graduation:

 * More practical examples of matrix manipulation
 * Increase community size and activity
 * First Apache release


= Kato =

Kato was accepted into the Incubator on 6 November 2008.

Kato is a project to develop the Specification, Reference Implementation,
and TCK for JSR 326: the JVM Post-mortem Diagnostics API

Recent Activity:

 * The corporate CCLA has been received by ASF.
 * Initial code contribution has been contributed.

The following is planned for next reporting period:

 * Contributed code to be built.
 * API Java doc to be built and put onto website.
 * Development of reference implementation (RI) of Kato API.
 * Development of working TCK.


= Log4php =

Log4php failed to report.

Log4php has been in the Incubator since 2004, and was retired once already,
then reviewed by new interest appeared.  Reviewing the mailing list, Log4php
appears to still be very much a one person project, with Christian Grobmeier
as the sole participant.  I see no sign of a user community, nor a developer
community.  Is there any thought on what should be the discposition of the
project?  Apache Labs?  Something else?


= OpenWebBeans =

!OpenWebBeans will be an ASL-licensed implementation of the Web Beans
Specification which is defined as JSR-299.

!OpenWebBeans entered the incubator in October 26, 2008. The following items
have been made after the last report

 * We have got a new committer who is Mark Struberg.
 * We released the M1 version
 * We published our new site via Maven

Belows are the next steps for coming days;

 * We will release the M2 version.
 * We will create additional documentation in the project web site.
 * We will implement additional examples that show the usage of the
OpenWebBeans
 * We will continue to attract new committers into the project.


= Pivot =

Pivot is an open-source platform for building rich internet applications in
Java.

Pivot was accepted into incubation on the 26 January 2009.

The Pivot community missed the last report, largely due to after acceptance
a period of 'no action' ensued. The Pivot project has now taken off. One
initial committer is lost in action and has been removed from the initial
committer list, as well as the couple of patches that he supplied has been
reverted.
The remaining 4 committers have submitted CLAs, accounts has been created,
authorization setup, Jira has been created, Confluence space has been
created, and we are soon to do the initial codebase submission. All
activities of setting up the podling has been tracked in
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PIVOT-1


= RAT =

After a long quiet period, there seems to have been a definite change of
momentum. A major stumbling block has been the absence of released version
of the codebase after the move to Apache. Once this has happened, it should
be possible to start on some more interesting topics.

Preparation of a 0.6 release ongoing (and looking good). Hopefully due in
April.

The scan code that generates http://incubator.apache.org/audit/ (by auditing
the distribution directories) is probably just about good enough for wider
distribution and use by other projects at Apache. This will be targeted for
release before May.

Discussions are ongoing about a Google SoC originating in Harmony but more
naturally in scope at RAT

Top Issues Before Graduation:
 1. ATM RAT is too small for a TLP but not clearly in scope for any existing
TLPs
 2. Regain momentum


= 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. River has been incubating since December 2006.

The River project is not doing well. Practically all original committers are
inactive and while there are interested users and even some pretty active
discussions about the future of River, that interest isn't showing up as
patches or other more constructive contributions.

We've seen some effort towards making the QA test suite more accessible, and
there is interest in doing another release. However, nobody is actively
working on new features or bigger improvements. It has been suggested that
River needs a major new vision, but it's debatable whether that would do
better as a fresh new project. In any case nobody is actively pushing for
anything like that.

There is still hope for River, but at this rate the project is heading for
termination.

Issues before graduation:

 * Re-activate the development community
 * Migrate packages to org.apache.river
 * Another Apache release

= Shindig =

Shindig failed to report.

Reviewing the Shindig mailing list shows considerable activity, with in the
realm of 1000+ messages per month.


= Stonehenge =

Stonehenge was accepted in December 2008

Stonehenge continues to make progress. There is now code committed for Ruby,
PHP, Axis2/Java and .NET. We are working on the wiki documentation on how to
get started and run the samples. Sun are working on an implementation for
Metro and we hope to get some contribution from Apache CXF too. Discussion
and mailing lists are slowly getting into place and the SVN and JIRA are all
in place and being used.

Main Activities:

 * .NET Stock Trader code contributed
 * Java and PHP Stock Trader code contributed
 * New tree structure for all contributions created
 * All existing code moved from contrib to trunk
 * new committers from SUN Microsystems identified and came online
 * Goals and exit criteria of Milestone 1 release being defined.



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




-- 
Bowen Ma a.k.a Samul Kevin @ Bluesky Dev Team    XJTU