[ANNOUNCE] Apache Portals Applications

[David Sean Taylor <da...@bluesunrise.com>]

I would like to announce that a new Apache Portals project proposal  
has been voted on and formally accepted by the Portals PMC.
The project, called "Portals Applications" is described in detail below.
I will be setting up this project next week, and providing this list  
with more information then.

David

-- Introduction --

Apache Portals Applications (APA) is a collaborative software  
development project existing under the Apache Portals project.
Our mission is described below. A description of the project:

APA is dedicated to providing robust, full-featured, commercial- 
quality, and freely available Portlet Applications
under the Apache license developed at the Apache Software Foundation.

APA is not a standalone project in that it has no charter, but is  
dependent on the Apache Portals project for all project management  
and guidance.

APA is not a new project, and thus does not require incubation. It is  
simply a reorganization of the Apache Portals project structure.
We are moving application code out of the portal structure, and into  
a new structure, applications.
We believe reorganization is vital to the health of the portals  
community by facilitating the creation of new portlet applications by  
the Apache Portals community.
An important goal is to facilitate the creation of new applications.
Any committer can lead the creation of a new APA subproject.

-- Mission --

To promote the use of open source portal technology at the  
application layer: writing open portlet applications.
The scope of APA does not include the system layer of portal  
development, such as portals and containers like Jetspeed, Pluto, or  
WSRP.
We view portlet applications as an important technology in the  
growing web applications environment.
We intend to build freely available portlet application software in  
order to promote the use of this technology.
After several years of Apache Portals providing portal and container  
software, we are finding that portal technology has reached limited  
success.
We believe the cause to this limited success is the lack of usable,  
open source portlet applications.
Also, many existing portlet applications are limited in their reuse  
because of their direct ties to a specific portal.

The mission of this new project is to address this missing area in  
the portal community, and fill that need.
Our goal is to enliven the portals community from the top down with  
rich, relevant, free portlet applications, and promote "universal  
deployment" as much as possible.

Whereas full and out-of-the-box universal deployment across all  
portals might be difficult to realize in practice, APA projects will  
strive to support universal deployment as much as possible and  
feasible. Furthermore, dependencies on non-standard portlet or portal  
features will be limited to those for which ASF compliant  
specifications are available and which are freely implementable by  
multiple portals.

To leverage, enable and integrate existing Apache projects and  
technologies inside these portlet applications.
A Portal is a natural platform to bring all these technologies together.
Listed below are several examples of already foreseen Apache project/ 
technology integrations:
* JackRabbit (JCR content repository)
* JAMES (mail)
* Directory (LDAP)
* JRoller (blogging)
* JSPWiki (wiki).

-- Organization --

APA will itself be a general project holding sub-projects under the  
"portlet application" categorization, with no official releases.
It will be comprised of portlet applications or common and shared  
components as sub-projects.
Each sub-project will have its own release cycle.

A subproject is defined as one of the following:
  * A collection of one or more portlets with a common theme and  
interest, all grouped into a standard Java portlet application as  
defined by the Java spec.
  * A collection of common or shared components which can be  
leveraged by the other sub-projects.
    Examples are the "Gems" sub-project for re-usable portlets not  
tied to any specific portlet application, build support like maven  
plugins, or backend enabling features like for JCR, web services,  
databases, etc.

Subprojects will not have their own set of developers. All developers  
will be members of the Apache Portals project to promote cross- 
pollination of ideas.
Votes for adding new committers will take place on Apache Portals  
general list, just like for all other Apache Portals projects.

Jetspeed already holds several portlet applications. We would like to  
refactor and move these projects into APA.
At the time of the writing of this charter, the following projects  
are proposed to be in the APA project from the start:

* Jetspeed Admin -- from Jetspeed project -- only runs on Jetspeed
* Jetspeed RSS -- from Jetspeed project -- runs on any portal
* Jetspeed Demo -- from Jetspeed project -- runs on any portal
* Gems -- from Jetspeed Project - not an application, but a general  
area for portlets that are beyond categorization into applications.  
-- runs on any portal


New APA subprojects can be submitted to the portals-general mailing  
list for vote and acceptance.
Only Apache Portals committers can vote.
Accelerated creation of small projects is a desired goal of APA.
To further facilitate this goal, one specific sub project, named  
"sandbox" will be predefined which purpose is help start and  
experiment with potential new applications or components. All Apache  
Portals committers are allowed to create new sandboxed projects at  
any time.
No application or component from within the sandbox can be released  
however until they are formally promoted as an official APA  
subproject under the rules described above.

Please refer to the Apache Portals charter for rules regarding  
removal of a subproject.

-- Project Management Committee --

As APA is a sub project of Apache Portals and not a new TLP, the PMC  
for Apache Portals will manage the APA project.
Also, as there are no new committers and its initial code base is  
already part of Apache Portals, incubation is not required.

Please see the Portals charter for more information on the PMC

-- Contributors --

Refer to the Apache Portals charter.

-- Committers --

Refer to the Apache Portals charter.

-- Infrastructure --

The APA project must provide the following:

a) JIRA -- A JIRA system for each subproject within APA with project  
alias prefix: APA

b) Repositories -- A Subversion Source Repository for each subproject  
of APA
    Each repository is organized as sub tree under a new applications  
root folder within the existing portals subversion tree.

c) Website --  A overall portals.apache.org/applications website and  
additionally one for each subproject of APA
    For example, j2-admin will exist at http://portals.apache.org/ 
applications/j2-admin/
    The website will contain information about the individual  
project, including documentation, downloads of
    releases, and other relevant information.


d) Subproject Mailing Lists -- Creation of one general applications- 
user and applications-dev list.

-- Licensing --

See Apache Portals charter.


-- The Development Process --

See Apache Portals charter.

-- SubProject Requirements --

See Apache Portals charter