Dave Brondsema wrote: > So if it's not a formality that all new ASF projects should undergo, who decides > if a project should be incubated or if it can go directly to being a regular > project?
The ASF Board, when it created the Incubator, and designated it as the only PMC authorized to accept new code bases on behalf of the Foundation. No project is allowed to accept externally developed code bases except through the Incubator. That is not to say that there have not been violations of this rule, including recently, but that is the rule. Some of the violations did not come with code grants. Having a substantial code base funded and developed by a corporation, and then contributed to the ASF is great, but not without a signed authorization that we have the right to distribute it under the Apache Software License. Filling out a STATUS form helps to make sure that foul ups like that don't continue to happen. How hard is it to fill this form out for a permanent record: http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/incubator/site/projects/incubat ion-status-template.cwiki? And not everything needs to be filled out, depending upon where the code base is going to land. The Incubator does not exist to be onerous or torturous. Projects need to stay in the Incubator only long enough to satisfy the criteria. The Incubator's job is to make sure that the IP is clean, the community healthy, and the basic rules are followed. Recent changes to the Incubation process direct involve each project closely in the process, which is a significant change. In several recent cases, projects have spent more time arguing about why they should be exempt or given special considerations than they have had to spend on Incubation. In a simple case of an externally developed code base being contributed to an existing project, the code base entered the Incubator last week, and looks likely to exit it next week. The time was spent primarily to receive documentation of the contribution, remove discovered GPL dependencies, verifying that there were no other IP issues, and completing a STATUS form. Consider Axion as an example of a standalone package. It was accepted into the Incubator on December 19th. From their STATUS (http://incubator.apache.org/projects/axion.html), I would expect that they are close to being ready to leave, and probably could have by now except for the holidays. They need to finishing filling in their STATUS, but although we won't know until they finish, from what I believe true of their actual project status, they ought to be good to exit. Mind you, although Axion was developed externally, it was done by ASF Committers, and is going into an existing PMC, which helps to complete a lot of the Incubation checklist. Spam Assassin, Directory, and Geronimo are all examples of projects that should spend more time than the preceding in the Incubator. They are all intended to be top-level projects. However, the PPMC mechanism enables each to participate directly in the management of the project, and so far the feedback from the actual participants in that process has been entirely positive. --- Noel --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
