Hi everyone, The report submitted to the September Board meeting is requesting guidance on binary releases, such as Docker and Helm. I act as the board's shepherd of Airflow, and here to help if needed.
First of all, Apache Software Foundation releases Open SOURCE software, and the source release is always the primary one. There are many reasons for this, such as security (one can know for sure what it contains), jurisprudence (trace origin,++) and usability on platforms that the community may not provide binaries for. Many communities provides additional binary releases, that has been called "Convenience Binaries", but the term is under review/reconsideration as they are for some communities (say, OpenOffice) the primary artifacts for the majority of users (OpenOffice users are typically not developers). The exact policies around this are being reviewed and worked on at the moment. Things like credentials to DockerHub or npm are for instance of concern, as well as the long-term stability of some of these distribution systems. That said; in general, as long as the binaries are buildable (with instructions) and the product can be built and used without reliance on such external systems, then it is mostly OK and it is up to each community to decide if binaries are provided and how. If there are specific questions on release policy or special requests, then contact the Infrastructure team and ask if it is Ok with them. If there are more general thoughts/feedback/discussion items in this space, ComDev is the place to approach. I will also try to do my best to answer questions here... Niclas Hedhman
