I was able to reproduce the same release artifact (d61c4935d7d3b664..) locally, so +1 for releasing it.
Steps for macOS: git worktree add ../calcite-1.28.0 dec167ac18272c0cd8be477d6b162d7a31a62114 cd ../calcite-1.28.0 JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.8) ./gradlew distTar -Prelease openssl dgst -sha512 release/build/distributions/apache-calcite-1.28.0-src.tar.gz -> d61c4935d7d3b66425ff6e0c5e6e506b56f734d562f0fc6e69dc1d484da1d92d7d922930fd7b545abe0dc7b0178f6847ff4239ad52c52c8fa155668aa3d3fc38 Vladimir