IMHO, it is a bit long and details more than the Board needs to know. In general, there is a tendency to not want to see company names splurted around, and perhaps all the PLC4X-specific terms could be shortened into generic technical language, and shortened.
Cheers Niclas On Sat, Mar 31, 2018 at 3:09 AM, Christofer Dutz <[email protected]> wrote: > Ok … a little earlier than expected … please comment :-) > > Chris > > ------------------------------------------------------------ > --------------------------- > > Apache PLC4X (incubating) > > > PLC4X is a set of libraries for communicating with industrial programmable > logic controllers (PLCs) using a variety of protocols but with a shared API. > > > Most important issues to address while moving towards graduation: > > Building the community: The PPMC and committer group has a large > percentage of codecentric employees, we have been recruiting people from > other companies, but will have to continue these efforts for establishing a > healthy Apache community. > Onboarding of new committers: With PLC4X several people on the team are > not very familiar with the Apache Way. We have started and will continue > our efforts on this onboarding. > Make our first release > > Any Issues the Incubator PMC or ASF Board might wish/need to be aware of: > > In contrast to previous reports some of the concerns regarding > availability and usability of specifications have been resolved. Especially > for using the Modbus and the OPC-UA specifications Christofer was able to > get official permissions from the corresponding foundations to use the > specifications. These permission Emails have been filed in the private list > for documentation. > > One of the external foundations (Profinet) doesn’t have a free membership. > In general, the CEO of the European branch of the Profinet Foundation has > signaled that it should be possible for the ASF to become a member and have > an outside company pay the membership fees, but we have to discuss the > details (With them as well as the ASF). > > How has the community developed since the last report? > > Christofer has invested most of his time in March spreading the word about > PLC4X. > A first POC has been created for the company “Kampf Schneid- und > Wickeltechnik GmbH & Co. KG” which is currently going into production > An article about Apache Edgent and Apache PLC4X has been published as a > cover-story in the German JavaSPEKTRUM magazines Industrial IoT special > edition (https://www.sigs-datacom.de/digital/javaspektrum/). One PLC4X > talk has been accepted to the Apache EU Roadshow 2018 in Berlin and one > will be at the Silpion Techcamp in Hamburg (https://techcamp.hamburg/) in > the first April week. > > The dev-list subscriptions has gone up by one from February, we are hoping > to increase the number in the next few weeks (However quite some emails > come in from un-registered users that have to pass moderation). > > We now have a Twitter account: https://twitter.com/ApachePlc4x as another > channel of communicating interesting PLC4X facts. > > How has the project developed since the last report? > > Sebastian worked hard on replacing the scripted Jenkins pipeline > definition to a declarative version. > After receiving the permission to use and implement the Modbus protocol, > the Driver skeletons have been setup, but no real implementation of the > protocol itself has been done yet. We are still hoping for volunteers to > step up as interest in implementing the Modbus protocol has been explicitly > mentioned by community memebers. > Thanks to infra’s new self-service service we are now able to resolve > problems with out-of-sync websites on our own and a lot faster than before. > We recently received the requested project VM, which we are currently > setting up. Hopefully as soon as that’s done, we’ll be able to run tests on > the non TCP and UDP protocols. The work on the RawSocket Netty transport > which is a requirement to implement protocols that are IP based, but are > not TCP or UDP has continued and we are currently working on some of the > quirks on Linux based operating-systems. > We added Netty support for IO over serial ports and will be using this in > the Beckhoff module as a first protocol. > We are still working on the S7 Protocol fragmentation and hope to be able > to finish this in April. > Also we discussed on the list about how the others would think of > initiating a first release of PLC4X. > > How does the podling rate their own maturity? > > We have a mix of new participants and experienced Apache people involved. > So far, the new participants have shown great willingness and success in > adopting the Apache Way. > However, we still need to continue: > the on-boarding > increasing the diversity of the team > Also, will we need to decide and establish all the processes involved in > releasing software at Apache > > > > -- Niclas Hedhman, Software Developer http://polygene.apache.org - New Energy for Java
