Based on my experience, the term "incubating" is inferred (without my digging around) as a beta/alpha quality release. Things may change, not necessarily for production usage. It ends up giving a negative connotation to the quality of the release contents, instead of clearly defining it as a release that may have ASF-incompatible contents.
I can say, specific to the case of freemarker, I had two different vendors tell me (when I asked why they were using older versions) that the ASF releases weren't ready to be used, and they pointed to the incubating suffix. So I unfortunately know the problem Daniel's bringing up. I'll also say that the problem isn't specific to freemarker, so while Daniel's points come across for his own selfish means, my points are to make this a broader catch. I've even had people tell me they won't use certain TLP software because it contains incubating contents (granted, I won't use something that explicitly says alpha in it). I get the points Martjin's trying to make. However, I feel the scope of this is beyond any one podling. How can we expect a community to grow around something being labeled as "not ready for prime time?" I also challenge the notion of incubating being a warning sign of failing. I see more TLPs retire than I see incubating projects retire. I'll point out that this silly maven "process" is not carried over to other technologies. So when, for instance, projects are pushed via pypi, they don't include -incubating. John On Thu, Dec 29, 2016 at 3:41 PM Emilian Bold <e...@apache.org> wrote: > I wonder how much analysys there was done before picking this -incubating > suffix. > > It's really ASF specific and I doubt that most end users know what it is > supposed to mean. > > An embryo undergoes incubation so it's easy to see how -incubating is > associated with an alpha product. > > > În joi, 29 dec. 2016 la 21:44 Martijn Dashorst <martijn.dasho...@gmail.com > > > a scris: > > > You are trying to fix the wrong thing. The whole idea of the > > > > -incubating moniker is to communicate to end users that the project is > > > > inside the incubator, and can fail incubation. The only and best way > > > > to get rid of the -incubating scheme is to *graduate*. > > > > > > > > Don't remain in the incubator hiding in your community, but fix those > > > > licensing issues, grow your community, reach out to the wider > > > > incubator community outside your 3 monthly report and hook up with > > > > other Apache projects for collaboration. > > > > > > > > Freemarker has been in incubation for 17 months. What do you need to > > > > learn and do before you will start your graduation vote? > > > > > > > > Martijn > > > > > > > > > > > > On Wed, Dec 28, 2016 at 2:18 AM, Daniel Dekany <ddek...@freemail.hu> > > wrote: > > > > > Hello, > > > > > > > > > > The last release of Apache FreeMarker (incubating) has these Maven > > > > > coordinates: > > > > > > > > > > <groupId>org.freemarker</groupId> > > > > > <artifactId>freemarker</artifactId> > > > > > <version>2.3.25-incubating</version> > > > > > > > > > > The "-incubating" in the Maven version is confusing for the users, as > > > > > it looks as the version number of an unstable release, and it seems > > > > > that this causes many to stick to the last non-Apache release from 1.5 > > > > > years ago. (See the "*" footnote if you want some more details.) > > > > > > > > > > As far as I know there's no explicit requirement for having > > > > > "incubating" in the Maven artifact version number. So, I wonder, can > > > > > we just omit "-incubating" from the Maven artifact versions from now > > > > > on? In FreeMarker's case the Maven groupId doesn't contain org.apache > > > > > (I know, it should, but that's a different topic), so I guess there's > > > > > less danger of branding confusion here. Of course, the version number > > > > > would remain x.x.x-incubating in the file names of the releases > > > > > downloadable from apache.org and so on. Also, in case it bothers > > > > > anyone, the "name" element in the Maven POM could be changed from > > > > > "Apache FreeMarker" to "Apache FreeMarker (incubating)" (or just to > > > > > "FreeMarker"). > > > > > > > > > > *: For those not working in the Java ecosystem, know that many users > > > > > will not go to the project home page nowadays to find the latest > > > > > version, just look at the versions at the Maven Central. Without > > > > > any place for explanation, "2.3.25-incubating" and such are often > > > > > believed to be development versions. (I have seen a few user > > > > > queries that indicated that too.) It certainly doesn't help either > > > > > that http://mvnrepository.com automatically marks these incubating > > > > > versions with red (~ alpha). Also, on the same place the last > > > > > non-Apache release has almost 5x more usages than the last two > > > > > "-incubating" releases together, which is suspicious. Spring has > > > > > also stuck at that version for some reason. > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > Thanks, > > > > > Daniel Dekany > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > > > > > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > Become a Wicket expert, learn from the best: http://wicketinaction.com > > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > > > > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > > > > > > > > >
