On 6/7/07, Gilles Scokart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[...]
I also would like to see where we should do better, what do we need
to enhance, what is still missing to be graduated. I have 2 ideas
(having a wider community, having a roadmap), but I guess a mentor
could say more about that.
I think it's a good time to start a discussion about what remains to do
before graduation. If we look at the graduation guide [1] and exit policies
[2], it seems we are on a good way.
If I take the whole list from the exit policies document, here is what I
consider ok:
- *Legal *
-
- All code ASL'ed
- The code base must contain only ASL or ASL-compatible
dependencies
- License grant complete
- CLAs on file.
- *Meritocracy / Community*
- ASF style voting has been adopted and is standard practice
- *Alignment / Synergy *
-
- Use of other ASF subprojects
- Develop synergistic relationship with other ASF subprojects
- *Infrastructure *
-
- SVN module has been created
- Mailing list(s) have been created
- Mailing lists are being archived
- Issue tracker has been created
- Project website has been created
- Project is integrated with GUMP if appropriate
- Releases are PGP signed by a member of the community
- Developers tied into ASF PGP web of trust
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is what I consider we still need to do:
- *Legal *
-
- Check of project name for trademark issues [A]
- *Meritocracy / Community *
-
- Release plans are developed and excuted in public by the
community. [B]
-
- (requirement on minimum number of such releases?)
- Note: incubator projects are not permitted to issue an
official Release. Test snapshots (however good the quality)
and Release
*plans *are OK.
- Incubator PMC has voted for graduation [C]
- Destination PMC, or ASF Board for a TLP, has voted for final
acceptance [D]
[A] I don't know how this can be checked. Any idea?
[B] We have done one release in the incubator, but we have no current
release plan. This is something that we need to discuss in a separate
thread.
[C] and [D] this will be done only when all other points will be addressed.
One point we will have to discuss before these votes is the destination:
should we try to graduate as a top level project or as a sub project of Ant
(our sponsor). This is also something that deserves its own thread for
discussion.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And here is what I don't clearly know what to think:
- *Meritocracy / Community *
-
- Demonstrate an active and diverse development community [A]
- The project is not highly dependent on any single contributor
(there are at least 3 legally independent committers and there
is no single
company or entity that is vital to the success of the project) [B]
- The above implies that new committers are admitted according
to ASF practices [C]
- Demonstrate ability to tolerate and resolve conflict within
the community. [D]
- Engagement by the incubated community with the other ASF
communities, particularly infrastructure@ (this reflects my personal bias
that projects should pay an nfrastructure "tax"). [E]
[A] From my point of view we demonstrate an active and diverse development
community. We have 3 committers from 3 different companies, 170+ mails
exchanged on the dev mailing list per month since March [3], and 11
contributors since our entry in incubation. But it's difficult to know what
is an active and diverse development community, if we compare to wicket we
are still far away.
[B] This point is difficult to evaluate for me. As the creator of the
project, I have some knowledge of the code base and history of the project
that is not easy to catch up with. But we've seen several contributions and
fixes dealing with some difficult part of the code base (like the dependency
resolution engine), and work has been done to make the code base cleaner and
easier to understand. So my IMHO the project is not highly dependent on any
single contributor, but I'd like to ear from other voices.
[C] I think this point doesn't really need discussion, Gilles was admitted
according to ASF practices.
[D] This point is not easy to address. I propose we start a flaming war in
the coming days and agree after a few days :-) Joke apart, I don't think we
have had any conflict so far in the community. Does it mean that we will
have troubles to resolve them, or simply that we are all tolerant enough to
avoid conflicts. It's difficult to say, but I don't think this is a major
drawback for our community.
[E] I think we have some kind of engagement, it's difficult to know if this
is enough. We participate to some discussions on the ant, incubator and
repository mailing lists. I think we have also some contacts with the
commons-vfs project, and the maven project too. On the infrastructure, it
was more asking for things (like the migration of JIRA) than contributing,
but it's difficult to actively contribute without any karma. So, can we
consider this point adressed?
So it seems we are on a pretty good way toward graduation. I'll start two
thread about release plan and destination.
Any input on the points above are welcome from the whole community, so feel
free to give feedback even if you are not a committer or mentor.
Xavier
[1] http://incubator.apache.org/guides/graduation.html
[2]
http://incubator.apache.org/incubation/Incubation_Policy.html#Graduating+from+the+Incubator
[3] http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-ivy-dev/
