On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 9:52 AM, Till <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Marvin Humphrey <[email protected]> hat am 22. August 2013 um 18:21
>> geschrieben:
>> Let me be blunt: VXQuery needs to make an incubating release.
>>
>> Personally, I think it's important that we see one before your next
>> quarterly report.
>
> Yes, I agree. And probably "important" is an understatement.
Today, I was wondering how VXQuery could have made it through four
years in the Incubator without making a release, and I took a look at the
website.
I note that in the navigation bar on the left hand side there is a "For Users"
section which includes an "Installation" link. The page at the link points to
the README file in svn.
http://incubator.apache.org/vxquery/user_installation.html
Install instructions can be found in the README file.
We must not distribute to users from our source repositories:
http://www.apache.org/dev/release.html#what
During the process of developing software and preparing a release, various
packages are made available to the developer community for testing
purposes. Do not include any links on the project website that might
encourage non-developers to download and use nightly builds, snapshots,
release candidates, or any other similar package. The only people who are
supposed to know about such packages are the people following the dev list
(or searching its archives) and thus aware of the conditions placed on the
package. If you find that the general public are downloading such test
packages, then remove them.
Under no circumstances are unapproved builds a substitute for releases. If
this policy seems inconvenient, then release more often. Proper release
management is a key aspect of Apache software development.
Here's some background about the policy in a message from Roy Fielding to the
legal-discuss list.
http://markmail.org/message/njray5dbazwcdcts
The release process is critical because it is the point at which the ASF
as an organization approves a release to the public. It is the point at
which the ASF's liability and goodwill comes into play. The checkpoints
are necessary to ensure that we don't release a product that isn't open
source or that hasn't been reviewed by the peers, since either one would
seriously damage the foundation. The consistency is necessary because it
establishes a well-worn set of procedures that distinguish ASF projects
from those at Sourceforge or Google code.
Speaking as the Incubator PMC Chair:
Please remove the user installation links immediately. VXQuery is not allowed
to distribute code which has not passed an IPMC vote to the general public.
Speaking as a member of the Incubator PMC:
If VXQuery has not released by the next report, I expect to initiate a
discussion on retiring the podling.
Marvin Humphrey
