Hi Paul, 1st of all, thanks for approaching the Apache Community Development [1] community with your questions and ideas.
On the technical side, your ideas sound interesting. On the project side, specially for new projects coming to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the Apache Incubator community [2] is the right place to start. That said, and by looking at sop-java [3], it looks like it is a 1 Person Community/Project. One of the key points in the Apache Way [4] is "Community Over Code": "... The maxim "Community Over Code" is frequently reinforced throughout the Apache community, as the ASF asserts that a healthy community is a higher priority than good code. Strong communities can always rectify problems with their code, whereas an unhealthy community will likely struggle to maintain a codebase in a sustainable manner.". Though the size of a Project's Community, in the number of developers/contributors [5], is not the only factor to measure a community's health, but from experience it is one of the main factors which contributes to that. In that sens, ASF works different than hosting a project's code on GitHub for example. My personal advise would be to continue working on your ideas while hosting the code on GitHub, or any other service of your choice, get traction and grow a community around your project. As stated on the Apache Community Development website [1], our mission is: "... However, because we believe that the Apache Way is, in fact, the best way to manage a software project, we strive also to make these artifacts releasable to the open source community as a whole." so you are more than welcome to come back here at anytime asking questions or seek advise and/or help on how to grow a community around your project whether or not you will be bringing your project at later time to the ASF. [1] https://community.apache.org [2] https://incubator.apache.org [3] https://github.com/pgpainless/sop-java [4] https://www.apache.org/theapacheway/index.html [5] https://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#developers On Sat, Jan 15, 2022 at 3:31 PM Paul Schaub <vanitasvi...@fsfe.org> wrote: > Hey! > > My name is Paul Schaub (vanitasvitae), I'm a free software developer > from Germany. > > While I already know what the Apache Foundation is, this is my first > time engaging with Apache as an organization, so please bare with me if > my mail is addressed to the wrong mailing list. > > I'm working on an OpenPGP library for Java named PGPainless[1]. The > library is based on Bouncy Castle and aims to make the use of OpenPGP as > painless as possible. > > Now, there are some efforts going on to create a standardized OpenPGP > API called the Stateless OpenPGP Protocol[2]. The specification > describes a Command Line Interface application that offers a limited > subset of OpenPGP operations. > > There are already some language-specific adaptions of this interface > available[3]. One of those is sop-java[4], a set of java interfaces that > model the Stateless OpenPGP Protocol. The idea behind this module is to > offer an implementation-independent set of interfaces, which can then be > implemented by different OpenPGP libraries. For example, there is a > PGPainless-based implementation called pgpainless-sop[5]. > > Ideally I'd like sop-java to be moved away from the PGPainless project, > to become an independent general API definition that other > implementations can implement. That would enable users of the API to > switch out the implementation as it suites them (similar to how you can > choose from a variety of slf4j backends for logging). > > Now the Apache project came to mind as a neutral entity to act as a > host/umbrella organization for sop-java. What do you think, is the > Apache foundation a good fit? > > Let me know what you think :) > > Paul > > [1]: https://pgpainless.org > [2]: > https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-dkg-openpgp-stateless-cli-03 > [3]: > > https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-dkg-openpgp-stateless-cli-03#section-7 > [4]: https://github.com/pgpainless/sop-java > [5]: https://github.com/pgpainless/pgpainless/tree/master/pgpainless-sop > > -- Thanks - Mohammad Noureldin ---- "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving" - Albert Einstein
