This past month, particularly recently, has been a bit less quiet than
usual. At the moment, nothing that warrants the Board's attention, although
there are a few matters that are getting the Incubator PMC's collective
attention, as it appears that we have a couple of projects where the
community is not functioning as well as they should for one reason or
another, and the Mentors feel that they are not being respected in the
discussions. Discussion is currently on the PMC private list to deal with
these matters.
We've had a number of proposals this past month:
Jaffre - lightweight Java RPC
ACE - a software distribution framework based on OSGi
SocialSite - a social networking service based on Apache Shindig
Commons Incubator - a "perpetual" podling for Apache Commons
We're also talking a bit about how to restart Log4PHP, although with
ApacheCon and other cycle drains, that has not progressed sufficiently well.
Gavin has volunteered to help, and we have a couple of people wanting to be
active, so we'll need to look at Committer status.
There has been a lot of discussion regarding the ACE proposal, most of it
concerns from JvZ as it overlaps with Eclipse P2 technology, but that
appears to be the only objection, and there seems to be quite a bit of
interest to incubate the project.
The Commons Incubator project is another one that has had considerable
discussion. At the moment, it is meeting with a fair amount of resistence
as not being a good fit, but discussion is ongoing.
-------------------------------------------
= Bluesky =
BlueSky has been incubating since 01-12-2008. It is an e-learning solution
designed to help solve the disparity in availability of qualified education
between well-developed cities and poorer regions of China.
Recent Activity: We finished the required work by Bill, our mentor. We'd
tried to use Dirac for replacing FFmpeg, while we were waiting for the
results of second code view. However, some problems happened and could be
resolved. Reading api of FFmpeg and vobis?theora is still undergoing. The
reason, why it is retarded, is that we had to do several projects
simultaneously, besides the classes. The running demo of Bluesky is
postponed too, but i can assure that it would be completed next week, after
i finish the coding task this week.
Next step:
*Waiting for the second code view results.
*Recording Bluesky running demo.
*Tried to work out a reliable sketch of replacing FFmpeg in two weeks.
= Cassandra =
Cassandra is a distributed storage system for managing (un)structured data
while providing reliability at a massive scale. It has been in incubation
since January 2009.
The incubator project had a very slow start. Code started to get moved over
from Google Code just about 5 weeks ago. But a very basic web site and the
wiki is in place. A new committer was elected. Unfortunately there is some
friction about contributions, code reviews and branching that needs to be
addressed ASAP. This is a community issue and we hope to get this resolved.
More on that in the next report.
* Consensus about the development process (code reviews, branching etc)
* JIRA permissions and configuration
* A bit more information on the web site
= Empire-db =
Empire-db is a relational data persistence component that aims to overcome
the difficulties, pitfalls and restrictions inherent in traditional Object
Relational Management (ORM) approaches.
Empire-db is on the Apache Incubator since July 2008.
Community:
* Development seems to pick up some momentum. Parts of the code are now
unit-tested and two new integration examples have been added (Apache CXF)
* dev@ and user@ traffic is rising, this brought some fixes to PostgreSQL
Driver as well as some possible changes for future releases.
Release:
* Preparations for a release are under way, this will be our first
maven-based release
* We hope the switch to maven will lower the barrier for adoption
Issues prior to graduation:
* Grow the community,
* Successful maven-based release
* Even more integration example code (Apache Wicket?) + more documentation
= Imperius =
Imperius has been incubating since November 2007.
Imperius is a rule-based infrastructure management platform.
Web site:
Code: Development continues on the code base.
Community:
* Several bug fixes were provided.
* In the process of adding two new committers (David Wood, Xiping Wang) to
the community.
* Discussions underway regarding first release
Issues prior to graduation:
* Grow the community
* Successful completion of the release
= JSPWiki =
2009 April JSPWiki Incubator status report
JSPWiki has been incubating since September 2007.
JSPWiki is a JSP-based wiki program.
During the past three months, the JSPWiki community has still continued to
increase.
The developer list now has 82 names, a modest increase from 72 the last
time, and the
user list is now 167 people strong, ten more than three months ago.
The big push now is for our graduation. The biggest hurdles have been
overcome:
The packages are now called "org.apache.wiki" (please see Tomcat bug
https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=46462 to see why we
couldn't
use org.apache.jspwiki); JSPWiki has switched to the Stripes framework; and
we
have switched to use the JCR backend (e.g. Apache Jackrabbit).
As a result of a vote, the support for webdav has been dropped.
The fairly old jsonrpc has been replaced by jabsorb.
However, the trunk is in a fairly immature state. For example, it is not
deployable
at all, which means that nobody can yet use the trunk for its intended
purpose.
Our main concern is to stabilize the code to some state where it would be
actually usable before making a release.
The biggest slowdown is simply the fact that JSPWiki is (still) a completely
volunteer-
developed project, with nobody actually receiving any money for its
development. While
this is great in the sense that development is relatively easy to join, and
communities
are not overrun by corporate requirements, it also means that the
committer's priorities
often conflict with the object of speedy graduation.
We are planning to have an "alpha" grade release as our first official
Apache release,
after which we should be fairly ready for graduation.
= Ki =
Ki (previously JSecurity) is a powerful and flexible open-source Java
security framework
that cleanly handles authentication, authorization, enterprise session
management and cryptography.
Ki has been incubating since June 2008.
The project team voted at the end of February to change the project name
from JSecurity (its previous name prior to entry into the ASF Incubator) to
'Apache Ki' for a number of reasons, which are documented in full detail
here:
http://markmail.org/thread/zcmi4pjv2bbf4574
Project infrastructure is being changed to match this name change, but is
not yet fully complete. Mailing lists are pending still.
There was a post on the old jsecurity.org website by an individual stating
that they would appreciate if we used a different name other than Ki, posted
here:
http://www.jsecurity.org/node/1081#comment-289.
One of our project members responded and have not received any responses
further. The project team is now internally debating whether we need to
change the project name yet again.
The old jsecurity.org project website has entered an archival state, clearly
pointing that all users should be redirected to the new Incubator ki
site. A crontab entry has been created to auto-export the cwiki to here:
http://incubator.apache.org/ki
We're happy to report that development and user list activity has steadily
increased since we started incubation last year, with March (last month)
being the most active month to date.
The project team is not considering graduation at this point,
as the code is not ready for an Apache release. Once IP clearance is
complete, we'll attempt our first incubator release.
One mentor, Emmanuel Lecharny, decided to step down from the project. The
number of mentors is now down to three, which is the quorum. Finding a few
more mentors should be a good idea at this point.
The status is being maintained at
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/jsecurity/STATUS
= Lucene.Net =
Lucene.Net has been in incubation since April 2006
Lucene.Net is a source code, class-per-class, API-per-API and algorithmatic
port of the Java Lucene search engine to the C# and .NET platform utilizing
Microsoft .NET Framework.
Not much changed from the last report:
* Announced Lucene.Net 2.3.1 as "final" (via SVN).
* Port of 2.3.2 is completed; the code is being reviewed and should be
announced soon.
* Work is simultaneously underway on the Lucene.Net 2.4.0 port.
* We are in the process of looking into graduation
= Olio =
Olio has been incubating since September 2008.
Olio is a web 2.0 toolkit to help developers evaluate the suitability,
functionality and performance of various web technologies by implementing
a reasonably complex application in several different technologies.
* Olio is continuing to gain users and being used for diverse purposes.
* One user is using it for testing MySQL performance.
* Another is using it for testing performance of file systems.
* Microsoft has started a .NET port of Olio.
* VMWare has joined the project and plans to use it for several of their
performance testing efforts.
* There are multiple deployments attempting to scale Olio to test
performance of system infrastructure, software application stack etc.
* A lot of work has gone to make the product more robust and stable over
long benchmark runs - over 50 JIRA issues have been fixed.
* Work is underway to create the first release. The artificats are tested;
the major work is in fixing the source headers, licenses etc.
* Olio has been presented to some Apache and Rails Meetups to get
attention.
* We're encouraging users to become active in contributing to the code.
= Pivot =
Pivot has been in incubation since January 2009.
Pivot is an open-source platform for building rich internet applications in
Java.
* Noel Grandin was added as a new committer on 3/29.
* The codebase was forked into the "WTKX" project at Google Code:
http://code.google.com/p/wtkx/. We didn't get a clear answer from the
developer as to why he chose to fork rather than collaborate. From what we
can gather, he seems to want to do Pivot "his own way".
* The Pivot PPMC is currently voting on a proposed 1.1 release. Work has
begun on a 1.1.1 maintenance release and 1.2 feature release.
Top 3 issues prior to graduation:
* Successfully complete the 1.1 release.
* Strengthen the understanding of The Apache Way and how to operate a PMC.
* Even stronger community; currently quite good with 5 active committers
from 4 different employers.
= RCF =
DID NOT REPORT.
RCF has been in Incubation since April 2007 (two years), sponsored by
MyFaces.
= Sanselan =
Sanselan has been in incubation since September 2007.
Sanselan is a pure-java image library for reading and writing a variety of
image formats.
The community hasn't grown much in the past six months. There continues to
be only one active committer. Participation level is low.
A new version has been released
Barriers to graduation continue to be diversity, size of the community, and
overall activity. We will address the possible graduation paths in the next
quarter and try to evaluate what the best approach for Sanselan might be.
= Stonehenge =
Stonehenge has been incubating since December 2008.
Stonehenge a set of example applications for Service Oriented Architecture
that spans languages and platforms and demonstrates best practices and
interoperability by using currently defined W3C OASIS standard protocols.
In the month of March, the growing Stonehenge community has ramped its
activity on several fronts, and has made solid plans for near future::
Admin: The donated code from Microsoft and WS02 was moved from contrib to
trunk. In the process various installation and configuration issues were
identified, and the community has worked very closely on the DL and offline
to advance these issues.
Community: 3 SUN developers have joined and have been working through the
various installation and configuration issues, and understanding the code
architecture. They plan to contribute a Metro based java implementation in
the medium term. Synergy has been developing between the WS02 and Microsoft
developers towards identifying and resolving common issues.
Code: The community has had discussions about a first release (M1) in the
immediate short term. The release is defined to be executable code from the
.NET and PHP implementations of the StockTrader application, along with
complete documentation allowing a new Stonehenge member to demonstrate
interoperability by mixing and matching components from the two StockTrader
applications. The two applications are also undergoing necessary code
changes to quality for passing the RAT tool (such as adding the legal
headers)
Wider Community: Some members and sponsors of Stonehenge have attended
ApacheCon EU and connected with the wider community about Stonehenge.
= Tashi =
Tashi has been incubating since September 2008.
The Tashi project aims to build a software infrastructure for
cloud computing on massive internet-scale datasets (what we call
Big Data). The idea is to build a cluster management system
that enables the Big Data that are stored in a cluster/data center
to be accessed, shared, manipulated, and computed on by remote users
in a convenient, efficient, and safe manner.
Development activities have included adding support for using a database to
track virtual machine information, modifying code to work with Python 2.4,
integration with dynamic DHCP and DNS servers, and adding a "tidy" target to
check the source code.
There have been a few questions on tashi-u...@i.a.o that centered around
getting Tashi up and running. Additionally, submissions on the dev list
included patches from a student at CMU, and some scripts from a
non-committer
at Intel. There is still a lot of work to be done in growing a community.
Items to be resolved before graduation:
* Put more effort into project documentation so that other potential
contributors may more easily get involved
* Develop community diversity (currently Intel and CMU committers)
* Prepare and review a release candidate
= Thrift =
Thrift is a software framework for scalable cross-language services
development. It combines a software stack with a code generation engine to
build services that work efficiently and seamlessly between a variety of
programming languages. Thrift entered the Apache Incubator in May 2008.
Recent Activity:
* Bryan Duxbury and Andrew McGeachie added as committers
* Automatic "instant releases" to simplify the build process
* First official release candidate scheduled for April 7th, 2009
* Finished migrating all source headers to ASF licensing
* Continued language library improvements
* Support for Twisted in Python
* Support for .NET 2.0
* New compact encoding
* Cross-pollination with other projects continues
* More PoweredBy entries
* Cassandra, now in Incubation, uses Thrift
* Discussions underway about collaboration with the Avro project
* Hadoop and HBase work ongoing
= UIMA =
UIMA is a component framework for the analysis of unstructured content such
as text, audio and video. UIMA entered incubation on October 3, 2006.
Some recent activity:
* OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org) members approved the Unstructured
Information Management Architecture (UIMA) version 1.0 as an OASIS Standard.
* A new contributor, Rico Landefeld, contributed a component to enable
indexing annotations as fields using Lucene.
* Many bug fixes and improvements continue to be focused on UIMA-AS (the
asynchronous scaleout add-on to base UIMA) driven by experience with users
doing extensive scaleout. The fixes address error handling and performance.
* IBM and MAYO Clinic announced a new consortium around making available
open-source UIMA annotators for use by the Medical / Health area; see
http://ohnlp.org
Items to complete before graduation:
* We still need to attract more new committers with diverse affiliations.
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