Hi Jochen, First off, congrats on even sending this email. I've often wondered by RAT is still lingering in the Incubator when it's been pretty much widely used for a long time, has a functional community, and keeps plugging forward with its mission. So, first off, +1 to getting out of the Incubator, and +1 to the excellent job you guys have done.
However, I'm not sure I get the whole reasoning below RE: TLP? Why not have a RAT TLP? The overhead of filing board reports and not knowing anyone on the team that would be able to? Hen files them all the time (well he used to as Attic VP). And the other names I see on that list [1] below are all people I widely respect at the ASF and folks who pop up on board@, members@ and other foundation-wide lists from time to time. I don't want to speak for anybody, but what would be the issue with any of them filing board reports? Or, yourself for that matter? :) You see to get this whole release process thing - how is the board report sent monthly for the first few months, then quarterly after such a big deal? So, what's the problem with being a TLP? Cheers, Chris On 8/10/10 3:40 AM, "Jochen Wiedmann" <jochen.wiedm...@gmail.com> wrote: Hi, having just published a release of Apache RAT with the "-incubating" label, I'd though it is time to discuss the future of RAT. RAT is an incubator project since 18 months. It is not an overly busy project: The occasional feature request, which is handled, a bug report from time to time, and so on. OTOH, it definitely lives: People are interested and, what's more, it is very widely adopted by all Java projects I am aware of and perhaps even by a few non-Java projects. If there will ever be a migration to a new license like ASL 3 or a another change of the header policy, then RAT will likely play a very important part in the process. Even now, the RAT report is carefully studied as part of every release vote. (Funnily, RAT is very rarely used to inspect itself, because so far I didn't find a possibility to run a previous version of the RAT Maven plugin as part of a build. In fact, RAT is the only project I am aware of, which doesn't publish a RAT report. :-) IMO, RAT could very well leave the incubator. It's 10 or so committers [1] are all part of an organization called ASF since years, so you might question the diversity, but I don't believe anyone will actually do that. ;-) The source code has been developed under ASL and by Apache committers right from the start, so licensing was never an issue. The question is: What's the target? RAT is way too small for an independent project. And I cannot imagine anybody of the current committers writing board reports. To me, a Rat TLP is no option. So we have the second possibility: Put it under the hat of another TLP. The only one that comes to my mind is the Apache Commons project. But Commons would be an excellent choice: Most, or even all of the RAT committers are Commons committers as well. Commons was one of the drivers for integration of RAT into every release build. I admit that I wouldn't like to change the package name or the Maven group ID again, but either Commons developers could accept that exception from the rule or I'd force myself to do the required changes. WDYT? Jochen [1] http://incubator.apache.org/rat/team-list.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Chris Mattmann, Ph.D. Senior Computer Scientist NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA 91109 USA Office: 171-266B, Mailstop: 171-246 Email: chris.mattm...@jpl.nasa.gov WWW: http://sunset.usc.edu/~mattmann/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Adjunct Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 USA ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
