Re: releasing from incubator? -- was: Re: a beehive release and the JSR 181 TCK issue
Here is my opinion on the whole release issue, which has not changed in 18 months since the first big discussion of releases and incubation branding. Full Disclosure: While this is my opinion as a member of the Incubator PMC, it is not necessarily the consensus of the PMC. In addition, I was once a BEA employee and am still a (recently inactive) committer on the beehive project; however, I have been consistent in my views on this issue regardless of what individual/company/project has raised the issue. Given (my assumptions): 1. (binary) releases are useful in building interest in a project, which often leads to a stronger community; also, the process of doing a release is useful for a project to go through while in incubation. 2. while in incubation (when a project is still trying to reach its goals for a diverse, collaborative, meritocratic-based community), Apache does not want a project to claim that it is a fully-endorsed Apache project 3. incubation status is no reflection on the technical quality or maturity of the code base Therefore: 1. releases should be allowed and even encouraged while incubation (personally, I don't care whether they're called "releases", "Releases", or "official project release". 2. projects should a) include obvious notices regarding their incubation status and the status of their releases (e.g. in the README file, as part of the file name, and on their web site), b) hold a vote of their ppmc (which should include interested members of the Incubator PMC), and c) should ensure their mentor approves of the release and its process. 3. projects within incubation should not be given some arbitrary technical boundary, such as preventing them from classifying a release as "1.0" or "2.0", based on the history and stability of the code base. Guess what? When we (this list) spend literally hundreds of emails discussing these issues in late 2003, we came up with a lose set of guidelines that pretty much fit with what is described above. See http://incubator.apache.org/incubation/Incubation_Policy.html#Releases%0D. Note there is nothing in there that states a release can't be called "official" or "1.0" or anything like that. Howeverm, it must meet the branding guidelines. I suggest those who disagree with these written guidelines suggest changes to them to be discussed and voted upon; otherwise, existing projects today should follow the only documentation we have given them. (ready for the inevitable flames to begin, possibly from some folks I have a lot of respect for...) Cliff - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: releasing from incubator? -- was: Re: a beehive release and the JSR 181 TCK issue
Cliff Schmidt wrote: > Here is my opinion on the whole release issue, which has not changed > in 18 months since the first big discussion of releases and incubation > branding. [snip] Maybe folks are confused by this sentence in the 'Minimum Exit Requirements' section. http://incubator.apache.org/incubation/Incubation_Policy.html#Minimum+Exit+Requirements Note: incubator projects are not permitted to issue an official Release. Test snapshots (however good the quality) and Release plans are OK. Maybe it should be removed? It does tend to contradict the bullet it is under. :-) Dan. - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: releasing from incubator? -- was: Re: a beehive release and the JSR 181 TCK issue
On 6/7/05, Daniel John Debrunner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > http://incubator.apache.org/incubation/Incubation_Policy.html#Minimum+Exit+Requirements > > > Note: incubator projects are not permitted to issue an official Release. > Test snapshots (however good the quality) and Release plans are OK. > > > Maybe it should be removed? It does tend to contradict the bullet it is > under. :-) Good catch, Dan! I would certainly be in favor of removing this line. I know there are different opinions on this within the PMC, but most would agree that incubation has nothing to do with the technical quality of the code. It just doesn't make sense to me to tell a community that believes it has a "1.0" quality product that they have to call it a "test snapshot". Instead we specify several branding-related requirements to ensure the project doesn't yet claim to be an officially-endorse ASF project. Cliff - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: releasing from incubator? -- was: Re: a beehive release and the JSR 181 TCK issue
Cliff Schmidt wrote: > Daniel John Debrunner wrote: > > http://incubator.apache.org/incubation/Incubation_Policy.html#Minimum+Exit+R equirements > > Note: incubator projects are not permitted to issue an official Release. > > Test snapshots (however good the quality) and Release plans are OK. > > Maybe it should be removed? It does tend to contradict the bullet > > it is under. :-) > > Good catch, Dan! I would certainly be in favor of removing this line. -1 from me. And I'll elaborate further ... > It just doesn't make sense to me to tell a community that believes it has > a "1.0" quality product that they have to call it a "test snapshot". Demo? Technology preview? Milestone? Happy Meal? Look, maybe this is hard to understand, especially if people are coming from an enviroment focused on code quality first, but this isn't about the state of the code. It is about the state of the community. We had a lot of long discussions regarding allowing any releases at all from the Incubator, and it is entirely intentional and deliberate that projects in the Incubator are not permitted to make anything that smells like an official release. The fact that they can make any release at all is out of recognition that some limited releases may help with community growth, but it also remains that we do not want users to depend on projects that are still in the Incubator. Now that may seem a self-contradictory statement, but the community we want focused on are other developers, not users. Nor we we want projects to be overly comfortable with a nice long stay. We want projects to be serious about getting out of the Incubator from the time that they get into it. If this were to mean that projects would start to put more emphasis on commmunity development than on their code "just" so that they can get out of the Incubator and make releases ... EXACTLY! Again, our emphasis is on a healthy developer communities that can be relied upon to be self-sustaining and follow ASF practices for many years. --- Noel - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: releasing from incubator? -- was: Re: a beehive release and the JSR 181 TCK issue
On 07.06.2005, at 22:48, Noel J. Bergman wrote: Demo? Technology preview? Milestone? Happy Meal? Look, maybe this is hard to understand, especially if people are coming from an enviroment focused on code quality first, but this isn't about the state of the code. It is about the state of the community. We had a lot of long discussions regarding allowing any releases at all from the Incubator, and it is entirely intentional and deliberate that projects in the Incubator are not permitted to make anything that smells like an official release. The fact that they can make any release at all is out of recognition that some limited releases may help with community growth, but it also remains that we do not want users to depend on projects that are still in the Incubator. Now that may seem a self-contradictory statement, but the community we want focused on are other developers, not users. Nor we we want projects to be overly comfortable with a nice long stay. We want projects to be serious about getting out of the Incubator from the time that they get into it. If this were to mean that projects would start to put more emphasis on commmunity development than on their code "just" so that they can get out of the Incubator and make releases ... EXACTLY! Again, our emphasis is on a healthy developer communities that can be relied upon to be self-sustaining and follow ASF practices for many years. Amen - can someone with karma for the incubator site please add this to the relevant section? I think this sums it up pretty nicely. Just my 2c... Cheers, Erik smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Biological Object Model Project
All, I would like to start a biological object model process (I need to come up with a catchier name) and I think ASF would be a great place for it. I currently work with a product called GKP (Genomics Knowledge Platform) from a company called Xteric and it works fairly well, but it is not open source. It's tough to get grant money from the government for software development if you're using something that's proprietary and not open source. You can't exactly tell a university that they have to spend $1M on a software package if they wish to use it for research. Anyway, what is needed in the Genomics/Bioinformatics world is a common, standardized, open source object model for us to develop applications against. I understand that I'm supposed to have a working codebase, but this is still a vision for me. However, if we started a project, I think we could get some real experts (bioinformaticians) to contribute and work towards developing a standard platform. Any thoughts? James Carman
RE: Biological Object Model Project
I meant "biological object model project." Sorry. -Original Message- From: James Carman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 6:35 PM To: general@incubator.apache.org Subject: Biological Object Model Project All, I would like to start a biological object model process (I need to come up with a catchier name) and I think ASF would be a great place for it. I currently work with a product called GKP (Genomics Knowledge Platform) from a company called Xteric and it works fairly well, but it is not open source. It's tough to get grant money from the government for software development if you're using something that's proprietary and not open source. You can't exactly tell a university that they have to spend $1M on a software package if they wish to use it for research. Anyway, what is needed in the Genomics/Bioinformatics world is a common, standardized, open source object model for us to develop applications against. I understand that I'm supposed to have a working codebase, but this is still a vision for me. However, if we started a project, I think we could get some real experts (bioinformaticians) to contribute and work towards developing a standard platform. Any thoughts? James Carman - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: releasing from incubator? -- was: Re: a beehive release and the JSR 181 TCK issue
On 6/7/05, Noel J. Bergman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> It just doesn't make sense to me to tell a community that believes it has >> a "1.0" quality product that they have to call it a "test snapshot". > > Demo? Technology preview? Milestone? Happy Meal? All of those terms (or at least the first three ;-) are references to code quality. If we are keeping a project in incubation until its community is of higher quality, why would we legislate terms that have to do with code? > Look, maybe this is hard to understand, especially if people are coming from > an enviroment focused on code quality first, but this isn't about the state > of the code. It is about the state of the community. As I said in my prior post, I think we all agree on this -- this shouldn't be hard for anyone to understand. > We had a lot of long > discussions regarding allowing any releases at all from the Incubator, and > it is entirely intentional and deliberate that projects in the Incubator are > not permitted to make anything that smells like an official release. I agree that they should not be permitted to make anything that resembles an official *ASF-endorsed* released. > Nor we we want projects to be overly comfortable with a nice long stay. We > want projects to be serious about getting out of the Incubator from the time > that they get into it. If this were to mean that projects would start to > put more emphasis on commmunity development than on their code "just" so > that they can get out of the Incubator and make releases ... EXACTLY! I'd be surprised if any individual or company was comfortable having to include the word "incubating" as part of every filename in their release, nor comfortable having a paragraph in their README stating that the project is not officially endorsed by the ASF, nor comfortable being required by our PRC to mention incubation in any PR-like materials. I think all these are all good and effective restrictions. > Again, our emphasis is on a healthy developer communities that can be relied > upon to be self-sustaining and follow ASF practices for many years. You and I completely agree on this. However, I am trying to separate code quality labels from branding. We all agree that incubation is about building community -- until a project as reached the goals around community development, we want to distinguish the project by requiring the incubator branding -- not the full ASF branding. I just don't see what that has to do with letting a project indicate to its users what degree of stability their code base is at or whether they expect to maintain backward compatibility on their APIs (often signalled by the "1.0" milestone). Cliff - To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
