Apply for Incubation at Apache??

[Niclas Hedhman]

Gang,

Building community is hard. And being a low volume, low profile project like Qi4j doesn't make it any easier.

So I put forward to you; Should we apply for Incubation at Apache Software Foundation (or not)?

Pros;

  + A lot of visibility. People follows the Incubator to see what is upcoming and new.

  + ASF has a "secret sauce" of how to build communities. In fact, it is so secret that no one, absolutely no one, knows it for sure. It might be the respect that it has earned over the years. Perhaps it is the way software is released. Perhaps it is the existing (large) community that helps spread the word cross projects. It often works, but not always.

  + ASF has a PR agent employed, and projects can push news (typically releases and events) via the press release network(s).

  + Infrastructure is provided, DL mirrors, web servers, @apache.org mail addresses for everyone, Jira, and much more. Also, projects have access to virtualized servers with more obscure operating systems on them.

Cons;

  - ASF is somewhat "old fashioned" (dinosaur if you like). Every project matter must be discussed on mailing lists. If it wasn't on ML, it didn't happen. This results generally in slower progress for fast pace projects. Not something we suffer from at the moment.

  - ASF's Git functionality is not nearly as good as GitHub. We are allowed to set up a GitHub read-only mirror under /Apache organization, so most of the reporting is kind of available that way, but a PR via GitHub is suddenly much more troublesome.

  - The release process is much more entailing than our "shoot from the hip", where a release needs to cut (in source form) into a tarball, signed, voted on and then pushed out. A process that takes minimum 3-4 days, and more likely 1-2 weeks.

  - A project report is required to be written by the so called "PMC Chair". The Chair is a glorified secretary, who takes all major bits and writes it up. While in the Incubator, the report goes to the Incubator PMC (Project Management Committee). Once graduated into a top level project and a PMC is formed around the project, the report is sent to the ASF board. First 3 reports are sent every month, later it is every quarter.

  - ASF will seize the ownership of the trademark. This means that IF it doesn't work out, and we decide to leave and continue outside, then we need to change the name. A relatively well-known example is iBatis, which left ASF and became MyBatis.

There might be more things.

The fact that I am a ASF Member (Emeritus) and was a long lasting contributor to the Incubator itself, should make the acceptance into the Incubator almost certain (failure is typically only from lacking Mentors, the guides to help you in the beginning).

The incubation process has a set of goals to be reached, and the Mentors will follow and see if the community are "ready" to graduate. Projects vary a lot, from a couple of months to many years, and some never graduated.

Let me know what you all think about this.

Cheers

--

Niclas Hedhman, Software Developer
河南南路555弄15号1901室。
http://www.qi4j.org - New Energy for Java

I live here; http://tinyurl.com/3xugrbk
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[Paul Merlin]

Niclas,

Sorry for the delay, been busy and mostly AFK.

Getting Qi4j under the Apache Software Foundation umbrella would surely be good for it. But as you wrote, it could also be some burden.

All in all, I'd be OK.

But, shouldn't we wait to settle our work on 3.0 before entering the incubator?
Or at least release 2.1 with existing fixes.
WDYT?

@Rickard, others: any opinion?

/Paul


Niclas Hedhman a écrit :

[Jiri Jetmar]

Hi Niclas, all

I do not have much experience with the legal & organisational aspects of the Apache Software Foundation, so can not really argue on this topic. 

Regarding the work on 2.1/3.0  - we talked some months ago about the spatial extensions on Qi4j. I was also pretty busy so could not start earlier, but now I;m mostly done. Means the Qi4j Query DSL is extended to support  expressions like : 

       Query<City> query = unitOfWork.newQuery(

                qb

                        .where(

                                ST_Within

                                        (

                                             templateFor(City.class).location(),

                                              ST_GeometryFromText("POINT(49.550881 10.712809)", SRID),

                                              1000, Unit.METERS

                                        )

                        ));

I;m expecting to submit a pull request on github in about two weeks together with some more lines about how/what/issues, etc.. 

Just FYI.. 

Thank you. 

Cheers, 

Jiri

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[Niclas Hedhman]

I will write up a proposal and we can take it from there...

[Niclas Hedhman]

There are talks about changes in the Apache Incubator at the moment. I don't think it necessarily needs to affect this proposal, but it could if we chose to.

In essence; Some members of the Incubator is suggesting that the Incubator dissolves itself, and a "Provisional Top Level Project" (pTLP) approach is taken. I.e. new projects are established like the "real deal", but still with the disclaimers that it isn't an official Apache project until the "graduate" (which the current talks don't cover much, but probably other's scrutiny of one or two releases being properly done and no branding issues).

A pTLP is operated in the same fashion as a regular project, and the suggested criteria is that the pTLP's project management committee (PMC) contains experienced Apache "members" (not necessarily an actual Member) who has shown to understand and know "The Apache Way". I think we qualify as the proposal is put forward.

I don't really expect anyone to fully grasp the difference, but I think it can be summarized as;

   a. Incubator is more "cozy" as the Incubator PMC is the "friendly neighborhood", where many people will assist when it comes to questions. As a pTLP, any advice needed will be sought out at the Board or Legal, ComDev or other committees. No one-stop shop so to speak.

   b. IMVHO, the Incubator has more "overhead" and more rigor. Incubator tries to shape the projects in more of the same fold, than projects are actually required to follow. A pTLP has the same reporting to be done (a report every month for the first 3 months, then one report per quarter), except that the report is sent directly to the Board instead of the Incubator PMC.

   c. The pTLP has a lot more autonomy, and with that comes more responsibility. Its participants will be required to check releases and ensure that Apache bylaws and policies are followed (and demonstrating this is likely to be the criterion for becoming an official project).

   d. In terms of technical, infrastructure, legal, branding and just about everything else, there is no difference as far as I can see.

So, does anyone have any comment on this?

Personally, I am in slight favor of being a guinea pig of pTLP....

Marcel?? Would you be ok with going for a pTLP, since your support is going to be needed? (That would give us 2 members + at least one committer on the PMC from start.)

Cheers

--

Niclas Hedhman, Software Developer

[Niclas Hedhman]

I forgot to mention one thing;

The initial PMC of the pTLP would only consist of existing Apache committers, and that this group's first task would be to vote in the rest of the community, and then handle the paper work associated. The paper work is effectively the same in the Incubator, and only the vote itself differs.

Cheers
Niclas

[Marcel Offermans]

Hello Niclas,

Like you I have been following the ongoing changes in the Incubator.

On 10 Jan 2015 at 07:31:01, Niclas Hedhman (nic...@hedhman.org) wrote:

There are talks about changes in the Apache Incubator at the moment. I don't think it necessarily needs to affect this proposal, but it could if we chose to.

[…]

Personally, I am in slight favor of being a guinea pig of pTLP....

Marcel?? Would you be ok with going for a pTLP, since your support is going to be needed? (That would give us 2 members + at least one committer on the PMC from start.)

Having gone through the existing incubator with three projects and mentoring one, I would be ok to go for a pTLP. I’m not quite sure yet how that will turn out, but my experience with the incubator in the past has been that it is sometimes hard to get enough people involved in mainly actively reviewing releases. The pTLP proposal seems to aim for more autonomy and responsibility right from the start and I think that is a good thing.

So you have my support on going this route, because I think the new process in general should attract a bit more attention, which helps.

Greetings, Marcel

[Paul Merlin]

Niclas Hedhman a écrit :

> So, does anyone have any comment on this?
>
> Personally, I am in slight favor of being a guinea pig of pTLP....

Marcel Offermans a écrit :

> So you have my support on going this route, because I think the new
> process in general should attract a bit more attention, which helps.

Let's go for pTLP then.

[Niclas Hedhman]

Another thing that we need to consider is NAME.

Having "4j" in the name kind of excludes future endeavors. Even straight off the bat, perhaps Stanislav's dotNet port wants to come into the same project... that is up to him, but I would welcome such a request.

So, perhaps the Apache project should have a different name, where Qi4j is a subproject, along side others.

Perhaps I am a bit biased towards "Apache Qi", and Qi4j, Qi4DotNet and possibly other languages becomes natural.

But we might as well have a completely different name;

  - Apache COP - enforces law and order in your code structures  ;-)

  - Apache ???

Add to list, if you have any name(s) that you would like to suggest.

Cheers

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[Paul Merlin]

Niclas Hedhman a écrit :

> Another thing that we need to consider is NAME.
>
> Having "4j" in the name kind of excludes future endeavors. Even
> straight off the bat, perhaps Stanislav's dotNet port wants to come
> into the same project... that is up to him, but I would welcome such a
> request.
>
> So, perhaps the Apache project should have a different name, where
> Qi4j is a subproject, along side others.
>
> Perhaps I am a bit biased towards "Apache Qi", and Qi4j, Qi4DotNet and
> possibly other languages becomes natural.

I like "Apache Qi", [uh-pach-ee chee] :)
It would also mean that Qi4j/Qi4DotNet would not need a massive rename,
keeping backward compatibility.

> But we might as well have a completely different name;
> - Apache COP - enforces law and order in your code structures ;-)
> - Apache ???
>
> Add to list, if you have any name(s) that you would like to suggest.

I'm a bit wary about Apache COP even if he's here "to care and to
protect" (:

Throwing names in the air...

- Apache Energy
- Apache Stamina
- Apache Mescal(ero)
- Apache Zest
- Apache Verdure
- Apache Aura
- Apache Essence
- Apache ...

[Niclas Hedhman]

I like "Apache Zest" as well.

There is a language called "Chichewa" (pun intended) and "Composite" is translated by Google to "Gulu" (reverse translates to "Group") which is short.

Apache Gulu

Cheers

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[Niclas Hedhman]

Gang,

And for those that want to know exactly what "The Apache Way" entails, in terms of project's MUST/SHOULD/MAY do is found here; https://www.apache.org/dev/project-requirements