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This was extracted (@ 2024-03-20 21:10) from a list of minutes which have been approved by the Board.
Please Note The Board typically approves the minutes of the previous meeting at the beginning of every Board meeting; therefore, the list below does not normally contain details from the minutes of the most recent Board meeting.

WARNING: these pages may omit some original contents of the minutes.
This is due to changes in the layout of the source minutes over the years. Fixes are being worked on.

Meeting times vary, the exact schedule is available to ASF Members and Officers, search for "calendar" in the Foundation's private index page (svn:foundation/private-index.html).

Labs

19 Aug 2020

Terminate the Apache Labs Project

 WHEREAS, the Project Management Committee of the Apache Labs project
 has chosen by vote to recommend moving the project to the Attic; and

 WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it no longer in the best interest
 of the Foundation to continue the Apache Labs project due to
 inactivity;

 NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Apache Labs project is hereby
 terminated; and be it further

 RESOLVED, that the Attic PMC be and hereby is tasked with oversight
 over the software developed by the Apache Labs Project; and be it
 further

 RESOLVED, that the office of "Vice President, Apache Labs" is hereby
 terminated; and be it further

 RESOLVED, that the Apache Labs PMC is hereby terminated.

 Special Order 7D, Terminate the Apache Labs Project, was
 approved by General Consent.

15 Jul 2020 [Danny Angus / Bertrand]

## Description:
The mission of Labs is the creation and maintenance of software related to A
place for innovation where committers of the foundation can experiment with new
ideas

## Issues:
There are no issues requiring board attention at the current time.

## Membership Data:
Apache Labs was founded 2006-11-15 (14 years ago)
There are currently 31 committers and 10 PMC members in this project.
The Committer-to-PMC ratio is roughly 8:3.

Community changes, past quarter:
- No new PMC members. Last addition was Simone Tripodi on 2011-06-14.
- No new committers. Last addition was Juan P. Gilaberte on 2018-05-30.
## Project Activity:
Labs remains largely inactive. The one "open" lab we have has seen no activity
for over a year.

## Community Health:
The community is neither healthy nor unhealthy, the PMC continue to be
able to offer governance and could respond to a roll call, but
there is little going on beyond that.
I intend to open the debate about the future of labs before
the next baord report is due. Past cycles have seen
volunteer energy offered for Labs itself but limited interest
from commiters who might benefit from creating a lab of their own.
It feels like this cycle should address that head on.

17 Jun 2020 [Danny Angus / Shane]

No report was submitted.

@Shane: discuss future of Labs

18 Mar 2020 [Danny Angus]

## Description:
Labs is a place for innovation where committers of the foundation can
experiment with new ideas.

## Issues:
Labs underwent a roll-call in January called by wave@ There were four responses.

## Membership Data:
Apache Labs was founded 2006-11-15 (13 years ago)
There are currently 31 committers and 10 PMC members in this project.
The Committer-to-PMC ratio is roughly 8:3.

Community changes, past quarter:
- No new PMC members. Last addition was Simone Tripodi on 2011-06-14.
- No new committers. Last addition was Juan P. Gilaberte on 2018-05-30.

## Project Activity:
Labs is largely inactive but as it is a facility offered to committers for
their use, lack of activity on its own is not a symptom of disfunction.

## Community Health:
Labs' community is all committers. Demand for labs is currently non-existent
but this may change.

18 Dec 2019 [Danny Angus]

## Description:
The mission of Labs is the creation and maintenance of software related to A
place for innovation where committers of the foundation can experiment with new
ideas.

Per our charter Labs does not make releases.

## Issues:
There are no issues that require board attention.

## Membership Data:
Apache Labs was founded 2006-11-15 (13 years ago)
There are currently 31 committers and 10 PMC members in this project.
The Committer-to-PMC ratio is roughly 8:3.

Community changes, past quarter:
- No new PMC members. Last addition was Simone Tripodi on 2011-06-14.
- No new committers. Last addition was Juan P. Gilaberte on 2018-05-30.

## Project Activity:
Labs has one open experiment, but there has been no activity this past quarter.

## Community Health:
Labs is inactive, but not without oversight.
It may be time to carry out another roll call.

@Dave: pursue a roll call for Labs

18 Sep 2019 [Danny Angus]

## Description:
Apache Labs is a  place for innovation where committers of the foundation can
experiment with new ideas

## Issues:
There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Membership Data:
Apache Labs was founded 2006-11-15 (13 years ago)
There are currently 31 committers and 10 PMC members in this project.
The Committer-to-PMC ratio is roughly 8:3.

Community changes, past quarter:
- No new PMC members. Last addition was Simone Tripodi on 2011-06-14.
- No new committers. Last addition was Juan P. Gilaberte on 2018-05-30.

## Project Activity:
There is one active Lab. Turbulence -
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/labs/turbulence/
Activity has been minimal, but Juan remains committed to his project.

## Community Health:
Labs is quiet, again, but not neglected and the nature of the project means
that we can always muster a roll-call.

19 Jun 2019 [Danny Angus]

### Description
Apache Labs exists to incubate small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.

## Issues:
There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Activity:
One active lab Turbulence.

## Health report:
Labs remains quiet, but not untended. Lack of volunteer energy continues to
limit progress. We have one active Lab.

## PMC changes:

 - Currently 10 PMC members.
 - No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
 - Last PMC addition was Simone Tripodi on Tue Jun 14 2011

## Committer base changes:

 - Currently 31 committers.
 - No new committers added in the last 3 months
 - Last committer addition was Juan P. Gilaberte at Wed May 30 2018

## Releases:

 - Per charter Labs does not make releases

20 Mar 2019 [Danny Angus / Brett]

### Description
Apache Labs exists to incubate small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.

## Issues:
There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Activity:
One active lab Turbulence.

## Health report:
Labs remains quiet, but not inactive.
Lack of volunteer energy limits progress.

## PMC changes:

 - Currently 10 PMC members.
 - No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
 - Last PMC addition was Simone Tripodi on Tue Jun 14 2011

## Committer base changes:

 - Currently 31 committers.
 - No new committers added in the last 3 months
 - Last committer addition was Juan P. Gilaberte at Wed May 30 2018

## Releases:

 - Per charter Labs does not make releases

16 Jan 2019 [Danny Angus / Phil]

### Description
Apache Labs exists to incubate small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.

## Issues:
There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Activity:
One active lab Turbulence.

## Health report:
Labs remains quiet, but not inactive. Time constraints and lack of volunteer
energy have limited our progress.

## PMC changes:

 - Currently 10 PMC members.
 - No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
 - Last PMC addition was Simone Tripodi on Tue Jun 14 2011

## Committer base changes:

 - Currently 31 committers.
 - No new committers added in the last 3 months
 - Last committer addition was Juan P. Gilaberte at Wed May 30 2018

## Releases:

 - Per charter Labs does not make releases

19 Dec 2018 [Danny Angus / Shane]

No report was submitted.

19 Sep 2018 [Danny Angus / Brett]

## Description
Apache Labs exists to incubate small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.

## Issues:
There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Activity:
One active lab Turbulence. This has been quiet in the last period.

## Health report:
Labs remains quiet, but not inactive. Time constraints and lack of volunteer
energy have limited our progress.

## PMC changes:
 - Currently 10 PMC members.
 - No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
 - Last PMC addition was Simone Tripodi on Tue Jun 14 2011

## Committer base changes:
 - Currently 31 committers.
 - No new committers added in the last 3 months
 - Last committer addition was Juan P. Gilaberte at Wed May 30 2018

## Releases:
Per our charter Labs does not make releases.

20 Jun 2018 [Danny Angus / Shane]

## Description

Apache Labs exists to incubate small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.

## Issues:

There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Activity:

Labs has at last become host to a new lab! "Turbulence" from
maintainer jpgilaberte.

    Turbulence is Chaos Engineering engine for testing
    distributed environments based on Apache Mesos.
    - Test high availability cases (HA).
    - Test fault tolerance cases (FT).
    - Error prediction cases in the underlying technologies.
    - HA benchmarks, FT capabilities regarding different
        distributed architectures.
    - Productive environment sizing.
    - Environment behaviour understanding.

This is the trigger for PMC to start some modernisation activity. I
Have reached out to users@infra.a.o for advice on github integration,
I intend to engage with the board vis a vis options to overcome
the "no release" strictures, and I intend to revisit the permalink
issue, I don't think that requires board attention.

I have also created a mailinglist "tech@labs.a.o" to attempt to do some
outreach into the commiters and members. It was sparked by a thread on
members@ round the AGM where a recent member bemoaned the lack of a
place where in depth discussions of tech without specific project goals
 was on topic.
 I have yet to launch it, need to figure out how to publicise it and
 get it to critical mass. Sally suggested inviting people to do
 "fast feather" posts that could spawn threads, and I thought maybe
 hosting AMAs with people might be interesting.


## Health report:

- Labs is quiet, still, but moving along a positive vector.

## PMC changes:

 - Currently 10 PMC members.
 - No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
 - Last PMC addition was Simone Tripodi on Tue Jun 14 2011

## Committer base changes:

 - Currently 31 committers.
 - Juan P. Gilaberte was added as a committer on Wed May 30 2018

## Releases:

 - In accordance with our charter, Labs makes no releases

21 Mar 2018 [Danny Angus / Mark]

## Description

Apache Labs exists to incubate small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.

## Issues:

There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Activity:

- Labs has had a quiet period. Largely because PMC Chair has had a new job to
 settle into and the ASF Members meeting is coming up.

- We still haven't managed to get any volunteers to spin up a lab, but I have
 had some ideas for other ways in which labs could be of use and I will
 develop those in the next period.

## Health report:

- Labs is quiet, but while there are still avenues to explore for how it might
 benefit the community and generate some interaction I will persist in
 following them up

## PMC changes:

- Currently 11 PMC members.
- No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
- Last PMC addition was Jan Iversen on Tue Feb 04 2014
- Jan Iversen resigned from the PMC on 15 Feb 2017

## Committer base changes:

- Currently 31 committers.
- No new committers added in the last 3 months
- Last committer addition was Jan Iversen at Thu Feb 27 2014

## Releases:

- According to our charter, Labs makes no releases

## Mailing list activity:

- labs@labs.apache.org:
  - 209 subscribers (up 0 in the last 3 months):
  - 3 emails sent to list (9 in previous quarter)

## JIRA activity:

- 1 JIRA tickets created in the last 3 months
- 0 JIRA tickets closed/resolved in the last 3 months

17 Jan 2018 [Danny Angus / Shane]

## Description

Apache Labs exists to incubate small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.

## Issues:

There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Activity:

- Another quiet period for Labs.

## Health report:

- As previously reported we have demonstrated that it is possible to generate
expressions of interest from within the committer community, but that has not
translated into positive momentum.

- Looking across the picture it is clear that, to make the service fit for
purpose we would need to adopt a git hub style of provision, and marry that up
to the benefits of ASF community membership (particularly legal), this may be
possible using the ASF->github integration, but I am reluctant to forge ahead
with this without a clear test case or better still a candidate project.

- Assuming a candidate project can be found and that the ASF->github bridge
does indeed provide us with a working option there remain two further
important hurdles, and these are more abstract.

1) The first, and most challenging of these is releases. There is a need for
a labs experiment to make releases, there is an understanding that a release
from a lab experiment would be different than a production ready piece of
infrastructure software, but when this was last discussed releases made
without proper oversight from the PMC were considered an unacceptable risk,
and proper oversight means independent corroboration of the code, which goes
against part of the lab philosophy, which is that we want to allow
already trusted people to get creative here, and not have to find another
place to kick start their one-person project. I think this might be capable of
being resolved by judicious use of branding, and a careful rephrasing of the
labs mission, but would require a board resolution to enact as "no releases"
is enshrined in the resolution that created the labs.

2) The second one is easier to achieve, we need to establish an archiving
process that allows completed and closed experiments to remain read-only in
perpetuity, which is more in keeping with the R&D spirit of labs experiments.

- Although there is a chance that this may be a solution without a problem I
personally believe that labs has the potential to play a major role in our
innovation mission, distinct from and complimentary to the incubator, and I
intend to follow up on these points in 2018.


## PMC changes:

- Currently 11 PMC members.
- No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
- Last PMC addition was Jan Iversen on Tue Feb 04 2014

## Committer base changes:

- Currently 31 committers.
- No new committers added in the last 3 months
- Last committer addition was Jan Iversen at Thu Feb 27 2014

## Releases:

- According to our charter, Labs makes no releases

## Mailing list activity:

- labs@labs.apache.org:
- 209 subscribers (up 0 in the last 3 months):
- 3 emails sent to list (9 in previous quarter)

## JIRA activity:

- 1 JIRA tickets created in the last 3 months
- 0 JIRA tickets closed/resolved in the last 3 months

20 Dec 2017 [Danny Angus / Mark]

No report was submitted.

@Mark: pursue a report for Labs; what are long term prospects?

20 Sep 2017 [Danny Angus / Bertrand]

## Description

Apache Labs exists to incubate small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.

## Issues:

There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Activity:

- Another quiet period for Labs, with essentially zero activity.

## Health report:

- Having managed to ascertain that there is volunteer energy amongst the wider
community, the next step will be to identify a real use case to act as a test
of any proposed changes, and to articulate a revised labs offering to the PMC,
the members and the board.
- Given that I believe that ASF<->Github integration is
critical to the future of this project I would be pleased to have advice from
board members about how I can engage with infrastructure without generating
disproportionate workload on that critical project.

## PMC changes:

- Currently 11 PMC members.
- No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
- Last PMC addition was Jan Iversen on Tue Feb 04 2014

## Committer base changes:

- Currently 31 committers.
- No new committers added in the last 3 months
- Last committer addition was Jan Iversen at Thu Feb 27 2014

## Releases:

- Labs does not make releases

## Mailing list activity:

- labs@labs.apache.org:
 - 209 subscribers (down -1 in the last 3 months):
 - 3 emails sent to list (55 in previous quarter)


## JIRA activity:

- 2 JIRA tickets created in the last 3 months
- 0 JIRA tickets closed/resolved in the last 3 months

19 Jul 2017 [Danny Angus / Ted]

## Description

Apache Labs exists to incubate small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.

## Issues:

There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Activity:

There was some activity generated by posts to members@ and committers@ early
in the period. This died down without reaching a critical mass. It is my
intention to try to build on this in the next period. I have had a personal
drama which has prevented me from making more headway and delayed this report
by a month, please accept my apologies for that.

## Health report:

Subscribers are steady and mailing list activity is almost nil in this period.
Following the response to the outreach activity I have some further activity I
would like to pursue regarding the future of the project in the next period,
which I will propose to the PMC. In short I want to test whether the interest
is a just bike-shed thing or whether anyone will actually propose a lab.

## PMC changes:

- Currently 11 PMC members.
- No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
- Last PMC addition was Jan Iversen on Tue Feb 04 2014

## Committer base changes:

- Currently 31 committers.
- No new committers added in the last 3 months
- Last committer addition was Jan Iversen at Thu Feb 27 2014

## Releases:

- Labs does not make releases

## Mailing list activity:

- labs@labs.apache.org:
 - 210 subscribers (up 1 in the last 3 months):
 - 1 emails sent to list (94 in previous quarter)

21 Jun 2017 [Danny Angus / Brett]

No report was submitted.

15 Mar 2017 [Danny Angus / Marvin]

## Description

Apache Labs exists to incubate small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.

## Issues:

There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Activity:

In the past few weeks I have started a series of actions intended
to determine whether there is any interest from committers or a section of the
committers in reforming Labs to make it relevant. If this activity comes to
nothing the project will be closed down.

## Health report:

Lack of activity does not imply a lack of health, the PMC and
committers include experienced and active members and committers, however
prolonged inactivity coupled with limited visibility and an offering that is
not fit for purpose do raise questions about the viability of the project.

I have recently started some activity to identify volunteers and
gauge whether or not there might be any value in revising the service.
If there is not enough volunteer activity generated by this to
sustain the project it will be retired.

My own opinion is that a vibrant Labs community could be an asset
to the ASF, and to our committers, but as with all things ASF this
will require volunteer energy.

## PMC changes:

- Currently 11 PMC members.
- No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
- Last PMC addition was Jan Iversen on Tue Feb 04 2014

## Committer base changes:

- Currently 31 committers.
- No new committers added in the last 3 months
- Last committer addition was Jan Iversen at Thu Feb 27 2014

## Releases:

- Labs does not make releases

## Mailing list activity:

labs@labs.apache.org:
 208 subscribers (up 31 in the last 3 months):
 40 emails sent to list (0 in previous quarter)

21 Dec 2016 [Danny Angus / Isabel]

## Description:

Apache Labs exists to incubate small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.

## Issues:

There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Activity:

There has been no activity of any kind in the past three months.

## Health report:

The project remains healthy but there was an ongoing lack of all activity
in Labs in the reporting period. This lack of activity does not imply a
lack of health, the PMC and committers include experienced and
active members and committers. I note from MT's comments on our last report
that "if the lack of activity continues for another reporting period or two
then the attic starts to look more likely." I would be interested to hear
other board members' opinions on attic vs status quo vs pivot, given that this
was a strategic initiative and is an outlier in its nature and purpose.

## PMC changes:

- Currently 11 PMC members.
- No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
- Last PMC addition was Jan Iversen on Tue Feb 04 2014

## Committer base changes:

- Currently 31 committers.
- No new committers added in the last 3 months
- Last committer addition was Jan Iversen at Thu Feb 27 2014

## Releases:

- this project does not produce releases


## Mailing list activity:

- labs@labs.apache.org:
- 177 subscribers (up 3 in the last 3 months):
- 0 emails sent to list (0 in previous quarter)

@Isabel: Work with PMC to see if they plan to change their remit

21 Sep 2016 [Danny Angus / Jim]

## Description:

Apache Labs exists to incubate small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.

## Issues:

There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

## Activity:

There has been no activity of any kind in the past three months.

## Health report:

The total lack of all activity in Labs in the reporting period poses a
question about the future of the project, but does not imply a lack of health,
the PMC and committers include experienced and active members and commiters.

## PMC changes:

- Currently 11 PMC members.
- No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
- Last PMC addition was Jan Iversen on Tue Feb 04 2014

## Committer base changes:

- Currently 31 committers.
- No new committers added in the last 3 months
- Last committer addition was Jan Iversen at Thu Feb 27 2014

## Releases:

- this project does not produce releases

## Mailing list activity:

- labs@labs.apache.org:
 - 174 subscribers (up 2 in the last 3 months):
 - 0 emails sent to list (34 in previous quarter)

15 Jun 2016 [Danny Angus / Greg]

## Description
Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF
committers.


## Activity
Labs activity is virtually nonexistent. Since being elected as PMC
chair I have had to handle more spam email to the lists than actual
correspondence of any kind. I'm not aware of any commits, there are no new
proposals, and I don't know how to find the mailing list subscriber stats, but
I would be surprised if it had changed.


## Issues
I have put some questions to the community about the future of the
project and had a handful of responses, it seems from that small sample that
there is some consensus around the idea that labs no longer fills a valuable
purpose at the ASF.

There are then options as to how we proceed, basically we can vote to shut
labs down, we can accept the status quo or we can attempt to pivot labs until
it becomes relevant.

During the next reporting period we will work on determining a way ahead, in
the meantime we would be grateful for any guidance the board may wish to
provide.

(N.B. I'm afriad I will be travelling at the time of this meeting and will be
unable to attend.)

## PMC/Committership changes:
New PMC Chair (danny) since the last board
report.

## Releases
The project does not make releases per definition.

20 Apr 2016

Change the Apache Labs Project Chair

 WHEREAS, the Board of Directors heretofore appointed Jan Iversen
 (jani) to the office of Vice President, Apache Labs, and

 WHEREAS, the Board of Directors is in receipt of the resignation of
 Jan Iversen from the office of Vice President, Apache Labs, and

 WHEREAS, the Project Management Committee of the Apache Labs project
 has chosen by vote to recommend Danny Angus (danny) as
 the successor to the post;

 NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that Jan Iversen is relieved and
 discharged from the duties and responsibilities of the office of Vice
 President, Apache Labs, and

 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Danny Angus be and hereby is appointed to
 the office of Vice President, Apache Labs, to serve in accordance with
 and subject to the direction of the Board of Directors and the Bylaws
 of the Foundation until death, resignation, retirement, removal or
 disqualification, or until a successor is appointed.

 Special Order 7B, Change the Apache Labs Project Chair, was
 approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present.

16 Mar 2016 [Jan Iversen / Bertrand]

# Description
Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.


## Activity
Another typical quiet couple months for Labs. The PMC remains quiet
and healthy.


## Issues
None

## PMC/Committership changes:
 - Currently 31 committers and 11 PMC members in the project.
 - Last PMC addition was Jan Iversen at Sat Feb 15 2014
 - Last committer addition was Jan Iversen at Thu Feb 27 2014

## Releases
The project does not make releases per definition.

16 Dec 2015 [Jan Iversen / Brett]

# Description
Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.


## Activity
Another typical quiet couple months for Labs. The PMC remains quiet
and healthy.


## Issues
None

## PMC/Committership changes:
 - Currently 31 committers and 11 PMC members in the project.
 - Last PMC addition was Jan Iversen at Sat Feb 15 2014
 - Last committer addition was Jan Iversen at Thu Feb 27 2014

## Releases
The project does not make releases per definition.

16 Sep 2015 [Jan Iversen / Sam]

# Description
Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.


## Activity
Another typical quiet couple months for Labs. The PMC remains quiet
and healthy.

A request for a new Lab has been made, and request has been granted.


## Issues
None

## PMC/Committership changes:
 - Currently 31 committers and 11 PMC members in the project.
 - Last PMC addition was Jan Iversen at Sat Feb 15 2014
 - Last committer addition was Jan Iversen at Thu Feb 27 2014

## Releases
The project does not make releases per definition.

17 Jun 2015 [Jan Iversen / Rich]

## Description
Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

## Activity
Another typical quiet couple months for Labs. The PMC remains quiet
and healthy.

The idea of having Labs to handle small projects before the enter
Incubator, was raised and discussed at ACNA 2015. A document is
currently being prepared for an initial discussion in the PMC.


## Issues
None

## PMC/Committership changes:
 - Currently 31 committers and 11 PMC members in the project.
 - Last PMC addition was Jan Iversen at Sat Feb 15 2014
 - Last committer addition was Jan Iversen at Thu Feb 27 2014

## Releases
The project does not make releases per definition.

18 Mar 2015 [Jan Iversen / Ross]

## Description

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.


## Activity
Another typical quiet couple months for Labs. The PMC remains quiet and
healthy. The new chair is in place.


## Issues

None

## PMC/Committership changes:

 - Currently 31 committers and 11 PMC members in the project.
 - No new PMC members added in the last 3 months
 - No new committers added in the last 3 months
 - Last PMC addition was Jan Iversen at Sat Feb 15 2014
 - Last committer addition was Jan Iversen at Thu Feb 27 2014

## Releases

The project does not make releases per definition.

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 0

- status changes (last 3 months): 0

- total number: 41

- active: 17

- idle: 15

- promoted: 3

- completed: 8

- labs with commits: none

## JIRA activity:

 - 0 JIRA tickets created in the last 3 months
 - 1 JIRA tickets closed/resolved in the last 3 months

21 Jan 2015

Change the Apache Labs Chair

 WHEREAS, the Board of Directors heretofore appointed Tim Williams
 to the office of Vice President, Apache Labs, and

 WHEREAS, the Board of Directors is in receipt of the resignation
 of Tim Williams from the office of Vice President, Apache Labs,
 and

 WHEREAS, the Project Management Committee of the Apache Labs
 project has chosen by vote to recommend Jan Iversen as the
 successor to the post;

 NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that Tim Williams is relieved and
 discharged from the duties and responsibilities of the office
 of Vice President, Apache Labs, and

 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Jan Iversen be and hereby is
 appointed to the office of Vice President, Apache Labs, to
 serve in accordance with and subject to the direction of the
 Board of Directors and the Bylaws of the Foundation until
 death, resignation, retirement, removal or disqualification, or
 until a successor is appointed.

 Special Order 7B, Resolution to Change the Apache Labs Chair,
 was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present.

21 Jan 2015 [Tim Williams / Chris]


Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.


[STATUS]


Another typical quiet couple months for Labs. The PMC remains quiet and
healthy. The PMC has voted to rotate chairs this month as well - resolution
pending.


[DETAILS]


== Community ==

A couple researchers had work, otherwise it’s back to being fairly quiet with
nothing significant to report.



== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 0

- status changes (last 3 months): 0

- total number: 41

- active: 17

- idle: 15

- promoted: 3

- completed: 8

- labs with commits: panopticon, alike

17 Dec 2014 [Tim Williams / Greg]

No report was submitted.

17 Sep 2014 [Tim Williams / Rich]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

Another typical quiet couple months for Labs. The PMC remains quiet and
healthy.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==
A couple researchers had work, otherwise it’s back to being
fairly quiet with nothing significant to report.


== Labs Statistics ==
- new: 0
- status changes (last 3 months): 0
- total number: 41
- active: 17
- idle: 15
- promoted: 3
- completed: 8
- labs with commits: panopticon, alike

16 Jul 2014 [Tim Williams / Bertrand]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

We finished up the ByLaws cleanup from last quarter, saw one addition, and saw
some house-cleaning activity.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==

As mentioned in the last board report, our ByLaws were a bit flawed in their
voting requirements.  Last quarter saw the cleanup of the PMC roster and this
quarter the vote to correct the ByLaws passed, clearing the way for
streamlined lab additions.

Loads of cleanup occurred over the quarter including JIRA, a new VM, and the
website.

A new lab "Flexicon" was created with Gabriela Gibson as the PI.  Flexicon is
tool for individuals, business and crowds to organize and maintain a personal
or community-owned compendium of compound commands and scripts, which can be
standardized, shared, tracked and searched due to having a general compatible
format and inbuilt tests. It is not tied to any particular operating system or
software, it is a general tool to keep our working methods organized and to
enable us to share and preserve them.

The Penihip lab went idle.

== Labs Statistics ==
- new: 1
- status changes (last 3 months): 1
- total number: 41
- active: 17
- idle: 15
- promoted: 3
- completed: 8
- labs with commits: panopticon, flexicon, yay

18 Jun 2014 [Tim Williams / Greg]

No report was submitted.

AI Brett: pursue a report for Labs

16 Apr 2014 [Tim Williams / Jim]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

We saw a good bit of activity around improving our processes and community this quarter, details below.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==

We saw a cascade of problems this quarter.  Starting with a new Lab that
failed to attain three binding votes, we realized that we actually don’t want
that hurdle for new Labs and would rather just a pure lazy approval.  So, we
set about fixing our bylaws to approve labs with simple lazy approval.
Unfortunately, the bylaws change requires a ⅔ approval vote which caused us to
realize that we have too many inactive PMC members to achieve that success.
This caused us to set about cleaning up the PMC roster by asking folks to
voluntarily resign if they don’t feel they can be participate any longer -
obviously, welcome to come back too.

We believe that cleaning up the roster will allow us to get the bylaws in
order and move forward.

Jan Iversen gave a presentation on Labs at a Fast Feather session at ApacheCon.

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 0
- status changes (last 3 months): 0
- total number: 40
- active: 17
- idle: 14
- promoted: 3
- completed: 8
- labs with commits: panopticon, yay, penihip

The board approves the removal of the following PMC members: Erik Abele (erikabele) Gregor Rothfuss (gregor) Noel J. Bergman (noel) Reinhard Poetz (reinhard) Scott Sanders (sanders) J Aaron Farr (farra) Garrett Rooney (rooneg)

19 Mar 2014 [Tim Williams / Brett]

No report was submitted.

18 Dec 2013 [Tim Williams / Roy]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

An unusually slow quarter even for us at Labs. The PMC remains
quiet and healthy.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==

Not a lot of development activity this quarter though.

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 0
- status changes (last 3 months): 0
- total number: 40
- active: 17
- idle: 14
- promoted: 3
- completed: 8
- labs with commits: panopticon

18 Sep 2013 [Tim Williams / Chris]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

A typically slow quarter for Labs. The PMC remains quiet and healthy.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==

The Mavibot lab has been quite successful.  They have found a permanent home under the Apache Directory project
and closed the lab.

A new lab, Panopticon was accepted for research.  Panopticon is web UI for tracking/managing ASF projects and
Incubator podlings based on Python/gunicorn.

During a vote this quarter we realized that our bylaws have had a non-traditional definition of “lazy consensus”
since our inception.  Since the bylaws actually provide the definition, it seems not to be a simple typo.  It
doesn’t seem to affect our functioning but it’s a confusing quirk that should be fixed at some point. Several
folks have stepped up to clarify and attempt to clean it up.

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 1
- status changes (last 3 months): 1
- total number: 40
- active: 17
- idle: 14
- promoted: 3
- completed: 8
- labs with commits: mavibot, yay, panopticon
- last PMC addition: June 2011

19 Jun 2013 [Tim Williams / Doug]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

A typically slow quarter for Labs. The PMC remains quiet and healthy.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==

The Mavibot lab has been quite successful.  Still haven’t pursued any
avenues out of labs yet.

The community is sleepy but typically responsive when beckoned.  One
potential concern is that a new lab was proposed “Summarize” that
didn’t immediately get enough binding votes to pass.  This is the
first time I’m aware of it happening.  It’s likely that it just got
pushed to the bottom of folks mailbox.

== New Labs ==
none to report

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 0
- status changes (last 3 months): 0
- total number: 40
- active: 16
- idle: 14
- promoted: 3
- completed: 7
- labs with commits: alike, mavibot, yay

20 Mar 2013 [Tim Williams / Brett]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

A typically slow quarter for Labs. The PMC remains quiet and healthy.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==

The Mavibot lab has been quite successful.  It’s PI is currently
exploring where to grow from Labs.

The community is sleepy but typically responsive when beckoned.

== New Labs ==
none to report

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 0
- status changes (last 3 months): 0
- total number: 40
- active: 16
- idle: 14
- promoted: 3
- completed: 7
- labs with commits: yay, alike, mavibot

19 Dec 2012 [Tim Williams / Sam]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

A typically slow quarter for Labs. The PMC remains quiet and healthy.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==

We voted to accept a new project, alike, a framework for searching similar
images/photos.

We voted to mark Monsoon as ‘completed’

== New Labs ==
alike

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 1
- status changes (last 3 months): 1
- total number: 40
 - active: 16
 - idle: 14
 - promoted: 3
 - completed: 7
- labs with commits: yay, alike

19 Sep 2012 [Tim Williams / Jim]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

A typically slow quarter for Labs. The PMC remains quiet and healthy.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==
We held a vote to change the status of Noggit to completed as it has moved
out of the Labs.

We voted to accept a new project, Mavibot, that is a pure Java
implementation of a MVCC B+Tree.

== New Labs ==
Mavibot

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 1
- status changes (last 3 months): 1
- total number: 39
 - active: 16
 - idle: 14
 - promoted: 3
 - completed: 6
- labs with commits: mavibot, magma, yay

20 Jun 2012 [Tim Williams / Rich]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

A typically slow quarter for Labs. The PMC remains quiet and healthy.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==

The Oak lab voted to change its status to complete.

The Noggit lab is moving out to another location (likely github) so
that it can do releases.  We are still needing to take care of
formality of actually changing its status.  The numbers part of this
report will reflect this next quarter after the formality is
completed.

We accepted and the board Ack'd Leo Simons resignation from the PMC.

We are currently in the midst of a vote on a new proposal to implement
a MVCC BTree in Java.

== New Labs ==
None.

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 0
- status changes (last 3 months): 1
- total number: 38
 - active: 15
 - idle: 15
 - promoted: 3
 - completed: 5
- labs with commits: magnet, yay

21 Mar 2012 [Tim Williams / Bertrand]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

A typically slow quarter for Labs. The PMC remains healthy.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==

As reported last quarter, the community was supportive of a proposal to the
Apache CMS.  We migrated over this quarter and are now using the CMS.

We had one lab, Oak, get started using Git.  It is currently in the midst of a
vote to complete.

Some housekeeping was done on our unix group membership to make it more
accurate.

== New Labs ==
None.

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 0
- status changes (last 3 months): 0
- total number: 38
 - active: 16
 - idle: 15
 - promoted: 3
 - completed: 4
- labs with commits: magnet, yay, oak

21 Dec 2011 [Tim Williams / Jim]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

A typically slow quarter for Labs. The PMC remains vital, though,
and loosely discusses different options for making Labs more attractive.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==

PMC Chair changed during the quarter.  We lost two PMC members during
the quarter, Bernd (berndf) and Yoav (yoavs) due to lack of time.  The
community continues to passively discuss ideas for generating more
interest in Labs.  There also continues to be some interest in using
Git but not enough energy to do anything about it.

The community was supportive of a proposal to move to the Apache CMS
and has created the appropriate directory structure and INFRA-4113 to
pursue.

== New Labs ==
Magnet (PI: Hadrian Zbarcea): Showcase of integrating various Apache
projects to produce a real life application. This project intends to
offer the practical ability of advertising ASF projects on various
channels with the intent of attracting new contributors and potential
committers.

Yay (PI: Tommaso Teofili): The Apache Yay library contains an API for
describing and implementing neural network based systems.

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 2
- status changes (last 3 months): 0
- total number: 38
 - active: 16
 - idle: 15
 - promoted: 3
 - completed: 4
- labs with commits: magnet, magma, noggit, yay, openelo

26 Oct 2011

Change the Apache Labs Chair

    WHEREAS, the Board of Directors heretofore appointed Bernd
    Fondermann to the office of Vice President, Apache Labs, and

    WHEREAS, the Board of Directors is in receipt of the resignation
    of Bernd Fondermann from the office of Vice President, Apache
    Labs, and

    WHEREAS, the Project Management Committee of the Apache Labs
    project has chosen by vote to recommend Tim Williams as the
    Successor to the post;

    NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that Bernd Fondermann is
    relieved and discharged from the duties and responsibilities of
    the office of Vice President, Apache Labs, and

    BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Tim Williams be and hereby is
    appointed to the office of Vice President, Apache Labs, to
    serve in accordance with and subject to the direction of the
    Board of Directors and the Bylaws of the Foundation until
    death, resignation, retirement, removal or disqualification, or
    until a successor is appointed.

 Resolution 7A was approved by unanimous roll call vote.

21 Sep 2011 [Bernd Fondermann / Roy]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

Again, a really slow quarter for Labs. The PMC remains vital, though,
and loosely discusses different options for making Labs more attractive.

[DETAILS]

== Community ==

Simone Tripodi was added as a new PMC member.

== New Labs ==

OpenELO (PI: Simone Tripodi): The Apache OpenELO library is a Java
implementation of the Elo Rating System
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system)

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 1
- status changes (last 3 months): 0
- total number: 36
 - active: 14
 - idle: 15
 - promoted: 3
 - completed: 4
- labs with commits: magma, jaxmas

15 Jun 2011 [Bernd Fondermann / Geir]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[STATUS]

Labs is in a kind of identity crisis, it seems. Activity around current
and new labs is low.

However, there might be hope. We recently had a very active public
discussion on labs@labs.apache.org about the project's future, where a
few constitutional cornerstones of Labs where put into question. That
said, not all is lost. My personal feeling is that we just need to
spread the word a little more to attract new lablings.

It's the PMC's task for the next quarter to work out what could be
changed and improved. There is also the perspective to go to the Attic
if no improvements can been achieved in the middle- to long-term
perspective.

Additionally, we are in the process of voting in a new PMC member.

[DETAILS]

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 0
- status changes (last 3 months): 0
- total number: 35
 - active: 13
 - idle: 15
 - promoted: 3
 - completed: 4
- labs with commits: magma, noggit

16 Mar 2011 [Bernd Fondermann / Sam]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[SUMMARY]

Labs activity has dropped considerably over the last quarters. This quarter
has seen an all-time low in commits and mailing list discussions.
Hopefully we can spawn new initiatives for Lab's renaissance in the
upcoming months.

[DETAILS]

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 0
- status changes (last 3 months): 1
- total number: 35
 - active: 13
 - idle: 15
 - promoted: 3
 - completed: 4
- labs with commits: jaxmas, magma, noggit

== Completed Labs ==

Axmake has changed its status to completed.

== Community ==

Very few activities.

Both Henri Yandell and Martin Cooper have resigned from the PMC.

No new Labs have been created over the last quarter.

A contribution on the ML for our "doapizer tool" has not received an answer
so far.

== Code ==

We only had 7 or so commits this quarter.

15 Dec 2010 [Bernd Fondermann / Doug]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[SUMMARY]

There has been moderate activity at Labs the last quarter.
What's especially significant is the lack of activity on the mailing list.
We re-iterate one issue to the board, please see below the last section of the report.

[DETAILS]

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 1
- status changes (last 3 months): 0
- total number: 35
 - active: 14
 - idle: 15
 - promoted: 3
 - completed: 3
- labs with commits: axmake, magma, jaxmas, oak, pulse, monsoon, agora

== New Labs =

monsoon (PI: Florian Moga): Monsoon offers implementations of the Websocket protocol
according to the latest IETF drafts.
P.S. oak (PI: Jukka Zitting): oak was new last quarter. I'd like to mention that this
lab acts as a test for using git as a repository. Jukka is also active within infra,
and I trust him to involve them as needed.

== (No) Releases ==

In the last report we had one question, but nobody came back to us after the
meeting.  So, probably the question was not properly posed. Let me try again:
Are we ok with PIs taking their lab's code and release it without endorsement
from the ASF?  Say, I have a lab called 'floodgate' and want to release it as
"Floodgate Project 1.0" on my own website open-floodgate.org.  Would that be
ok?

Thanks for any feedback.

Labs has asked the board to comment on whether it is permitted for code from a Lab project to be released with no endorsement by the ASF?

The consensus is that it's ok as long as the license and branding requirements are met. What we don't want is for the ASF to lose rights to names of lab projects if the code is distributed and then comes into the incubator.

AI: Shane prepare guidelines for release of Labs projects.

22 Sep 2010 [Bernd Fondermann / Greg]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[SUMMARY]

There has been moderate activity at Labs in the last quarter.
The PMC took care of stati for labs which saw no activity for a long time.
We present one issue to the board, please see below.

[DETAILS]

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 2
- status changes (last 3 months): 14 (see 'Housekeeping')
- total number: 34
 - active: 12
 - idle: 15
 - promoted: 3
 - completed: 3
- labs with commits: magma, penihip, jaxMas, mouse

== New Labs =

oak (PI: Jukka Zitting): No, not a re-implementation of ancient Java, but
"HTTP-based hierarchical resource store", written in JS and Clojure.
Mouse (PI: Hyrum Wright): A light-weight license checker and release audit
tool (similar to RAT).

== Re-activated labs ==

None.

== Housekeeping, Status changes ==

During the last quarter, we identified all labs with no activity for at least
one year. We notified their PIs and - after a vote - changed all their stati
to idle, if the PI hadn't himself already taking care of this. This is why we
see a lot of labs going to 'idle' this quarter.
Here's the list:
errbase, dworker, mboxer, dislocate, speedyfeed, apiary, agora, nucleus,
discordia, boardcast,  webarch,  badca, clouds, pinpoint

We fixed some DOAP files, too.

== Status overview page ==

Tim Williams coded a script to generate a nice labs status overview[2].

== Community ==

We welcome Tim Williams to the PMC.

== (No) Releases ==

A lab can't do a release, and we all accept and understand this. More precisely,
according to the project's bylaws, the PMC can't vote on a release.
On the other hand, committers working on a lab might want to cut releases,
either for use outside of the ASF, or simply to signal a certain level of
maturity to attract others to the project. For me this makes perfectly sense.
I don't think it makes sense to work on a lab without ever wanting to make other
people aware of it and make them use it in one way or the other.
So it was discussed on our dev ML[1] if private releases are a way to do this,
meaning the PI or any other person takes the code, tars it up and calls it a
release, without having a Lab PMC vote, and without tagging it "Apache".
Now, we'd like to hear the board's general position on this topic, especially
any corner cases and gotchas we have to take into account.
Thanks for any feedback.

== Lab hacking ==

Same as last quarter: Development activity was low last quarter, mailing list
conversations on coding-related topics practically non-existent.

[1] http://s.apache.org/X2M
[2] http://s.apache.org/labs_tim

If labs want to make a release, then they can join the incubator and try to build a community around the code. AI Greg discuss this with lab folks.

16 Jun 2010 [Bernd Fondermann / Brett]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[SUMMARY]

Activity at Labs has been very low last quarter.

[DETAILS]

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 1
- status changes (last 3 months): 1
- total number: 32
 - active: 25
 - idle: 1
 - promoted: 3
 - completed: 3
- labs with commits: magma, pulse, noggit, axmake

== New Labs =

axmake (PI: Mladen Turk): "Advanced XML based native make system"

== Re-activated labs ==

None. Noggit saw 2 tiny commits, the first ones since Dec 2008.

== Completed labs ==

Last quarter's report noted the creation of the Amber Lab. Right after
it's inception it was taken to the Incubator, without any real dev
activity here, except discussions.
Therefore, I now count this lab under 'promoted'.

== Community ==

The following statement relates to recent debates about how connected
(or not) projects are to the Foundation:

I think that Labs is well aware of the Apache way and overall can be
described as connected to the ASF. For example, the PMC consists mostly
of very experienced ASF members.  However, due to the special nature of
Lab projects being mostly solitary endeavors, I don't observe a
particular strong bonding amongst committers and - even more - amongst
the PMC.
This leads to the fact that our community (if you want to call it that)
is not very close with each other.  Looking at the sustainability of
each lab, it seems like they either move on early (mostly to Incubation)
or dry out sooner than later. This "sourceforge" effect, where most
projects stall and only a very small portion prospers, could've been
(and probably was) expected at Labs inception.
What's missing is two or three people actively overseeing labs (commits,
lab status, bugging PIs to post updates to the ML, promoting Labs on
blogs and elsewhere).

== Lab hacking ==

Development activity was low last quarter, mailing list conversations
practically non-existent.

Shane to send a note to Apache Labs re: possibility of internal outreach or assistance by Community Development.

17 Mar 2010 [Bernd Fondermann / Brett]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[SUMMARY]

Activity in Labs was low but steady in last quarter.
Nothing requiring special board attention this time.

[DETAILS]

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 1
- status changes (last 3 months): 0
- total number: 31
 - active: 25
 - idle: 1
 - promoted: 2
 - completed: 3
- labs with commits: magma, fluid, clouds, amber, pulse

== New Labs =

amber (PI: Simone Tripodi): "A Java development framework mainly aimed
to build OAuth-aware applications" This lab aims to be a from-scratch
re-implementation of a software the PI has been involved in before.

== Re-activated labs ==

None.

== Completed labs ==

None.

== Community ==

Nothing requiring board attention.

== Lab hacking ==

We had two commits for Lab fluid attributed to multiple non-committers
(r886691, r886729).

It wasn't clear which contributions came from the PI or other people
and the PI was unwilling to supply this information in detail and
split commits into appropriately attributed pieces and re-commit.  So
finally, the PMC reached consensus and removed this code from
svn. Unfortunately, this resulted in a frustrated PI.

16 Dec 2009 [Bernd Fondermann / Brett]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[SUMMARY]

Overall a quiet quarter with business-as-usual at Apache Labs.

[DETAILS]

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 0
- status changes (last 3 months): 1
 - hupa (promoted)
- total number: 30
 - active: 24
 - idle: 1
 - promoted: 2
 - completed: 3
- labs with commits: hupa, magma, jaxmas, consite, dungeon, fluid

== New Labs =

UPnPSpread (PI: Norman Maurer): The vote for creating this lab has succeeded,
but the lab has not been created yet.

== Re-activated labs ==

None.

== Completed labs ==

Hupa (PI: Norman Maurer) moved as a subproject to Apache JAMES.

== Community ==

Nothing remarkable.

== Lab hacking ==

Nothing remarkable.

23 Sep 2009 [Bernd Fondermann / Justin]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[SUMMARY]

Nothing that requires board attention.

[DETAILS]

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 3
- status changes (last 3 months): 1
 - bananadb (completed)
- total number: 30
 - active: 25
 - idle: 1
 - promoted: 1
 - completed: 3
- labs with commits: magma, clouds, penihip, hupa, bananadb, esqueranto,
  mboxed, consite, jaxmas
 (this is a new per-quarter all-time high)

== New Labs =

Hupa (PI: Norman Mauerer):
"Hupa is GWT based Webmail for IMAP-Servers."

Esqueranto (PI Tim Williams):
"An antlr lexer/parser grammar for CQL and related tree grammars for
concrete search implementations (e.g. Lucene)."

mboxed (PI Paul Querna):
"Uses standard MBox files and indexes to display mail archives."
This Lab has been voted on last year and has now been created in SVN where a
proper doap.rdf can be found (which was missing from the original request.)

Tupplur (PI Karl Wettin):
"CouchDB ORM for Java."
This lab has been successfully requested, but not been created yet, so it's
not included in the statistics.

== Re-activated labs ==

None.

== Completed labs ==

BananaDB (PI Karl Wettin) has been completed.

== Community ==

Simone Gianni was voted on the PMC.

On one or two occasions we failed to respond in time to on-list questions or
lab request. With growing a PMC which includes active PIs, I hope those
kinds of situations will be diminished.

== Lab hacking ==

Magma again saw many commits this quarter and is actively seeking to grow
community. Hupa has become very active, too and is thinking about leaving
Labs to Apache JAMES.

17 Jun 2009 [Bernd Fondermann / Greg]

Apache Labs hosts small and emerging projects from ASF committers.

[SUMMARY]

Nothing that requires board attention at this time.

[DETAILS]

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 3
- status changes (last 3 months): 2
 - orthrus (moved to Google Code)
 - vysper (moved to Apache MINA)
- total number: 27
 - active: 23
 - idle: 1
 - promoted: 1
 - completed: 2
- labs with commits: bananadb, orthrus, magma, vysper, pinpoint, consite,
 clouds, penihip

== New Labs =

clouds (PI Steve Loughran):
This is a special lab. It's not about code. It's about documentation of
cloud related projects at Apache and provides general cloud info. Besides
Steve, Robert Burrell Donkin is a major contributor to it. In Clouds' own
words, its about "Architecture, tools and tests for integrating Apache
products into to 'the cloud'".

consite (PI J. Aaron Farr):
consite is about "conference website management". The lab consists of "a
web application for managing apachecons".

penihip (PI David Crossley):
penihip is a tool generating "new words by applying a caesar cipher to
existing words".

== Re-activated labs ==

None.

== Completed labs ==

Orthrus (PI Paul Querna) has moved out of the ASF realm over to Google Code.

Vysper lab (PI Bernd Fondermann) has been completed. Apache MINA voted to
take it aboard as a subproject. Code and issues are already moved over,
with confluence pages still to be done.

== Outreach ==

There was a proposal to use the new blogging facilities to tell about new
labs and maybe have a 'Lab of the Month' entry once in a while. Not much
feedback on this.

== Labs & Google Summer of Code ==

It has been discussed whether or not Labs can have GSoC students. The
concern was that Labs does not provide a sufficient environment for
mentoring and learning Open Source 'The Apache Way'. In the end, this also
became the general consent. For reference: A substantial part of that
discussion has taken place on the committer-only code-awards@a.o. list.

For the Vysper lab (which already received interest from students at that
point) we compromised to let it take students as a lab, if only the lab
would move out immediately to some of the other projects where community is
more homogeneous. This destination has now become Apache MINA.

Michael Jakl gained a GSoC student slot for the Vysper lab for implementing
the PubSub extension spec.

== Lab hacking ==

Magma again saw many commits this months.
Clouds received a number of contributions to its confluence pages.

18 Mar 2009 [Bernd Fondermann / Greg]

Labs is an open space for committer's coding experiments.

Business-as-usual in the past quarter here at Labs, without anything
requiring board attention.

== Labs Statistics ==

last 3 months:
- new: 1
- status changes: 0
- labs with commits: magma, vysper, BananaDB, noggit, orthrus

all-time:
- total number: 24
 - active: 22
 - idle: 1
 - promoted: 1
 - completed: 0

== New or Reactivated Labs ==

BananaDB (PI Karl Wettin) was started in January. It is about a
"Filesystem based hashtable, living in the filesystem rather than in
RAM. Aims at becoming a general embedded key/value pair DB with
transactions, secondary indices and annotational API."

Orthrus (PI Paul Querna) became alive. Substantial code was committed
to its svn trunk.

== Small and mature projects ==

A very interesting discussion spun up[1] about where small (in terms
of code, features and community) and mature (in terms of features,
code quality and thus releasability) projects would have a place here
at ASF.

The consensus was that there currently is none, while there was no
consensus if that is good or bad and what might be a solution to it.

== Lab hacking ==

Magma still busy in terms of commits and JIRAs. Other labs saw more
selective development.

== GSoC09 ==

The Vysper Lab is reaching out for GSoC09 students with one proposal [2].

[1] http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/labs-labs/200902.mbox/%3C4999223E.9040601@apache.org%3E
[2] http://wiki.apache.org/general/SummerOfCode2009#vysper-project

Looks like Vysper is shaping up for incubation.

17 Dec 2008 [Bernd Fondermann / Geir]

After a busy start, the last quarter ended rather quiet.

At first, many thanks to Stefano Mazzocchi, Labs initiator, inventor and
first PMC chair who resigned in September, for his great work on this
project. He promised to stick around and that's very good news.
Handing over PMC chair duties went seamlessly.

== Labs Statistics ==

- new: 0
- status changes (last 3 months): 1
 - Droids (promoted to Incubator)
- total number: 23
 - active: 21
 - idle: 1
 - promoted: 1
 - completed: 0
- labs with commits: droids, magma, vysper

== Promotion to Incubator ==

I am happy to report that Droids (PI Thorsten Scherler) moved on to the
Incubator, becoming the first lab to do this, after the lab already
gained traction in the previous reporting period. Thorsten did a great
job in transisioning the lab, both in exploring and finding consent how
to do it. People from Lucene and HttpComponents helped making the move a
success.

Thorsten (on 2008-10-29) triggered a discussion if labs should be
allowed to move not only to Incubator but alternatively as a subproject
to an already existing TLP without going through Incubator first. The
discussion faded after a few people had commented without any resolution
or vote. I don't see this as an urgent issue. We can re-visit this topic
as soon as a lab wants to take this route.

== Lab hacking ==

Magma saw many commits and JIRAs. PI Simone Gianni is the only
committer, others participated via JIRA, but nobody contributed code, as
far as I can see.
Vysper had some commits, too. Nobody contributed on-list, in svn or JIRA
besides PI Bernd Fondermann.

== New Labs ==

No new lab to report.
Failed lab inception: Paul Querna proposed a new lab 'mboxed' (not to be
confused with already existing lab 'mboxer'). The proposal received a
warm welcome. But since the proposal lacked a DOAP file and there is no
related activity anywhere on Labs to be seen, this lab has not yet been
established.

== Crypto ==

Crypto notices: Two labs use cryptographic software, BaDCA and Vysper.
Both have crypto notes in place in their SVN trunk root. Notes have also
been added at the proper place at incubator/site, so I am left to send
out the appropriate emails for both products.

We thank Bernd for relentlessly pursuing the issue of Crypto code hiding within the Labs.

17 Sep 2008

Change the Apache Labs Project Chair

 WHEREAS, the Board of Directors heretofore appointed Stefano Mazzocchi
 to the office of Vice President, Apache Labs, and

 WHEREAS, the Board of Directors is in receipt of the resignation of
 Stefano Mazzocchi from the office of Vice President, Apache
 Labs, and

 WHEREAS, the Project Management Committee of the Apache Labs
 project has chosen by vote to recommend Bernd Fondermann as the
 successor to the post;

 NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that Stefano Mazzocchi is relieved and
 discharged from the duties and responsibilities of the office of Vice
 President, Apache Labs, and

 BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Bernd Fondermann be and hereby is
 appointed to the office of Vice President, Apache Labs, to
 serve in accordance with and subject to the direction of the Board of
 Directors and the Bylaws of the Foundation until death, resignation,
 retirement, removal or disqualification, or until a successor is
 appointed.

 Special Order 7A, Change the Apache Labs Project Chair, was
 approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present.

17 Sep 2008 [Stefano Mazzocchi / Bill]

It was a mostly quiet quarter for the Labs project with two or three
highlights worth noting.

= Labs statistics =

- new: 2
 - JaxMas (est. 2008-07, PI: Jochen Wiedmann)
 - Magma (est. 2008-09, PI: Simone Gianni)
- status changes (last 3 months): 0
- total number: 23
- active: 22
- idle: 1
- promoted: 0
- completed: 0
- labs with commits: pinpoint, droid, vysper, jaxmas

= Cryptography =

We asked every lab for information about whether it includes
cryptographic software. It is still an open work item to complete this
process by recording this information at the right places and issue
notification emails.

= Change to the PMC chair =

On the public list, Stefano Mazzocchi announced his intention to step
down as PMC chair due to time restrictions. New candidate(s) were
drafted and finally Bernd Fondermann was voted as PMC chair candidate on
the public list. A special order draft to change the PMC chair was
brought before the board for your kind consideration.

= New labs =

A new lab, JaxMas, was conceived by Jochen Wiedmann. JaxMas is a "poor
mans JAXR provider for running JAXR based unit tests". Another new lab,
Magma, was concieved by Simone Gianni. Magma is a "research about using
AOP on the front line to provide an integration framework for Apache
technologies"

= Droids planning to move out =

Lab Droids (est. 2007-02, PI: Thorsten Scherler) is considering moving
on to the Incubator. Currently, the lab is preparing incubation,
including drafting a proposal at the Incubator Wiki and looking for a
champion and mentors. We are very excited about that, since providing an
ecosystem for projects on the way from the first line of code until
incubation is one of the goals of the Labs project, and Droids - if
successful - would be the first lab to follow this path ultimately. Some
discussion came up, here and on the Incubator's general list, about the
process how to proceed with labs aiming to become a project's
subproject, instead of going TLP. According to our bylaws, going through
the Incubator is inevitable. And the Incubator surely is the right place
to determine how to properly deal with that.

Bill notes that all crypto source code is subject to notification and export control, not simply "released" code

25 Jun 2008 [Stefano Mazzocchi / Justin]

The labs project has very little to report.

There are only a few labs that currently receive attentions from their
sponsoring committers (basically Droids, a web crawler, and Vysper,
an XMPP server) and there has been no lab proposed since the last report.

There have been tentative talks about how to go about promoting a lab
into incubation (in relation to Vysper) but no action has yet to come
out of that.

Overall, as far as the board is concerned, labs is a sleepy harmless project.

19 Mar 2008 [Stefano Mazzocchi / Bill]

There is nothing much to report about labs that needs the board's attention.
No lab has yet to exit its status and transition into incubation even if at
least one lab (Droid) is already thinking about doing it.

There are a handful of labs that receive attention from their maintainers
and many others that just sit there. It is worth noting that this was expected
and this is nothing that concerns me or the labs population in general and I
don't think it should concern the board either.

There was a discussion about starting a lab to document guidelines for version
control systems, mostly about the difference between centralized and
distributed version control systems, but it was decided that
infrastructure-dev@ was a better place to have such discussions, if only
because the lab population was afraid of saturating the single labs@ mailing
list with lots of heated and subjective discussions about version control
styles.

Other than that, labs remains a quiet project simply cruising along and no
signs of anything that would require board attention.

19 Dec 2007 [Stefano Mazzocchi / Bill]

All it's quiet in Apache Labs.

Some of the labs have some more or less steady activity and a few have
more than one people working on it, but nothing that has yet reached the
point of requiring action on the evolution of the lab.

 - o -

One interesting lab that somewhat differs from all the others is Roy's
Webarch (http://labs.apache.org/webarch/) which is now being used as
input for the work of the HTTP next-gen IETF working group.

I was, in fact, very positively surprised to see a reference to
labs.apache.org from various blog posts on the future of HTTP and I like
the fact that such links give credibility to labs.

I feel the need to outline, though, that the "no release" rule for labs
was created to avoid people from using labs as a way to route around the
incubator, yet 'code-less' labs are able, in fact, to 'release' their
own documentation artifacts, without oversight or the need for a
community around the effort.

That said, I'm only outlining the existence of such issue but I do not
think this is currently creating a problem: the Webarch pages reflect
the labs.apache.org style and in doing so clearly mark the work as
'experimental' or 'researchy', which is very similar than people
publishing stuff on their people.apache.org/~user/ pages and creates a
level of distance between any official apache position and the pages,
even if they are served off of *.apache.org domains.

Let me repeat: I think that Webarch and code-less labs are a *good
thing* and should be encouraged in any way possible, as long as the
product of their effort is clearly marked as coming from a lab (which is
the case for Webarch) and not used as a way to abuse the apache branding
to give resonance to an individual committer's effort.

I'm just mentioning this so that both labs@ and board@ consider this
food for thought and in no way I want such food for thought endanger the
ability to use labs in the way Roy has done... but it's my duty, as PMC
chair, to report changes in the project evolution that might require, in
the future, board attention that this is the closest thing to that (even
if, right now, does not require any action from any part and it's
unlikely that it will require any in the future either).

Approved by General Consent.

19 Sep 2007 [Stefano Mazzocchi / Bill]

The activity on Apache Labs is small but steady. There are no community
issues and no things that the board should be concerned about.

The number of labs continue to grow at the rate of one/two every month
and most of them sit there silently doing nothing or having bursts of
individual activity.

We have yet to see a lab that has been capable of attracting development
from anybody but their primary sponsor and so we remain far from the
"graduation concerns" that we might face if such a pickup would take place.

Overall, even with its small and spotty activity, it is general
consensus that labs provides a necessary substrate for
individual-oriented project-seed nursing that would otherwise be lost or
exit the apache community radar.

At the same time, it is my personal opinion (as I cannot gather hard
evidence of that) that the impossibility of releasing artifacts and the
vague and unbeaten path of lab graduation prevents many of our
committers to choose labs for their seed development.

Not necessarily a bad thing, but worth noting.

Would any of our labs graduate to become a more 'real' project (and show
how painful/straightforward that would be), I suspect others might find
labs more/less appealing for their own individual developments.

Thank you.

Approved by General Consent.

20 Jun 2007 [Stefano Mazzocchi / Henning]

In a nutshell: very low activity around the Apache Labs and nothing that
concerns board attention.

On the positive side, the diversity of ideas and technologies used in
the labs is much broader than on the foundation in general (ranging from
a OWL reasoner written in Mercury to an XMPP server, from a fast json
serializer to an atom optimizer).

The current number of labs is 14 and growing slowly. You can see the
list and the timeline of labs creation at the labs web site
(http://labs.apache.org)

Approved by General Consent.

28 Mar 2007 [Stefano Mazzocchi / Greg]

Labs have been very quiet lately, nothing really changed that requires
board attention.

[Addendum]

We hear confusion has arisen about the purpose of the Labs project.
It has been suggested that it is the aim of the Labs project to
replace any sandbox efforts of individual projects.  As the board has
already concluded, this is not the case. Labs VP Stefano Mazzocchi's
introductory e-mail was quite clear on the intent and purpose of
Labs.  Additionally, the Labs PMC has added an entry to the FAQ list
on labs.apache.org addressing this issue, and will continually dispel
any such notion should it arise in the future.

and the FAQ reads:

"Q: Now that we have Labs, can our project still have a Sandbox?

 A: Of course you can. Apache Labs do not replace the project
    sandboxes.  Instead, the Labs were designed to allow individual
    Apache committers room to experiment outside the constraints of an
    existing project."

Approved by General Consent.

21 Feb 2007 [Stefano Mazzocchi / Jim]

Not much activity lately. A few new labs were added, but nothing that
requires specific board attention.

It is worth mentioning, though, that while it is pretty silly to
forecast the evolution of a new project by its first few months
(especially one that diverges from our established and well known
dynamics), it is not unforeseeable that the number of apache labs might
continue and their activity will be distributed according to a power
law, meaning that very few labs will attract attention and grow in
traffic/energy, while a large tail will maintain a rare and occasional
bust of activity, mostly from their respective PIs.

And since we are designed to turn those few, high energy labs into
incubated projects, labs is probably destined to have a high number of
low-energy efforts going.

Justin shared with the board the fact that he had been told by some that Labs was really intended to replace a PMC's sandbox (where the Lab is a new branch of an existing project - i.e. related to an existing project). He indicated that this was not his understanding. The board agreed; this was not and is not the purpose for Labs. Jim will follow up with Stefano to see what can be done to make this clear.

Approved by General Consent.

17 Jan 2007 [Stefano Mazzocchi / Jim]

We have added a few more labs and we are now at 8, with 2 being under
vote right now.

The language/OS/committership is diverse and the community is healthy
and attracting attention from all sides of the foundation. The
'neutrality' feeling that we wanted to inspire seems to be reflected in
the community participation and in the diversity of
technologies/prog-languages used in the various labs.

There seems to be a cluster of interest in 'mail list' analysis (my
Agora, Brett Porter's Mboxer and the proposed Pulse which is Ken's code
that currently graphs the mail list usages) and, as Santiago put it,
it's nice to see 'loosely coupled pieces' coming together in different labs.

Personally, I think that putting loosely coupled pieces close together
and see what happens was one of the reasons to start labs in the first
place and the lack of friction seems to indicate that the effort is
successful in bringing a little unity to otherwise personal efforts.
It's hard to see at this point what evolution these pieces will undergo,
but it's promising to see labs becoming a center of attraction for such
"otherwise left on one's hard drive" efforts.

Another interesting thing to note is Roy's request for a "web
architecture lab", currently under vote, that is the first "code-less"
lab proposed. As 'code-less' labs came up during the discussion for the
creation of Apache Labs and nobody mentioned reasons to avoid them, it's
safe to assume that it will pass (no negative votes from the PMC at this
time). Then, it will be interesting to see how such lab evolves and
weather this will inspire others to do similar things in other areas.

No social or legal issues to report, the list has been relatively quiet
during the xmas vacations but I suspect more traction will appear with
the new year.

From the infra@ side, labs still don't have a zone, but since there is
not much interest for it right now from the labs PIs, we see no reason,
at this time, to push more for it.

In short, no actions are required from the board.

Approved by General Consent.

20 Dec 2006 [Stefano Mazzocchi / Dirk]

The Apache Labs project was created Nov 18, 2006 and so far we have 6
labs that were created and one lab that was proposed, got negative
feedback from a few PMC members and the lab proponent decided to
withdraw the proposition.

The negative votes were due to the fact that some of the PMC members
believed that the proposed codebase didn't fit the labs charter because
it was an already established codebase (not released but already used in
production) and that the lab proponent was explicitly looking for ways
to engage a bigger community. It was proposed that the incubator was
better suited for that kind of activity.

It is worth mentioning, though, that there seems to be a perceptual gap
between labs and the incubator and such proposal made it very explicit:
the incubator is perceived, by some committers, as a very heavy-weight
social ecosystem, poorly fitted to transition a committer one-man-show
into a open development community.

While it is not something that Labs can fix, it is something that
graduating labs will have to confront and it is useful for the board to
realize that an impedance mismatch between the planned evolutionary work
flow for a lab and the reality of committers perception exists.

Whether or not this is going to change as a few graduating labs go thru
this process is hard to predict, but in the realm of possibilities.

From a technological note, the labs are already exhibiting a wide range
of technologies (C, java, python, javascript).

From an organizational point of view, each lab has its own DOAP
descriptor. We also wrote a little DOAPizer tool[1] to help the
submission process. We have not have any complains about such
requirements as lab PIs don't seem to mind the existing 'metadata tax'.

From a charter point of view, it has been vocally suggested that the 'no
releases' restriction should be lifted because it makes it substantially
harder for labs to gather attention.

Again, labs seem to be perceived as a better fit than the incubator for
projects that want to attract more usage and developers, but labs is
really about research, rather than community building. I have personally
stated that I'm not going to allow a re-evaluation of the charting rules
before at least 12 months time, time that would allow us to understand
better what is really a problem and what is just a committer's
perception. This seems to have stabilized this matter, at least for now.

On a PR/publishing point of view, a lot of effort went into making sure
that the labs.apache.org[2] web site look modern, fresh, fast and it was
very easy for a distributed group to maintain. There is already evidence
that people like the site and find it easy to modify and adjust. There
is still work to do in the automation of web pages generation from DOAP
descriptors, but given the current number of labs, there is no hurry and
we will let things emerge organically.

From an infrastructure point of view, the infrastructure was created
timely, the only problem was the creation of the solaris zone that is
still not available and we don't have an ETA on that.

I've seen the same thing happening for Harmony and I wonder if we are
running out of resources for zones. I think it would be worthwhile for
the board to have a clear understanding of the project zone situation.
If/when the board has such understanding, it would be useful for it to
be reported back to the projects asking for zones and currently on hold.

[1] http://labs.apache.org/doapizer.html
[2] http://labs.apache.org/

Justin noted that there was discussion on-list about the technical tradeoffs of the current zone policy, but it was agreed that there was no need for the board to interfere at this point.

Approved by General Consent.

15 Nov 2006

Establishing the Apache Labs project

  WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it to be in the best
  interests of the Foundation and consistent with the
  Foundation's purpose to establish a Project Management
  Committee charged with the creation and maintenance of
  innovation labs where committers of the foundation can
  experiment with new ideas without the burden of
  community building; and

  WHEREAS, the Board of Directors believes that innovation is
  a powerful and necessary resource to promote and maintain
  inside the foundation; and

  WHEREAS, the Board of Directors understands that research
  efforts are intrinsically associated with a higher mortality
  rate that don't match the already established
  incubation and development practices.

  NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that a Project Management
  Committee (PMC), to be known as Apache Labs, be
  and hereby is established pursuant to Bylaws of the Foundation;
  and be it further

  RESOLVED, that Apache Labs be and hereby is responsible
  for the maintenance and oversight of topic-oriented innovation
  labs for foundation committers to use; and be it
  further

  RESOLVED, that Apache Labs is responsible for promoting
  innovation without discrimination of purpose, medium or
  implementation technology; and be it further

  RESOLVED, that Apache Labs is responsible for regularly
  evaluating labs under its purview and making the determination
  in each case of whether the lab should be terminated,
  continue to receive support and oversight, or proposed to
  the incubator as seed for a new project; and be it further

  RESOLVED, that the office of Vice President, Apache Labs be and
  hereby is created, the person holding such office to serve at
  the direction of the Board of Directors as the chair of the
  Labs PMC, and to have primary responsibility for management of
  the projects within the scope of responsibility of the Apache
  Labs PMC; and be it further

  RESOLVED, that the persons listed immediately below be and
  hereby are appointed to serve as the initial members of the
  Apache Labs PMC:

   * Stefano Mazzocchi <stefano@apache.org>
   * Santiago Gala <sgala@apache.org>
   * Yoav Shapira <yoavs@apache.org>
   * Gregor Rothfuss <gregor@apache.org>
   * J Aaron Farr <farra@apache.org>
   * Brett Porter <brett@apache.org>
   * Leo Simons <leosimons@apache.org>
   * Bertrand Delacretaz <bdelacretaz@apache.org>
   * Reinhard Poetz <reinhard@apache.org>
   * Henri Yandell <bayard@apache.org>
   * Garrett Rooney <rooneg@apache.org>
   * Ted Leung <twl@apache.org>
   * Erik Abele <erikabele@apache.org>
   * Sander Temme <sctemme@apache.org>
   * Martin Cooper <martinc@apache.org>
   * Jukka Zitting <jukka@apache.org>
   * Niall Pemberton <niallp@apache.org>
   * Graham Leggett <minfrin@apache.org>
   * Scott Sanders <sanders@apache.org>
   * Noel J. Bergman <noel@apache.org>
   * Geir Magnusson Jr <geirm@apache.org>
   * Danny Angus <danny@apache.org>

  NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Stefano Mazzocchi
  be appointed to the office of Vice President, Apache Labs, to
  serve in accordance with and subject to the direction of the
  Board of Directors and the Bylaws of the Foundation until
  death, resignation, retirement, removal or disqualification,
  or until a successor is appointed; and be it further

  RESOLVED, that the initial Labs PMC will be governed by the
  bylaws attached to this proposal, and that it will continue
  to maintain and adapt such bylaws to maximize its goals
  and minimize eventual negative impact on the rest of the
  foundation.

  See Attachment W for the Apache Labs Bylaws

 Special Order 6B, Establishing the Apache Labs project, was
 approved by Unanimous Vote.

15 Nov 2006

                  Apache Labs Bylaws
                  ------------------

 Executive Summary
 -----------------

The Apache Software Foundation is well known for its motto
"community is more important than code" and has designed
its incubation facilities accordingly.

While healthy and diverse open development communities
provide a very efficient solution for self-sustaining,
long-lasting and well-adapting software development
practices, the creation and bootstrap of such community
is normally a long and emotionally expensive process.

Moreover, in order to provide a seed to grow and ground
discussions on technical levels, the ASF incubation rules
require the "podlings" to join the incubation process with
an established and working codebase.

While this is a tremendous benefit for the incubator (because
setting the bar high avoids it to have to do the filtering and
dissipating the negative energy that would develop in such a
process), it also implies that the ability for the ASF to
"innovate" is left at the top level projects that graduated
out of incubation.

Several of these projects provide places for their committers to
work on innovative ideas (these are normally called "sandboxes"
or "whiteboards"). Unfortunately, such efforts are constrained by
the project bylaws, which can limit the degree of innovation
that such efforts can exhibit.

Apache Labs are the place where ASF committers can work on
innovative, blue-sky and off-the-wall ideas, without having to
worry about fitting in an existing project bylaw or building a
community around it, but unlike other external venues that
can offer similar hosting services, as a place where fellow
committers can offer suggestions and help.



 Guidelines
 ----------

 - The Apache Labs project infrastructure is composed of the
   following parts:

    o) a zone
    o) a virtual host (http://labs.apache.org/)
    o) a SVN repository (http://svn.apache.org/asf/repos/labs/)
    o) three mailing lists
         - labs@labs.apache.org
         - commits@labs.apache.org (this receives the svn commits diffs)
         - private@labs.apache.org
    o) a lab registry (a collection of machine-readable descriptors)

 - Every ASF committer has both read and write access to the entire
   Labs SVN repository.

 - Everybody can subscribe and post messages to "labs@labs.apache.org".
   Posters are suggested to use '[labname]' prefix in their
   email subjects to give proper context to the email threads.

 - Everybody can subscribe to "commits@labs.apache.org", but only
   automated agents can post to it (svn commit diffs, cron jobs, etc..).

 - The Labs PMC members (and all ASF members)
   can subscribe and post to private@labs.apache.org,
   everybody else can post but their messages will be moderated.

 - Every ASF committer can ask for one or more labs. The creation of
   the lab requires a PMC lazy consensus vote
   (at least three +1 and no -1, 72 hours).

 - If approved, the ASF committer will create the lab on his/her own
   and register the lab's descriptor in the lab registry. The
   committer that asks for the lab becomes known as that lab's PI
   (principal investigator). The PI is the sole responsible
   for keeping their lab descriptor up-to-date. Failure to do so
   can result in lab completion.

 - Labs are prohibited from making releases.

 - The Labs PMC will not ask for commit access for people that
   are not already ASF committers.

 - The Labs PMC will not ask for lab-specific mail lists.

 - Each Labs PMC member can resign at any time. The PMC can elect
   another ASF committer as Labs PMC member at any time. Only ASF
   committers can become members of the Labs PMC. The elected ASF
   committer reserves the right to reject the nomination without
   justification.

 - A Lab PI can resign and select another committer as PI just by
   communicating so to the PMC. It becomes effective if the new PI
   accepts.

 - The Apache Labs will welcome existing lab-like efforts (sandboxes,
   whiteboards) from existing ASF TLPs to become labs.

 - Changes to the Apache Labs bylaws require a 2/3 vote from the PMC
   members.



 Lab Lifecycle
 -------------

 - A lab can have four states:

     o  Active
         [activity is happening]

     o  Idle
         [activity is paused but
          it will be resumed in the future]

     o Promoted
         [lab started incubation]

     o Completed
         [activity has been completed and
          unlikely to resume in the future]

 - The lab PI can change the state of the lab from 'active' to 'idle'
   and back at any time, just by updating the descriptor.

 - The Labs PMC can change the state of a lab with a majority vote.

 - In any vote when a lab state is changed, and in such votes only,
   the lab's PI's vote will be counted along with the PMC members'
   to form majority.

 - When a lab is "idled", the descriptor is changed accordingly and a
   boilerplate disclaimer is placed in the README file.

 - When a lab is re-"activated", the descriptor is changed accordingly
   and a the boilerplate disclaimer is removed from the README file.

 - When a lab is "promoted", the files are moved over to the
   incubation area.

 - When a lab is "completed", the lab is archived and removed from SVN.



 Guidelines Rationale
 --------------------

The voting guidelines are not established to induce rigid process,
but rather to avoid that a single negative vote can act as a veto. We
expect that most votes will resolve themselves with lazy consensus
(three +1 and no -1). In case a -1 appears, it is good practice to
try to reach a compromise that results in the removal of such -1. In
case such a  compromise cannot be reached, the majority vote takes
place. Established social practices throughout the foundation suggest
that such cases are very rare.

The reason why the lab PI is included in the 'state change' vote is to
act as arbiter in case the PMC is undecided. It also gives the feeling
of participating in the decision-making process.

The reason why the Labs PMC has the power to vote a 'state change' even
if the lab PI is in disagreement is to allow the PMC to promote those
labs that become too active even if the labs PI and participants would
rather stay in the labs.

The reason why the Labs PMC has to perform a lazy vote on the
establishment of a lab is to provide oversight with a minimal overhead.
Such oversight is meant to avoid the abuse of labs as 'personal backups'
or 'dumping grounds', which would be off-topic in the Labs' mission,
or use labs as a way to 'fork' existing efforts and route around
incubation practices. It also allows the PMC to allow labs only if
they have a functional machine-readable descriptor, which allows the
automation of the information gathering about the labs.

The reason why the Labs PMC cannot create new mailing lists or institute
new committers is to avoid labs to become a way for people to 'route
around' the incubator (and also to avoid add more work to
'infrastructure')

The reason why Labs are prohibited from making releases is to simplify
operation and avoid the legal oversight associated with the release
process and to avoid labs from becoming ways to 'route around' the
incubator.

The reason why Labs have a fixed number of mailing list is to force
people to watch over other's people's shoulders, to avoid mail-list
creation load on infrastructure and to provide a comfort threshold that
successful labs can easily trigger as an indicator that they might be
ready for promotion into the incubator.

The reason why all committers have write-access to all labs is to avoid
adding infrastructure costs and to simplify collaboration. The use of
version control, the selected nature of committership and the existence
of a single communication channel guarantee minimal risks and collision
costs in doing so.

The reason why labs must have a machine-readable descriptor is to allow
automation of lab metadata gathering and web site publishing in order to
scale to hundreds of labs and provide more effective oversight.