This was extracted (@ 2024-11-19 16:10) from a list of minutes
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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.
## 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.
No report was submitted.
@Shane: discuss future of Labs
## 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.
## 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
## 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.
### 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
### 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
### 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
No report was submitted.
## 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.
## 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
## 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
## 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
No report was submitted.
@Mark: pursue a report for Labs; what are long term prospects?
## 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
## 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)
No report was submitted.
## 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)
## 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
## 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)
## 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.
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.
# 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.
# 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.
# 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.
## 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.
## 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
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.
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
No report was submitted.
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
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
No report was submitted.
AI Brett: pursue a report for Labs
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)
No report was submitted.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.