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WHEREAS, the Project Management Committee of the Apache Tiles 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 Tiles project due to inactivity; NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Apache Tiles 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 Tiles Project; and be it further RESOLVED, that the office of "Vice President, Apache Tiles" is hereby terminated; and be it further RESOLVED, that the Apache Tiles PMC is hereby terminated. Special Order 7E, Terminate the Apache Tiles Project, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present.
## Description: Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. ## Issues: After discussion on both user and dev ML, a successful vote agreed to move the project to the Apache Attic. The resolution has been added to the board report as Special Order (E). The vote results for the Attic move are found at https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/5d61f74e9ea0883c53c433d18b2416f0b415b671b988b65520de5004@%3Cdev.tiles.apache.org%3E
## Description: Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. ## Activity & Health report: User and dev ML traffic was lower this quarter. Commits and Issues ML traffic show a small increase. The last release was Tiles-3.0.8, on November 18th 2017. There are currently two responsive PMC, other PMC help out with votes when needed. In total there are 8 PMC members, and 10 committers. The last PMC/committer was added on Mon Apr 23 2012, being Nicolas LE BAS. The initial agreement from the two responsive PMC to move the project to the Attic still stands. Initiating the process has been on hold as some contributions have come in, albeit small bugs fixes. There is low-hanging-fruit tasks of moving the codebase onto JDK11 for any new contributors to get into. If no new activity eventuates then the process of moving to the Attic, starting off with an announcement to users ML and then a vote, will commence in the next quarter. ## Issues: There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.
## Description: Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. ## Activity & Health report: Mailing list traffic was lower this quarter. And responsive rate was not great. The last release was Tiles-3.0.8, on November 18th 2017. There are currently two responsive PMC, other PMC help out with votes when needed. In total there are 8 PMC members, and 10 committers. The last PMC/committer was added on Mon Apr 23 2012, being Nicolas LE BAS. Currently there's an initial agreement from the two responsive PMC to move the project to the Attic. If no new activity eventuates then the process of moving to the Attic, starting off with an announcement to users ML and then a vote, will commence in the next quarter. ## Issues: There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.
## Description: Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. ## Activity: Mailing list traffic was lower this quarter. And responsive rate was not great. Activity generally has noticably been on summer holidays this quarter. This will be addressed and discussed in the dev ML. The last release was Tiles-3.0.8, on November 18th 2017. On the table are four more releases following this, in an effort to upgrade the project to Java9. ## Health report: There are currently two responsive PMC, other PMC help out with votes when needed. In total there are 8 PMC members, and 10 committers. The last PMC/committer was added on Mon Apr 23 2012, being Nicolas LE BAS. ## Issues: There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.
## Description: Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. ## Activity: Mailing list traffic remained the same this quarter. Although there was yet another slight increase in commits this quarter. Two releases have been made this quarter: Tiles-3.0.8 and Tiles-Request-1.0.7. It looks like there will also be four more releases following this, in an effort to upgrade the project to Java9. ## Health report: There are currently two responsive PMC, other PMC help out with votes when needed. In total there are 8 PMC members, and 10 committers. The last PMC/committer was added on Mon Apr 23 2012, being Nicolas LE BAS. ## Issues: There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.
## Description: Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. ## Activity: Apache Tiles saw more traffic project this quarter. An higher number of commits and traffic on the dev ML than normal. One meta release has passed and a public release is in progress. This will be followed by one more release. It looks like there will also be four more releases following this. There has been a few small fixes around the website. ## Health report: There are currently two responsive PMC, other PMC help out with votes when needed. A recent ML discussion showed there's still a small community of people that care. There remains a need to add another committer to the project.
## Description: Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. ## Activity: Apache Tiles saw a little extra traffic project this quarter. A few small fixes. And more community involvement, new contributors and new people offering answers on MLs. No releases were cut, but one remains warranted, and is planned this month. Responsiveness on the ML increased a little this quarter. ## Health report: There are currently two responsive PMC, other PMC help out with votes when needed. There is room to add another committer to the project. ## Issues Further effort is still required to increase health to the project. A past ideas: including the StackExchange traffic digests to dev ML; is being experimented.
## Description: Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. ## Activity: Apache Tiles remains a stable but low traffic project. This quarter there has been a little more public activity. A couple of small fixes. A couple of improvements and upgrades. And more community involvement. No releases were cut, but one is now warranted. Responsiveness on the ML dropped this quarter. ## Health report: There are currently two responsive PMC, other PMC help out with votes when needed. Everyone is aware of the how little momentum the project has, but it does not feel abandoned by members, nor not in use by the public. There is room to add another committer to the project. ## Issues Further effort is required to increase health to the project. Previous board report received feedback on what such effort might be. This remains unaddressed by the community, although a new individual is contributing patches. Past ideas remain: from including the StackExchange traffic, following up on some of the development ideas, to publicity and engagement with other communities that have more momentum in the UI space.
## Description: Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. ## Activity: Apache Tiles remains a stable but low traffic project. This quarter there was very little public activity. A couple of small fixes. No releases were cut. The majority of activity still happens on non-apache sites like the StackExchange forums. StackExchange sees a few questions and answers each day or two. Efforts to subscribe these posts back to the user mailing list should be re-investigated. ## Health report: There are currently two responsive PMC, other PMC help out with votes when needed. Everyone is aware of the how little momentum the project has, but it does not feel abandoned by members, nor not in use by the public. ## Issues Further effort is still required to increase health to the project. Previous board report received feedback on what such effort might be. This can be from including the StackExchange traffic, following up on some of the development ideas, to publicity and engagement with other communities that have more momentum in the UI space. ## Memorial On September 30th our previous chair Greg Reddin passed away. A number of members stepped forward to contribute their praise and condolences. What was written up was shared with Greg's wife. http://www.apache.org/memorials/greg_reddin.html
## Description: Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. ## Activity: Apache Tiles remains an stable but low traffic project. This quarter two releases were cut with three PMC involved. Otherwise there is two responsible and responsive PMC ready to help users and discuss development ideas. Both user and dev mailing lists saw increased traffic over the previous quarter, although most of this is attributed to the releases. The majority of activity still happens on non-apache sites like the StackExchange forums. StackExchange sees a few questions and answers each day or two. ## Health report: There are currently two responsive PMC, other PMC help out with votes when needed. Everyone is aware of the how little momentum the project has, but it does not feel abandoned by members, nor not in use by the public. Further effort is still required to increase health to the project. ## Issues The board agreed last report the importance of making a release to test whether the project has three involved PMC. That has been done and proven. ## Releases: Two releases were made this quarter. Apache Tiles AutoTag-1.2 and Apache Tiles-3.0.7
## Description: Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. ## Activity: Apache Tiles remains an stable but low traffic project. There remains two responsible and responsive PMC ready to help users and discuss development ideas. Other PMC come out to help when needed. Currently no members are active in development, and no contributions have come in. The majority of activity happens on non-apache sites like the StackExchange forums. StackExchange sees a few questions and answers each day or two. This quarter saw input from an emeritus member Antonio, who had contributed much of the rewrite to Apache Tiles-3. While Antonio looks not to actively contribute again, but is using Tiles-3 again and will offer related contributions and ideas when appropriate. ## Health report: Apache Tiles is a stable project seeing little new momentum. There are currently two responsive PMC, other PMC help out with votes when needed. An initial effort was made to subscribe the StackExchange traffic into the users mailing list, without luck. Since this is the best representation of active traffic that we have this effort should be retried. Current members need to be reaching out to other forums to show that the Apache community is still there for them. Everyone is aware of the how little momentum the project has, but it does not feel abandoned by members, nor not in use by the public. The pending patch release really should be made the next quarter so to verify the presence of 3+ PMC, as described above. ## Issues The board requested last report that less emphasis on the output of the health reporter be used, and a more direct statement used to describe the low health status that the project holds. Hopefully this has been addressed this report. ## Releases: No releases were made this quarter. There is still a patch release pending, no action has been taken so far.
## Description:
Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications.
Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user
interfaces.
## Activity:
Activity in the Tiles community remains slow, slowing down further from last
quarter. Questions and issues are still generally addressed quickly. Otherwise
the majority of traffic remains on StackExchange and within the Spring
community.
## Health report:
The Apache Tiles project has dropped to the "urgent action required!" health
status. The significant issues with the health status are the low traffic on
the mailing lists, the lack of a release (despite one being promised), and no
new committers over the past two years. The few active members are aware of
the state of the project and most of our attention goes toward keeping a
stable project still communicating with users and developers that have
questions. Little time goes toward trying to increase the project's momentum.
## Issues:
There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.
## Releases:
No releases were made this quarter.
## Mailing list activity:
Mailing list activity has been quiet this quarter.
- users@tiles.apache.org:
- 148 subscribers (down -1 in the last 3 months):
- 8 emails sent to list (14 in previous quarter)
- dev@tiles.apache.org:
- 34 subscribers (up 2 in the last 3 months):
- 1 emails sent to list (10 in previous quarter)
@Shane: Suggest ways to improve the board report; especially the "Health" section
## Description:
Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for
Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to
simplify the development of user interfaces.
## Activity:
Activity in the Tiles community remains slow, slowing down from last quarter.
Questions and issues are still generally addressed quickly.
There lags some documentation edits that should be published.
Otherwise the majority of traffic remains on StackExchange and within the Spring
community.
## Health report:
The Apache Tiles project remains in the "action required" health status for
apache projects. The few active members are aware of the state of the project
and most of our attention goes toward keeping a stable project still
communicating with users and developers that have questions.
Little time goes toward trying to increase the project's momentum.
## Issues:
there are no issues requiring board attention at this time.
## LDAP committee group/Committership changes:
- No new changes to the LDAP committee group or committership since last
report.
## Releases:
- No releases were made this quarter. The project remains due for a patch
release.
## Mailing list activity:
- users@tiles.apache.org:
- 149 subscribers (up 1 in the last 3 months):
- 14 emails sent to list (17 in previous quarter)
- dev@tiles.apache.org:
- 32 subscribers (up 1 in the last 3 months):
- 8 emails sent to list (22 in previous quarter)
@Jim: Please include community changes and release dates in reports
## Description: Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. ## Activity: Activity in the Tiles community remains slow, roughly the same. Questions and issues are still generally addressed quickly. June-July saw a flurry of activity with some contributions from newcomers. An interesting discussion was raised from a newcomer that could see some nice improvements result. Otherwise since then it has been quiet and the majority of traffic on StackExchange and within the Spring community. ## Health report: The Apache Tiles project remains in the "action required" health status for apache projects. The few active members are aware of the state of the project and most of our attention goes toward keeping a stable project still communicating with users and developers that have questions. Little time goes toward trying to increase the project's momentum, we need to address this. ## Issues: there are no issues requiring board attention at this time. ## LDAP committee group/Committership changes: - No new changes to the LDAP committee group or committership since last report. ## Releases: - No releases were made this quarter. The project is due for a patch release.
## Description:
Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for
Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to
simplify the development of user interfaces.
## Activity:
Activity in the Tiles community remains slow, roughly the same.
Questions and issues are still generally addressed quickly.
The majority of traffic remains on StackExchange and
within the Spring community.
The user list looks to have spawned some new code contributed.
## Issues:
- there are no issues requiring board attention at this time
## PMC/Committership changes:
- Currently 10 committers and 8 PMC members in the project.
- No new changes to the PMC or committership since last report.
## Releases:
- No releases have been made in the past quarter.
- Last releases were Tiles Request 1.0.6 and Tiles 3.0.5 on 9th October
2014.
## Mailing list activity:
- users@tiles.apache.org:
- 146 subscribers (up 1 in the last 3 months):
- 12 emails sent to list (10 in previous quarter)
- dev@tiles.apache.org:
- 30 subscribers (up 0 in the last 3 months):
- 2 emails sent to list (5 in previous quarter)
- issues@tiles.apache.org:
- 12 subscribers (up 0 in the last 3 months):
- 9 emails sent to list (14 in previous quarter)
- notifications@tiles.apache.org:
- 12 subscribers (up 0 in the last 3 months)
## Description:
Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for modern Java
applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify
the development of user interfaces.
## Activity:
Activity in the Tiles community remains slow.
But questions and issues are generally addressed quickly.
The majority of traffic remains on StackExchange and
within the Spring community.
Some development has occurred with the AutoTag subproject,
and will around documentation fixes.
## Issues:
- there are no issues requiring board attention at this time.
## PMC/Committership changes:
- Currently 10 committers and 8 PMC members in the project.
- PMC Chair changed from Greg Reddin to Mick Semb Wever.
## Releases:
- No releases have been made in the past quarter.
- Last releases were Tiles Request 1.0.6 and Tiles 3.0.5 on 9th October 2014.
## Mailing list activity:
- users@tiles.apache.org:
- 145 subscribers (down -1 in the last 3 months):
- 10 emails sent to list (5 in previous quarter)
- dev@tiles.apache.org:
- 30 subscribers (down -1 in the last 3 months):
- 5 emails sent to list (23 in previous quarter)
- issues@tiles.apache.org:
- 12 subscribers (up 0 in the last 3 months):
- 13 emails sent to list (22 in previous quarter)
## JIRA activity:
- 3 JIRA tickets closed/resolved in the last 3 months
WHEREAS, the Board of Directors heretofore appointed Greg Reddin to the office of Vice President, Apache Tiles, and WHEREAS, the Board of Directors is in receipt of the resignation of Greg Reddin from the office of Vice President, Apache Tiles, and WHEREAS, the Project Management Committee of the Apache Tiles project has chosen to recommend Michael Semb Wever as the successor to the post; NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that Greg Reddin is relieved and discharged from the duties and responsibilities of the office of Vice President, Apache Tiles, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Michael Semb Wever be and hereby is appointed to the office of Vice President, Apache Tiles, 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 7C, Resolution to Change the Apache Tiles Chair, was approved by Unanimous Vote of the directors present.
Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for modern Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. This report is almost a carbon copy of the last one. There have been a couple of releases and some discussion of progress, but no real change in the pace of the project. I am submitting with this report a resolution to change the project chair. I am finding that I have less and less time to fulfill the duties and I don't want the project to suffer from my lack of time. I intend to remain on the PMC and provide help to the new chair and oversight of releases, etc. The Tiles project continues to move at a slow pace, but work is ongoing. In the last quarter the project has produced two releases: * Tiles Request 1.0.6 GA * Tiles 3.0.5 GA The community to Tiles remains the same, a largely stable project. The same one or two people have been continuing to do much of the development for Tiles. There remains a little traffic in the users list and in the issue tracker and these are responded to and/or fixed usually within the week. The Spring community, and stackexchange.com, reamain the most active inputs to the community.
No report was submitted.
Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for modern Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. The Tiles project continues to move at a slow pace, but work is ongoing. In the last quarter the project has produced one release: * Tiles-Request 1.0.5 GA The community for Tiles remains the same. The same one or two people have been continuing to do much of the development for Tiles. There remains a little traffic in the users list and in the issue tracker and these are responded to and/or fixed usually within a week or two. The Spring community, and stackexchange.com, are the most active inputs to the community. We have not added any new committers or PMC members since 2012. Attempts continue to build the active community. A paper was submitted to ApacheConEU without any luck. Otherwise the community is small and slow, but still present and active.
Apache Tiles is a free open-sourced templating framework for modern Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. The Tiles project continues to move at a slow pace, but work is ongoing. In the last quarter the project has produced several releases including the following: * Tiles-Request 1.0.4 GA * Tiles 3.0.4 GA * Tiles-Request 1.0.5 (Release is ongoing currently and the quality vote is underway.) The same one or two people have been continuing to do much of the development for Tiles. We have not added any new committers or PMC members since 2012. We have put out several requests to the user community to see if we could spark more interest without much success. A patch or two have been submitted, but nothing sustained. The primary user base of the Tiles software appears to be in the Spring community, but it is not clear that many from that community desire to see changes in the software. This state of affairs would tend to keep the development community small, and slow, but still present and active.
Apache Tiles is a templating framework for modern Java applications. General: This has been a very slow quarter for Apache Tiles. There have not been any software releases or PMC changes in this quarter. There have been a few threads on the user@ mailing list, but even that traffic seems to have slowed down for the time being. The ongoing slow pace of the project continues to be something to keep an eye on, but I don't believe it is a cause for concern at the moment.
Apache Tiles is a templating framework for modern Java applications. Based upon the Composite pattern it is built to simplify the development of user interfaces. This quarter has shown a dramatic spike in activity on the Tiles User mailing list. That activity has spurred us to release the first GA release of version 3 of the framework. Most of the mailing list activity consisted of users asking questions and seeking advice. The PMC was active in answering these questions, but several community members have assisted others in doing the same. It is my hope that some of this activity may lead to new committers joining the project. Releases: The Tiles PMC had our first GA release of the 3.x branch of the framework this quarter. Apache Tiles 3.0.3 was released with a quality stamp of GA in November. Community: There have been no changes to the Tiles community in this quarter. The last addition to the PMC was in April, 2012.
General: Apache Tiles is a templating framework built to simplify the development of web application user interfaces. Tiles continues to be one of those projects with very little development activity but a decent-sized user base. There does not seem to be much momentum for future development with the project. Questions are continuing to be answered and the PMC continues to be responsive to requests that come in. The existing community has been in place for several years now, moving at a slow pace. I see no reason to believe that will change anytime soon. Releases: There have been no releases this quarter. The last Tiles release was in Q2 2013 when we released the Tiles Request library 1.0.3 Beta. Community: There have been no changes to the Tiles community in this quarter. The last addition to the PMC was in April, 2012.
No report was submitted.
AI: Greg to pursue a report for Tiles
General: Apache Tiles is a templating framework built to simplify the development of web application user interfaces. Once again, the Tiles community has stepped up and shown some signs of life just when I was ready to call it done. This quarter has shown some continued activity around releases. Questions continue to trickle into the users list and they generally get responses within a day or two. Progress is slow, but I'm comfortable continuing to work with a slow-moving project as long as the Apache Board is willing to continue with it. The community is responsive even though new development seems to be happening at a snail's pace. I think Tiles still has a significant user base within the Spring community. Our challenge would be to figure out how to get more of those users involved in the project. Releases: This quarter the Tiles PMC made two releases: We released version 5 of the master POM with a quality of GA. We also released version 1.0.3 of the Tiles Request library with a quality of Beta. Community: There have been no changes to the Tiles community in this quarter. The last addition to the PMC was in April, 2012.
Apache Tiles is a templating framework built to simplify the development of web application user interfaces. Over the last couple of quarters it seems that Tiles has started to stagnate again. It's probably time to discuss retirement again, so I will get that discussion started and report on it again in the future. There has been a small amount of discussion on various mailing lists, but not nearly enough to say that the project is moving forward at this time. I'll check with the PMC and see if they see that changing any time soon.
Apache Tiles is a templating framework built to simplify the development of web application user interfaces. The Tiles project had an extremely slow quarter with no community changes and no releases. Mailing list activity was at a trickle until the very end of the period. At that time a few user-related questions were asked and answered and there was some activity on the dev@ list about switching over to the svnpubsub website architecture. The website migration was not completed by the deadline set by infrastructure. Work to implement this is still underway. Overall, it seems that interest in Tiles is slowing again, but has not come to a complete standstill. We should monitor over the next few quarters to see what happens before making any decisions about the future.
No report was submitted.
Apache Tiles is a templating framework built to simplify the development of web application user interfaces. Releases: This quarter has marked at least one release of all of the Tiles 3 components. The following versions have been released and voted as Beta quality by the PMC: * Apache Tiles 3.0.1 * Apache Tiles Autotag 1.1.0 * Apache Tiles Request 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 Community: The project has not added any new committers or PMC members during this reporting cycle. However, I am pleased with the level of discussion that has taken place on the mailing list. The Tiles community has always been a "niche" community and a slow-moving project. I see that trend continuing. But, as with past reporting periods, I see movement continuing at a steady pace and starting to involve more people. Overall I am happy with the direction of the project.
Apache Tiles is a templating framework built to simplify the development of web application user interfaces. Releases: We released version 3.0.0 of the Tiles Framework as Beta quality. Along with this release we split out the autotag and request frameworks from the main Tiles project. We released the first version of these frameworks as beta quality. This release is revolutionary in that it no longer envisions Tiles as a framework for generating templates at runtime within Java web applications. Tiles is now moving towards the goal of being useful as an offline templating mechanism as well. We hope this will generate interest from a new class of users. Community: Nicolas LE BAS joined the Tiles PMC this quarter and Antonio Petrelli stepped down from the PMC. The Tiles community continues to be in a slowly regenerating state. The addition of Nicolas and the departure of Antonio both signal progress in that direction. We are hoping the release of the 3.0 line of work will spark more interest in the project and help with the rebuilding of the community. The autotag and request frameworks may eventually be spun off into top-level projects, but for now they do not have a separate community building around them.
Apache Tiles is a templating framework built to simplify the development of web application user interfaces. The Tiles PMC is in the middle of a slow, but steady reconstitution. This quarter, like most quarters, has been characterized by slow progress. The development team is aware that it has been a while since our last release and discussion is underway to bring things together for a 3.0.0 release, which will probably be Beta quality. We have not added any new PMC members this quarter, but there have been a couple of outside contributions that may someday lead to new committers if they continue. As I've stated before, we believe that, at some point the original PMC will be mostly replaced by new members and a new chair will be named. We don't have a timeline for that right now, but it does feel like the new effort still has legs.
Apache Tiles is a templating framework built to simplify the development of web application user interfaces. We added one new committer this quarter: Nicolas LE BAS. We are hoping that a beta release of Tiles 3 (the next revolutionary version of Tiles) will occur sometime in the next quarter. The Apache Tiles project is in a rebuilding phase. Several of the original PMC members remain on board primarily to build and mentor a new PMC. Almost all of the original PMC members have stated their intention to go emeritus once the project is re-established. We really need to add two or three more people for this to work, so I expect the process to take a minimum of several months to play out. It all depends on how much interest we generate. In the meantime work is ongoing to create a new revolutionary version of Tiles. Previous versions of the framework required an online Servlet environment to render pages. Tiles 3 will abstract all the templating capabilities from the Servlet environment so that sites can be constituted and rendered in an offline mode. We are now moving toward a beta release of this functionality.
Apache Tiles is a Java EE templating framework built to simplify the development of web application user interfaces. Community: It's been an interesting quarter for the Tiles project. I fully expected to come to this report with a resolution to move Tiles to the attic, but it seems we're not quite ready for that yet. Instead we added Mick Semb Wever to the PMC as he is wanting to push toward a Tiles 3 release. Steady progress has been made toward that goal. I do believe it would be good to change the project chair soon. We discussed that and no interested candidate emerged. So I've agreed to continue in this role for the time being. Depending on how things play out over the next few months we'll see if the PMC changes or if anyone else on the PMC has a change of heart. The last week or so has seen a real flurry of activity on the users list. Some of that has been one poster who is being a little overzealous with new threads. But some of it does seem to indicate genuine new interest. There have been a few names I've not noticed before. This is interesting since there was not a single response on the users list when we posted that we were considering moving the project to the Attic. If there is still interest in the project we need to figure out how to convert some of these users to committers. Otherwise I do think the Attic will be in our near future. Trademarks: As far as I know we are now in full compliance with the Foundation trademark guidelines. The only outstanding item I am aware of was to get our Project Metadata up to date. We got that done a couple of weeks ago.
In January I reported that the Tiles community has been inactive long enough that it may be time to make a change. In discussions on the dev@ list some committers indicated that they had plans to do some revolutionary work that would be starting in the next few months. We agreed to give the project another six months before addressing the issue again. Those six months have passed and no significant change has taken place. My feeling is that it is time for some kind of change. I had intended to start a discussion about that early this month, but the last three months have proven difficult for me to do much of anything due to workload at my day job. So, unfortunately, the Tiles community is finding out this information at the same time the board is. At a minimum it is probably time to change the project chair. It may be time to consider options such as the attic. It is my intention to start a discussion on the dev@ list this week about the future of Tiles and see what direction the community desires. If desired, I'd be happy to send a special report next month or a resolution for change if something concrete comes up. There is still one step left in the process to complete our branding requirements. That step is to check the status of the project DOAP file. As noted above, my time availability has been near zero, so I still have not completed this task. Other than that, there has been little activity in the Tiles project this quarter.
It's been another quiet period for Apache Tiles. Some development has happened on our "next generation" work that is underway in the sandbox, but there have not been any releases or community changes. Antonio made all the changes necessary to implement as much of the branding requirements as he could. The only remaining piece is to check in a DOAP file. I had intended to get that done before filing this report, but it did not happen. My availability has been even less than usual the last two or three months, but I will try to get this work completed as soon as possible. We're still seeing a decent level of activity on the user list, which tells us that there is still an active community of users. We continue to struggle to generate growth in our development community.
No report was received.
It's been another slow quarter for Apache Tiles with no changes in the PMC and no new releases. I have not looked at the trademark/branding requirements yet to make sure we are in compliance, but we will do so by our next report. We had a very good discussion on the dev@ list about the future of Tiles. My initial thought going into this discussion was that Tiles has "stabilized" and would soon be getting ready for the attic. However, it came out in this discussion that there are still some revolutionary ideas about the project. Some of these ideas are already being fleshed out in the sandbox and we are expecting to see further progress in the next six months or so. We will reevaluate at that time whether the project still has momentum or if we should be looking at the attic. One of the things we discussed is the lack of new committers. Tiles sees plenty of activity on the user@ list, but those users very rarely turn into project committers. Several possible solutions were raised. Some of them included forking the project to Google Code or even to see if the Spring people would be interested. We do seem to have a high user base within the Spring community. However, it is unclear to me how the project would gain more momentum elsewhere than it has with Apache. I'm not sure what the barriers are at Apache that would automatically be lifted by moving the project elsewhere. Perhaps we should instead be trying to do more to bring some of the users on board as committers. At any rate, the direction for now is to wait and see what happens with the new development and see if the project sees new life.
Instead of forking, how about more actively engaging and promoting new committers?
Summary It has been another slow quarter for Apache Tiles with one release and a bit of discussion about future development. Releases Tiles 2.2.2 was released early in the quarter and has been declared GA quality by the Tiles PMC. Development Discussions have started about moving the sandbox development tree to the trunk as a basis for Tiles 3.
The Tiles PMC voted to extend commit rights to Michael (Mick) Semb Wever this quarter. This is an exciting development for us as Mick is just the type of committer we have been hoping to attract. He is a user who started contributing patches. All of the previous Tiles committers have come from prior work with other Apache projects. Mick got busy right away by preparing the release of our master POM. The PMC released version 2 of the POM a few weeks ago. More recently, we have decided to use the Nexus repository to host our future releases. To facilitate this change another release of the master POM is pending. Other development has continued at its normal slow pace. We are probably due for a software release sometime in the next few months.
The Apache Tiles project continues to tick along with no major changes. We have not made any releases this quarter or added any new committers. Antonio posted a blog entry about his vision for Tiles 3. He has been actively pursuing this vision in the Tiles Sandbox. The blog posting can be found here: https://blogs.apache.org/tiles/entry/abstracting_requests_and_templates The Tiles user community continues to be steady with discussion of users' questions and issues. There are currently no issues that require board assistance.
This quarter Apache Tiles has released new versions of both the 2.1 and 2.2 series. Here is a synopsis of the releases: * 2.2.1 Beta - The 2.2 series includes a cleaner API and some new features and is dependent on modern versions of the JDK and servlet specifications. * 2.1.4 GA - The older 2.1 series is being maintained for users who require older JDK and servlet versions, but there are no plans to backport the newer features to this branch. * The release roadmap is on the Tiles wiki here: http://cwiki.apache.org/TILES/post-21x-release-plan.html There have been no changes to the PMC or committers group this quarter. User list traffic is steady and non-committers seem to be stepping up a bit more to answer questions.
Releases
We have made three releases this quarter. 2.1.2 was a simple bugfix release that
fixed a security issue documented here:
http://tiles.apache.org/framework/security/security-bulletin-1.html
Release 2.1.3 is the latest GA release. It includes several other bugfixes and
enhancements. We also released the first version of the 2.2.x series. Apache Tiles
2.2.0 is an alpha-quality release. It series adds several new features, including:
* Native support for Freemarker and Velocity
* Support for pattern matching using regular expressions.
* OGNL support and MVEL support in Tiles definition files, when specifying
attributes and templates.
* Ready to use configuration classes to ease startup with minimal coding.
Additionally, 2.2.0 removes some backwards-compatibility features. These features
allowed Tiles to work with older architectures (Java 1.4/Servlet 2.4) that are
no longer supported.
Community
As I've noted in the past I am somewhat concerned about the stability of the
Tiles community. We have no trouble mustering up the votes needed for
releases. Development discussions continue to produce multiple points of
view. But the development and release work is still performed by one PMC
member. The truth of the matter is that if this developer stopped working on
Tiles there would be no further progress. There is a healthy amount of
traffic on the user list, but this developer also answers the bulk of the
questions there. So if he were to leave the project and no one stepped up to
take his place that activity would come to a halt as well. The rest of us
are still interested in the project, but it does not affect our daily work
to the extent that we are compelled to contribute in a more concrete way.
When Tiles was a Struts subproject it was designed to only work with Struts.
Now it is a standalone templating engine that is not tied to a specific
framework. Our biggest user base probably comes from the Spring community.
We have a significant number from the Struts 2 and JSF user base as well.
But most of these users tend to think of Tiles as a third-party dependency
rather than a library in its own right that needs to be developed. Hence, we
have a healthy stream of user list traffic, but we have been unable to
translate any of those people into new committers. It's worth noting that we
have not made a significant effort to reach out beyond our community to seek
growth using the PRC or other resources.
I believe that Tiles still offers some compelling features and there is
still development work to be done. As long as there is still someone around
to do the work and we still have the people to vet releases I'm willing to
continue supporting the project administratively, at least. I don't see
Tiles as a candidate for the Attic at this time, but if development stops it
may be in the future.
Board will continue to monitor this, and appreciates the candor.
It has been a very quiet quarter for Apache Tiles. There have not been any releases or community changes. Traffic was noticeably slower on the users@ list as well. Even so, there has been enough discussion to indicate continued interest in Tiles and its further development.
RELEASES In this quarter the Apache Tiles PMC released version 2.1.1 as beta quality. After that release we found a security flaw related to Tiles' support for JSP EL expressions. The flaw is documented here: http://tiles.apache.org/framework/security/security-bulletin-1.html The release was not pulled, but the bulletin above includes a recommendation not to use it. A subsequent 2.1.2 release. The 2.1.2 release also fixed some other bugs and hardened some features for the 2.1.x series. Thus it was released as the first GA release of the 2.1.x series. DEVELOPMENT On the development front, we are moving towards FreeMarker and Velocity support. A plan has been prepared a plan for future releases. That plan, at a high level, includes the aforementioned Freemarker and Velocity support in the 2.2.x series, and more revolutionary changes for a 3.0.x series. The full plan can be seen here: http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/TILES/Post+2.1.x+Release+Plan COMMUNITY Recent months have seen a slight uptick in user mailing list activity. We are still in dire need of more committers to add some better diversity to the development team. We continue to encourage patches and other submissions. To date, it seems there are a lot of people experimenting with Tiles and using it in production environments, but there is very little interest from the outside in helping further develop the project. The developer community has not changed in a very long time, but we are still able to find a qorum for releases and other things.
The biggest accomplishment this quarter has been the successful IP Clearance of the Velocity Tiles Plugin. The plugin was contributed by Sergey Zolotaryov via a software grant and is now part of Tiles. User list traffic remains steady. There is a strong indication that many people are experimenting and developing applications using Tiles. We are continuing efforts to recruit some of these users as developers and probably need to step up those efforts. Our development work continues to be driven primarily by one person, but, for the most part, we are not having trouble finding a quorum when votes occur. We know of no issues currently needing board attention.
Tiles 2.1.0 has been released. It is a beta quality release that contains some significant enhancements and new capabilities. The documentation is the main factor that prevents 2.1.0 from achieving the GA quality label. Work is continuing on that front. No new committers or PMC members have been added this quarter. Martin Cooper stepped down from the PMC. Mailing list traffic remains steady with many questions from users. We are still hoping some of these contributers will start submitting patches and increase their involvement in the community. The project could use a few more active committers.
This quarter we released Apache Tiles 2.0.6 as GA quality. It is mostly a bugfix release. In addition the Kaolin (formerly Dimensions) incubation process is progressing. I think we are still waiting for IP clearance forms to come through. There are no changes in the community to report. Mailing list activity has been steady with maybe a slight increase. We did issue a "call for help" on the users list which generated some response, but has not yet translated into much formal help. We continue to seek greater participation by the community at large.
General Status The Tiles project continues to see slow and steady forward movement. There has been an uptick in interest on the users list. This is likely due to the fact that a GA release is finally available. Antonio is wanting to start the IP clearance for Kaolin (formerly the Dimensions project) and is still looking for a champion among the membership. He is seeking help on general@incubator. Cryptography We have reviewed the project code and dependencies and we do not believe the Tiles project meets the requirements for export notification. Please advise if the board requires further clarification. Community We have been concerned about a lack of committer activity on the project. Essentially all coding and technical support in at least the last three months has been done by one PMC member, namely Antonio Petrelli. That is not to say that no one else on the PMC is involved. I have been watching the commit logs and mailing lists, but really only contributing to the project administratively. It is also not due to any kind of "community tyranny" on the part of Antonio or anyone else. He is simply the only one who has the itch to scratch and the time to do it at the same time. I took a poll on the private list asking the PMC members to indicate their desired level of involvement on a 3-point scale with 1 being "fully involved" - contributing code, support, etc., 2 being administratively involved - moderating lists, voting, testing releases, etc., and 3 being not involved or emeritus. Antonio is the only committer who indicated a level of 1. Wendy Smoak, Nathan Bubna, and myself indicated a level 2, or intention for administrative involvement. No one else has responded, but in fairness I started the poll too late and was not able to give the full 72 hours needed for a full consensus. My personal take on the issue is that the Tiles codebase is in a stable state. It does what it is supposed to do in most cases. We do have a sense of where we would like to take the project in the future, but currently most of us are too involved elsewhere to make much progress in that direction. I see the uptick of user activity as a very positive thing and I need to do a better job of making the needs of the project and opportunities for involvement known to the users. I think we can draw in new committers from the user base over time. We should also consider the advice from the board at our last report to seek the help of prc@ in promoting the project. Again, we welcome any further input and advice from the board on this matter.
The board notes the request for input and advice, and simply commends the PMC for the way they are looking after the health of the project
Releases The Tiles PMC applied the "GA" quality tag to release 2.0.5. This is the first production-quality release of the Standalone Tiles project and has been over two years in the making. Incubator Antonio Petrelli, a Tiles PMC member, would like to incubate a Sourceforge project he's worked on called Dimensions (http://mutidimensions.sourceforge.net/ ). In his words "Dimensions is an extension of Tiles (Tiles 2 version is developed but not released) that allows to configure different Tiles definitions for different "dimensions" (currently they are the user role and the calling device)." A draft proposal can be found here: http://cwiki.apache.org/TILES/dimensionsincubationproposal.html Our understanding is that incubation requires an Apache member to champion the project. The Tiles PMC has voiced approval of the incubation but we've been unable to find a champion. If the board knows of anyone interested in championing this incubation we would appreciate the help. Community Activity remains steady on the Tiles user mailing list. However, developer support is not as strong as it could be. At any given time there's only been one or two committers who are doing the work, although the active commiter(s) have been different people at different times. I believe the reasoning is that, for some of us, Tiles is not part of our daily work, and our interest is more of a hobby .Therefore, our contribution time is limited and sporadic. Those who are using the software on a daily basis are involved in the Users mailing list, but very few have contributed to the project so far. IOW, we haven't added committers because no one has really stepped up to the task. I don't currently see a huge cause for concern. Now that we've released a GA version, maybe more people will start contributing over time. Or, perhaps, there's a feeling that Tiles largely works and doesn't need a great deal of enhancement. I felt the board should be aware that activity has been slow. We welcome suggestions if the board feels we should do more to promote the project.
Henri to work with Greg Reddin to find a champion
Approved by General Consent.
Since the last release (5 June) there have been bug fixes and small improvements. We are slowly working toward a GA release, but we seriously need more volunteers to step up and help. For the most part we have had limited time to dedicate to the project. New features development is slowing down. The project was in a great deal of flux before the 2.0.4 release and has since stabilized. The user community is definitely growing and frustration has grown with regard to our slowness. I hope this will result in both more motivation for us to get things done and more motivation for others to step up to the plate.
Approved by General Consent.
Releases The Tiles community has released Tiles 2.0.4 Beta, moving us one step closer to a GA-quality release. Antonio Petrelli drafted a logo for the project and we all liked it enough to put it up on the site. You can see it on our home page. Community Mailing list traffic has seen a slow increase. Many of the PMC are subscribed to other projects' lists, such as Struts, Shale, and Velocity, where Tiles questions are asked. We redirect most Tiles-related questions to our lists. We are seeing more questions regarding Tiles 2 coming to our own lists now, but traffic is still pretty slow. It remains to be seen how much adoption this "next generation" version of Tiles will see. It has been slow so far, but we feel a lot of that is because the project has been unstable. We have addressed the stability issue by releasing the beta. The next step is to integrate the beta into our sister projects like Struts 2 and Shale. Then we expect to see a higher adoption rate. There has also been some discussion of providing a migration path for Struts-Tiles users which may encourage more adoption as well.
Approved by General Consent.
Not a great deal to report this month. The Tiles project is moving at a steady pace. Release 2.0.1 was voted alpha-quality by the PMC and copied to the mirrors last week. Development is continuing to stabilize the 2.0 codebase so we can release a GA soon. Most of the list traffic is still taking place on the DEV list, including a few proposals for new development tracks. There hasn't been a lot of user feedback as of yet, but we expect more of that to come with a Beta or GA release. There have been no committer or PMC changes in this reporting period.
Approved by General Consent.
The Tiles project infrastructure components are all set up and running smoothly. The website has been migrated over from the Struts project and work is ongoing to make it a better representation of our project. Interest in the revolutionized Tiles API continues to grow among users of the frameworks it interfaces with. Development Activity ================ We created separate project modules for framework, showcase, and shared (maven, website) components. These are separate modules with different dependency structures and purposes. Since the project has not made an actual release to date there is a lot of confusion around which version of Tiles other frameworks should use. Most of the questions we see about integrating with Tiles relate to problems of mismatched nightly build versions. Because of this, it is our highest priority to get a release out that people can build dependencies on. We rolled a 2.0.0 build, but it was not released due to packaging problems and missing license headers. The issues are currently being fixed and a 2.0.1 build should be coming soon. Community ========= We have added two new PMC members from the Struts PMC: Martin Cooper and Joe Germuska. Since they were part of the Struts PMC and, thus were able to make binding decisions about Tiles before it moved to a TLP, we decided to invite them to join our PMC. There are currently no issues that need the board's attention.
Approved by General Consent.
The INFRA ticket for the Tiles infrastructure setup has been accepted and work is proceeding. We have a JIRA instance and are already using it to post new tickets. Some development is continuing in the Struts sandbox while we wait for the TLP infrastructure to be set up. There are no official committers on the project other than the original PMC at this time, but we are seeing some interest from a few other Struts committers on occasion. Questions and posts on the Struts mail lists pertaining to Tiles are steady. No official announcement of the Tiles TLP has been made. We will make an announcement when the mailing lists are ready for posting. We do not have any community or legal issues at this time or anything else that needs the board attention.
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 open-source software related to the continued
implementation of the page composition and layout management
framework currently known as Apache Struts Tiles, for distribution at
no charge to the public.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that a Project Management Committee
(PMC), to be known as the "Apache Tiles Project", be and hereby is
established pursuant to Bylaws of the Foundation; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the Apache Tiles Project be and hereby is responsible
for the creation and maintenance of software related to the Tiles
template framework; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the office of "Vice President, Apache Tiles" 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 Apache Tiles
Project, and to have primary responsibility for management of the
projects within the scope of responsibility of the Apache Tiles
Project; 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 Tiles
Project:
* Antonio Petrelli (apetrelli@apache.org)
* Craig McClanahan (craigmcc@apache.org)
* David H. DeWolf (ddewolf@apache.org)
* Greg Reddin (greddin@apache.org)
* Nathan Bubna (nbubna@apache.org)
* Wendy Smoak (wsmoak@apache.org)
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Greg Reddin be
appointed to the office of Vice President, Apache Tiles, 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 Apache Tiles Project be and hereby is
tasked with the migration and rationalization of the Apache Struts
Tiles sub-project; and be it further
RESOLVED, that all responsibility pertaining to the Struts Tiles
sub-project and encumbered upon the Apache Struts PMC are hereafter
discharged.
Special Order 6D, Establishment of the Apache Tiles Project,
was approved by Unanimous Vote.