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The Apache Software Foundation
Board of Directors Meeting Minutes
November 14, 2004
1. Call to order
The meeting was scheduled for 19:00 PST -0800 and was begin when
a sufficient attendance to constitute a quorum was recognized by
the chairman. The meeting was called to order at 19:23. The meeting
was held in person at the ApacheCon conference in Las Vegas.
The meeting itself was held in 2 sessions. At 21:44 the meeting
was called into recess. The meeting was reconvened on November 15,
2004 at 12:09.
2. Roll Call
Directors Present:
Brian Behlendorf
Ken Coar
Dirk-Willem van Gulik
Jim Jagielski
Geir Magnusson Jr.
Stefano Mazzocchi
Sam Ruby
Greg Stein
Sander Striker
Directors Absent:
None
Guests:
Kevin Crowston of Syracuse (investigating the process
and procedures of Open Source)
Shane Curcuru
Vadim Gritsenko
Chuck Murcko (Treasurer)
Ted Leung
Robyn Wagner (Counsel)
3. Minutes from previous meetings
A. The meeting of October 20, 2004
CVS - board/board_minutes_2004_10_20.txt
The approval of minutes was tabled.
4. Officer Reports
A. Chairman [Greg]
Greg stated that there was really nothing to report,
over and beyond what was reported at the ASF Members
Meeting. In general, the ASF was meeting some
challenges, and operating well.
B. President [Dirk]
Dirk reported that he was keeping track on the
efforts and discussions underway within the European
Union (EU) regarding software patents. According to
Dirk, of particular interest was the fact that German
political parties united in their support against
patents, which is in conflict with the German EU
Council vote. Poland has also withdrawn support.
C. Infrastructure [Sander]
Infrastructure benefits a lot from the face to face meetings at
ApacheCon. Work is getting done.
David Reid and Ben Laurie have been working on the CA and things
are looking very promissing. We will be able to offload all the
adding and removing people from groups. This will require that
all services are exposed via HTTP, so there is a lot work that
needs to be done. With the moving of several projects to SVN,
this goal will be easier to reach, given that shell accounts
won't be needed anymore to do actual development.
People do actually volunteer, but it is hard to actually parallellize
a lot of the tasks given the centralized knowledge.
Services are being moved around and off nagoya, since the machine
is being retired.
Infrastructure is budgetting $5k for the acquisition of a UPS
for the US colo.
D. Treasurer [Chuck]
Assets of the Foundation have remained relatively flat in 2004,
the first full year in which the Foundation has paid for
colocation charges. Additional expenses were incurred for
corporate filing charges, accounting services, office supplies,
and equipment replacement and procurement, totalling (with colo
charges) $22166.89 over the 12 month period 11/15/03-11/14/04.
Contributions breakdown (by percentage):
Corporate (by check) 35%
Private (by check) 20%
Private (by PayPal) 45%
Note: The PayPal contribution includes a very small percentage of
contributions received as micropayments from VA Linux
Assets Summary 11/15/03-11/14/04:
11/15/03 total assets $100954.46
Contribution income 11/15/03-11/14/04 $20134.86
Expenses ($22166.89)
Colo charges $18000.00
Corporate filing $588.00
Accountant $575.00
Office supplies $330.00
Capital equipment $2673.89
11/14/04 total assets $98922.43
Current balances (as of 11/13/2004):
Paypal $1494.06
Checking $4644.00
Premium Mkt. $92784.37
Total $98922.43
Chuck also reported that, as of that date, the
ASF had not received any funds from the Car Donation
company which we have signed on with, even though
at least one car has been donated.
E. Exec. V.P. and Secretary [Jim]
Jim's report centered around what ASF information should
be deemed "public" versus "private." In particular, should
the list of all received CLAs be made public or not. The
debate within the board was twofold. The first issue was
the reason and rationale for making the information public.
One reason mentioned was that it allowed 3rd parties to
verify that they could use ASF software by checking code
with the CLAs. Some within the board thought that this
was not a compelling reason; instead, 3rd parties should
simply trust that the ASF was doing its job and obtaining
the required "approvals" for folding in patches and code
from contributors; if the 3rd parties did not trust
that, then they were under no obligation to use ASF code.
These 2 points of view were never resolved.
The second issue was whether there was any expectation
of "privacy" regarding CLAs; in other words, did the
simple act of signing and submitting a CLA to the ASF,
knowing what the ASF is, imply that the information could
be open and public, as is the code itself.
During the 2nd session it was generally agreed that it was
in the best interest of the ASF, and the community especially,
if the list of CLAs were made public, but with special consideration
made for those who did not want their "legal" names made public
(and they would therefore be noted by their pseudonym). This
information was to be made public by January 1, 2005. Dirk
and Jim were to inform the community of this in sufficient time
for people to provide pseudonyms if required. The format would
like follow the semi-public Projects and Committers pages
Jim has under www.apache.org/~jim.
5. Committee Reports
A. Apache Ant Project [Conor MacNeill]
See Attachment A
Apache Ant Project approved by General Consent.
B. Apache Cocoon Project [Sylvain Wallez]
See Attachment B
Apache Cocoon Project approved by General Consent.
C. Apache Forrest Project [David Crossley]
See Attachment C
Apache Forrest Project approved by General Consent.
D. Apache HTTP Server Project [Sander Striker]
See Attachment D
The report was slightly modified to reflect that the
Apache 1.3 line had had 1 "official" release (1.3.33)
and one non-official release (1.3.32).
Apache HTTP Server approved by General Consent.
E. Apache Lenya Project [Rolf Kulemann]
See Attachment E
Apache Lenya Project approved by General Consent.
F. Apache Logging Project [Ceki Gülcü]
See Attachment F
No report was submitted.
G. Apache Perl Project [Doug MacEachern]
See Attachment G
It was noted, again, that the Perl Project report was
not submitted by the current Perl PMC Chair, but instead
by Stas Bekman. The board decided to ask the PMC to
reconsider its choice of PMC chair. Jim volunteered
to follow up with the Perl PMC in this regard.
Apache Perl Project approved by General Consent.
H. Apache XML Project [Berin Lautenbach]
See Attachment H
Apache XML Project approved by General Consent.
I. Public Relations Committee [Brian Fitzpatrick]
See Attachment I
No report was submitted.
J. Apache XML Graphics Project [Jeremias Maerki]
See Attachment J
Apache XML Graphics Project approved by General Consent.
6. Special Orders
A. Establish guidelines for handling copyright notices. (This is
the same resolution informally voted on two weeks before the
meeting.)
WHEREAS, the copyright of contributions to The Apache
Software Foundation remains with the contribution's original
owner(s) unless explicitly assigned to the Foundation in
writing,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that for the case of copyright
notices in files contributed and licensed to The Apache
Software Foundation but naming another copyright holder, the
preferred handling is for the copyright holder to either
remove such notices, or place them in a separate file for
inclusion in a per-project COPYRIGHT file, or to include with
the contribution written permission for the Foundation to
make such removal or relocation of the notices; and be it
further
RESOLVED, that files licensed to The Apache Software
Foundation shall be labeled with the following notice,
suitably amended to reflect the year of contribution and any
subsequent years of original publication:
Copyright [yyyy] The Apache Software Foundation or its
licensors, as applicable.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
"License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
software distributed under the License is distributed on an
"AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the
specific language governing permissions and limitations
under the License.
Special Order A, Establish guidelines for handling copyright notices,
was approved by Unanimous Vote.
B. Affirm Intent to Own Copyright to all ASF Distributions
WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it to be in the best
interests of the Foundation and consistent with the
Foundation's purpose that the Foundation receives assignment
of copyright of all contributions to the Foundation
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Board of Directors
does affirm that ownership of copyright by the ASF is in the
best interest of the Foundation, and will work to create
documentation and agreements for contributors to the ASF
incorporating this basic principle.
Special Order B, Affirm Intent to Own Copyright to all ASF
Distributions, was tabled.
C. Approve new version of Corporate CLA
Still a placeholder. For information, the version we'll vote on
will be:
https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/infrastructure/site/trunk/docs/licenses/proposed/cla-corporate.txt
Special Order C, Approve new version of Corporate CLA, was tabled.
However, it was noted that the proposed Corporate CLA was accepted
but not ratified.
D. Termination of the Avalon PMC
WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it no longer in the best
interest of the Foundation to continue the Apache Avalon project
due to the separation of the community into new projects
WHEREAS, the Avalon PMC is unable to further fulfill the
responsibilities of creation, maintenance, and support of the
Avalon software
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Apache Avalon Project is
hereby terminated; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the Excalibur PMC be and hereby is tasked with
maintenance of the Avalon framework software; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the Apache Avalon PMC be and hereby is no longer
responsible for the creation and maintenance of software related to
component and service management, based on software licensed to the
Foundation; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the office of "Vice President, Apache Avalon" is
hereby terminated; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the Apache Avalon PMC is hereby terminated.
Special Order D, a Resolution for the Termination of the Avalon PMC,
was approved by Unanimous Vote.
7. Discussion Items
A. Conferences and ConCom
The board expressed its extreme displeasure with the work
done by Security Travel regarding ApacheCon. There was
debate on whether the board should restrict ConCom from
renewing any contract or agreement with ST. The general
consent was that this restriction was not going to be
placed, but that the board withheld the right to do so.
The ConCom was tasked with "determining the look, feel
and direction of ApacheCon" and submitting that to the
board. The ConCom was further tasked with coming up
with creative new ideas regarding what we want ApacheCon
to be (ie: what is the major focus of ApacheCon? A
revenue source? A community building effort? etc...)
8. Unfinished Business
No unfinished business
9. New Business
No new business.
10. Announcements
No announcements.
11. Adjournment
The 2-session meeting was formally adjourned at 13:22, November 15,
2004.
============
ATTACHMENTS:
============
-----------------------------------------
Attachment A: Status report for the Apache Ant Project
The Ant project is in a stable phase of development and there have not been
any major events in the last three months, such as new releases or significant
issues.
o Ant 1.6.2
Ant 1.6.2 was released on July 16th, 2004
There have been no major issues with the release to date.
o Ant 1.7 (CVS Head)
CVS head development continues, of course. There is currently no planned
release date for Ant 1.7.
o Nightly builds
Nightly builds are still inactive.
o Legal Issues
No legal issues
o Community
All well on the community front.
Dominique Devienne is being added as a new committer. He is a long-time member
of the Ant community. Martijn Kruithof has recently been nominated for
committer.
-----------------------------------------
Attachment B: Status report for the Apache Cocoon Project
Community:
- The 3rd Cocoon GetTogether, yearly meeting of Cocoon users and
developers, whas held as is usual now in Gent (Belgium) in early
october. That was again a great success with 140 people coming from
17 countries, an active hackaton and interesting presentations.
- There was a relative traffic slowdown on the dev list during spring
and summer, mostly because people were very busy. After the
GetTogether, the activity on the dev list raised back to its usual
traffic and lots of interesting discussions are happening.
- We have two new committers, Ralph Goers and Leszek Gawron.
- Cocoon 2.1.6, is planned to be released next week, this is a
maintainance release while development continues on the 2.2 branch.
- Lenya is no more a in the Cocoon TLP as it successfully exited
incubation and moved to top-level.
- The death of Avalon and the fact that our component manager is
considered as deprecated by the Excalibur project led us to fork it.
These are only 15 source files, which allow us to master the
foundations on which Cocoon is built.
Legal:
The legal issues we had with the Rhino fork supporting continuations
are about to be solved, as the Mozilla Rhino team has added
continuation support in the official Rhino, and Cocoon will therefore
abandon the fork in favor in the official distribution.
-----------------------------------------
Attachment C: Status report for the Apache Forrest Project
Issues needing board attention
------------------------------
None.
New committers and new PMC members
----------------------------------
* Two existing committers are now also PMC members, so now all active
committers are on the PMC:
Ross Gardler <rgardler@apache.org>
Thorsten Scherler <thorsten@apache.org>
* Elected a new committer and PMC member:
Rick Tessner <rick@apache.org>
General status
--------------
* The section of our draft bylaws dealing with new committers and new
PMC members has been completed, so now we can finally vote some new
people in.
* As discussed last quarter, we turned our attention to enhance
the top-level ASF docs, especially the "how-it-works" document.
Where possible our project guidelines are simply referring.
Issues still to be dealt with by the Forrest PMC
------------------------------------------------
* Still not yet completed our project bylaws, but it is a lot closer
than last quarter.
* Handling sudden growth of the project is an ongoing issue.
Progress
--------
* Released Forrest-0.6 on 2004-10-15
* Working on a plugins system and restructured our SVN. This will
make it easier for users to add features and to contribute in
smaller and more manageable chunks.
* We seem to have a big influx of new users.
General observations during last quarter
----------------------------------------
* Apache Infrastructure needs more help. There is a backlog,
especially with root creating new committer accounts.
* We declined the kind offer from the PRC to assist with promotion of
the project. We feel that we are too small to bear the load of many
new users that would ensue from an official press release. So we
want to grow steadily, then make a bigger splash when we reach the
Forrest-1.0 release.
* Despite this low-profile, we are getting a stack of new users, and
not sufficient new developers to ease the load. We are gradually
recruiting new committers. If any other project has smart solutions
and hints for steadily growing a project, then we would be pleased
to help to enhance the top-level docs at /dev/ and Incubator, to
assist current and future PMCs.
-----------------------------------------
Attachment D: Status report for the Apache HTTP Server Project
Since the previous board report there have been 3 releases of the 2.0 line
and a single release of the 1.3 line.
As usual, all a combination of security fixes and a regular release. For
some reason security issues have a way of turning up in the middle of a
release process. Taking appropiate action to security issues has interfered
with getting the actual cutting of a release of the 2.1 line (in the form of
an alpha); which leaves the 2.1 line without any releases to date.
At ApacheCon all the Apache HTTP Server modules are being converted to
Subversion. The modules are locked down and no CVS commits are possible
as of now. The Subversion repository will be opened for commits during
the ApacheCon.
mod_aspdotnet graduated from the Incubator and will be moved once the
SVN module is opened.
There is a new module coming in, mod_arm4, providing something one
can think of as SNMP on steroids:
From http://www.opengroup.org/tech/management/arm/
"The Application Response Measurement (ARM) standard describes a common
method for integrating enterprise applications as manageable entities.
The ARM standard allows users to extend their enterprise management
tools directly to applications creating a comprehensive end-to-end
management capability that includes measuring application availability,
application performance, application usage, and end-to-end transaction
response time."
Other than that nothing to report.
-----------------------------------------
Attachment E: Status report for the Apache Lenya Project
Issues needing Board attention
---------------------------------
* Make sure Lenya PMC chair has access to necessary files in
/foundation and /board to do his PMC job (?)
New commiters and new PMC members
---------------------------------
* We voted 3 new commiters
- Andreas Kuckartz
- Wolfgang Kaltz
- Torsten Schlabach
* We welcomed Antonio Gallardo as a new Lenya PMC member
General status
---------------------------------
* Switched from CVS to SVN
* Lenya was graduated from an incubator project to an Apache TLP.
* TLP move is almost complete. SVN, mailinglists and web space moved
from incubator space to Lenya's own TLP resources. Wiki still needs
to be moved.
* Website is currently being updated
* New commiters sent their CLAs and accounts are almost setup. CLAs
sometimes seem to get lost. Andreas and Torsten are still trying to
get their CLAs on file.
Progress
---------------------------------
* The Lenya community is preparing the 1.2.1 release. This release
contains a lot of bug fixes since 1.2 and a refactored build
process, which lowers the entry barrier for new users. After we
cleaned up the website and the docs we will release maybe in a few
weeks
* Users actively support the 1.2.1 release with testing and filing
bugzilla reports
* Lenya 1.4 branch was created. We plan to integrate a JCR repository
(JackRabbit). After the 1.2.1 release we will concentrate on the
repo integration.
* External WYSIWYG editor (Kupu, BXE) integration has been improved.
We use svn:externals to circumvent separate checkouts for users.
-----------------------------------------
Attachment F: Status report for the Apache Logging Project
-----------------------------------------
Attachment G: Status report for the Apache Perl Project
-- Releases --
The mod_perl 1.x is a maintenance track designed to work with httpd
1.3.x.
Nothing much happening on that track. No new mod_perl 1.x releases
since the last report.
---
The mod_perl 1.99 series is a development track designed to become
mod_perl 2.0; it works with httpd 2.0.x.
Recent releases:
1.99_15 - Aug 20, 2004
1.99_16 - Aug 22, 2004
1.99_17 - Oct 22, 2004
---
Apache::Test provides a framework which allows module writers to write
test suites than can query a running mod_perl enabled server. It is
used by mod_perl, httpd and several third party applications.
Recent releases:
1.13 - Aug 20, 2004
1.14 - Oct 12, 2004
1.15 - Oct 22, 2004
-- Development --
Development on mod_perl 2.0 and Apache::Test is moving at a healthy
pace. Now working on polishing the API so we can get ready for the 2.0
release hopefully somewhere in summer.
-- Users --
The mod_perl users list is thriving.
Usage stats continue to decline, with 1.5M or 4.7M sites depending on
which survey you look at.
The advocacy list, revived back August, is back to the dormant state
:(
-----------------------------------------
Attachment H: Status report for the Apache XML Project
General Comments
----------------
A reasonably quiet quarter. The foundation progresses, and
XML Graphics (comprising Fob and Batik) and Xalan have now
been approved by the board as TLPs. Activity has been
picked up again for Xerces, so we are coming close to
the end of the road.
This report is not as complete as it normally would be.
The delinquent PMC chair neglected to take into account
the fact the board meeting was brought forward a week,
and so has somewhat failed in his duty.
Issues needing attention
------------------------
The JuiCE sub-project in the incubator is still waiting
on action on the corpriate CLA from uni of memphis.
Axkit
-----
Due to the slowdown in the AxKit project, both in terms
of community and the developers, we have decided to
re-merge the dev and users lists to ensure that users
are aware that we are actually doing some things to
the code. I have emailed infrastructure with the request
to migrate the users list to Apache infrastructure
(currently hosted on my personal DSL line) so we can
proceed with the merge. I await a response (unless it
got lost by my spam filters). In the meantime bugs are
being fixed, and we are working with the XML::LibXML
developers to resolve the libxml input filters conflicts
with other perl and PHP projects and should resolve that
issue soon.
We also need to work on migrating axkit.org to Apache
infrastructure as I am moving to Canada in about 6 weeks
and so the urgency of this has increased. I will try and
coordinate with infrastructure@ on this. This is complicated
by the hosting of a number of non-apache open source
projects on the axkit.org domain.
MattSergeant.
Commons
-------
Xerces-C++
----------
Released Xerces 2.6 at the end of September. Many bug fixes.
Moved to 2.0 license. Ongoing discussions ragrding moving
Xerces to a top level project.
Proposed charter being finalised now.
Xerces-J
--------
Xerces-J 2.7.0 is still a work in progress. The completion
of this release is pending on the donation of the portions of
JAXP 1.3 developed by Sun Microsystems for the JAXP
1.3 reference implementation. In October, Sun expressed their
interest in donating this work to Apache and the community
began discussing how best to integrate the code in Xerces (as
well as in Xalan and XML-Commons).
Our understanding is that Apache and Sun are attempting to
work out the details of a software grant for this code,
and that both parties are committed to the resolution of these
issues. Since JAXP is of central importance to Xerces-J, the
community ardently hopes that these final hurdles will be
resolved soon so that we can begin the integration work and
soon thereafter release Xerces 2.7.0.
We have one new committer to report: Ankit Pasricha was voted
in during the last weeks of October.
Discussion has continued on the migration of Xerces-* to a
top-level project. The composition and chairmanship of the
PMC and the proposed charter are being reviewed and finalized.
We're hopeful that a motion to transform Xerces to a TLP may be
moved within days.
Xerces-P
--------
Xindice
-------
XML-Security
------------
The Java library is now progressing towards a 1.2 release, with
RC-1 currently being reported on by users. Work has been
concentrating on an XKMS implementation within the C++ library,
and Berin Lautenbach has been doing interoperability testing
with the C++ code and the W3C workging group on the XKMS standard.
We now have a full implementation of X-KISS and work has commenced
on X-KRSS.
-----------------------------------------
Attachment I: Status report for the Public Relations Committee
-----------------------------------------
Attachment J: Status report for the Apache XML Graphics Committee
--- General Comments --
This is our first status report as new TLP. So far, we have the TLP
creation form sent to the infrastructure people and have started to
prepare a website for the XML Graphics project which will go live as
soon as we have the necessary infrastructure. On top of the todo list
is also the project charter.
--- PMC arrivals, departures ---
No changes. Initial PMC list is still valid.
--- Issues needing attention ---
* Is it ok if we report at the same schedule as the XML project?
(Feb, May, Aug, Nov)
--- Batik ---
No releases. More license header changes.
Submitted a build of Batik for testing against SVG 1.2
Some rearchitecting underway to support SVG 1.1 & 1.2
--- FOP ---
No releases, but steady progress.
New committer: Luca Furini
------------------------------------------------------
End of minutes for the November 14, 2004 board meeting.
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