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Timeline

Wed October 01	Podling reports due by end of day
Sun October 05	Shepherd reviews due by end of day
Sun October 05	Summary due by end of day
Tue October 07	Mentor signoff due by end of day
Wed October 08	Report submitted to Board
Wed October 15	Board meeting

Shepherd Assignments

Calvin Kirs	Livy
Dave Fisher	Gluten
Drew Farris	Pegasus
Justin Mclean	ResilientDB
P. Taylor Goetz	Fesod
PJ Fanning	Pony Mail
Timothy Chen	Amoro
Willem Jiang	Fluss
Xuanwo	HugeGraph

Incubator PMC report for October 2025

The Apache Incubator is the entry path into the ASF for projects and codebases wishing to become part of the Foundation's efforts.

As of September, there are 30 podlings under incubation. Three releases were made during the month, and one IP clearance was completed. Several new project ideas and early proposals were discussed on the general list, with them seeking mentors and guidance for next steps. A new proposal, EasyXL, was discussed and is in the process of identifying mentors. No podlings retired during the month, and three new people joined the IPMC.

Mailing-list traffic in September covered regular Incubator business, including new proposals, release votes, graduation-readiness discussions, and mentor engagement, alongside two experiments aimed at improving visibility into podling health.

The first, an optional checkpoint, provides a lightweight review approximately six months after incubation, utilising a pre-filled template based on signals such as contributors, pull requests, releases, and mailing list activity. Mentors add context and adjustments with the aim of support rather than evaluation.

The second is a monthly health-metrics prototype that analyses public data over 3, 6, and 12-month windows to highlight trends within each podling. Draft health reports were generated for all podlings to validate the approach. The intent here is to help with podling reporting.

A mentor engagement analysis revealed a significant correlation between active, multi-mentor participation and successful graduation outcomes. It concluded that podlings with three mentors and consistent sign-offs are significantly more likely to graduate, reinforcing the importance of maintaining multiple active mentors throughout the incubation period.

Some analysis was conducted on graduation/retirement times. It was noted that projects that eventually retire spend almost twice as long in incubation as those that graduate. The majority of projects graduate within one to two years.

The graduation of Wayang was discussed, with a conversation highlighting some branding/vendor considerations to address before proceeding with any formal graduation proposal.

Work also continued on new training and onboarding materials. A new Training & Onboarding section was added to the Incubator website to consolidate resources by role and material type. New content includes: Mentor Onboarding slide deck, Incubator Case Studies collection, and PPMC & Committer onboarding guides.

A small number of reminders were sent to mentors regarding missing sign-offs for the previous month. Most podlings continue to make progress toward graduation, and the IPMC will continue to monitor long-running or low-activity podlings and provide additional guidance where appropriate. Livy is back on track with graduation, but there's been no response from Toree.

3 podlings did not report and will be asked to report next month. One report, ResilientDB, was submitted without a mentor sign-off. A couple of podlings were contacted about the quality of their reports this month and were pointed to the new reporting guide.

Community

New IPMC members:

Karanjeet Singh
Alin Jerpelea
Jarek Potiuk

People who left the IPMC:

none

New Podlings

Fesod

Podlings that failed to report, expected next month

HugeGraph
Pegasus
PonyMail

Graduations

DevLake

The board has motions for the following:

None

Releases

The following releases entered distribution during the month of September:

Amoro 0.8.1
Pekko Persistence 1.1.0
Polaris 1.1.0

IP Clearance

Druid Operator

Legal / Trademarks

N/A

Infrastructure

N/A

Amoro

Amoro is a Lakehouse management system built on open data lake formats like Apache Iceberg and Apache Paimon.

Amoro has been incubating since 2024-03-11.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

Polish our website and document.
Release more versions under ASF.
Build and grow a community.

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

Currently no.

How has the community developed since the last report?

Added 2 new Committers
Added 6 new contributors
Github stars reached ~1.1K

How has the project developed since the last report?

Released Amoro 0.8.1-incubatiing
Merged 68 PRs

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

Initial setup
Working towards first release
Community building
Nearing graduation
Other:

Date of last release:

2025-09-11, released Amoro 0.8.1-incubatiing

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

2025-08-22, committer:Nico CHen(GitHub ID: nicochen)
2025-09-25, committer:Zhuojun Jiang(GitHub ID: Jzjsnow)

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Yes, Amoro's mentors actively participate in the project, contribute insights, and help advance the project towards graduation.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

Yes, everything is fine.

Signed-off-by:

(amoro) Justn Mclean
Comments:
(amoro) Zhongyi Tan
Comments:
(amoro) Yu Li
Comments: Good to see new release produced and new committers joining. The community is developing in a good shape.
(amoro) Xinyu Zhou
Comments:
(amoro) Kent Yao
Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

Fesod

Fesod is a high-performance and memory-efficient Java library for reading and writing Excel files, designed to simplify development and ensure reliability.

Fesod has been incubating since 2025-09-17.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

Ensure that the website and codebase are fully compliant with ASF policies.
Publish the first release under the Apache Incubator.
Continue to grow the community and work towards the ASF Maturity Model.

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

No.

How has the community developed since the last report?

The project is still in the preparation phase, but we have welcomed several new code contributors.

In addition to the required code migration and compliance work, development of new features is also progressing.

How has the project developed since the last report?

The community is actively working on the first release (v2.0.0) under the Apache Incubator, which is currently planned for December.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

Initial setup
Working towards first release
Community building
Nearing graduation
Other:

We are still in the process of initial setup. The GitHub repository and project website have been migrated to the Apache organization.

The community is also planning to set up CI/CD pipelines to streamline future development and deployment.

Date of last release:

N/A

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

N/A

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Yes. They remain actively engaged with the project and continue to provide valuable input to guide its progress.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

Yes, everything is fine.

Signed-off-by:

(fesod) tison
Comments:
(fesod) Dave Fisher
Comments:
(fesod) Huajie Wang
Comments:
(fesod) PJ Fanning
Comments: Rapid progress with initial tasks

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

Fluss

Fluss is a streaming storage built for real-time analytics which can serve as the real-time data layer for Lakehouse architectures.

Fluss has been incubating since 2025-06-04.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

Publish the first release under the ASF incubator
Grow the community and attract more committers, contributors and users.
Fill out the maturity model

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

Fluss plans to release its first version (v0.8) under ASF incubator in October and will need IPMC assistance, including validation and voting.

How has the community developed since the last report?

Add 2 new committers, currently with total 15 committers.
The Fluss PPMC created a [LinkedIn page] (https://www.linkedin.com/company/apachefluss/), which has 625 followers within ~3 months, all organic growth.
[Regular Monthly Community Call] (https://docs.google.com/document/d/18b7G_dvYx-1FogV7LWEFMHXze5D5T9XZ3h 9zSU75dDA/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.9aenn0fakn4l) for July, Aug, Sept.
Jark Wu presented Fluss at CommunityOverCode Asia 2025 on July 26th.
Jark Wu and Giannis Polyzos are going to Flink Forward Barcelona 2025 to present Fluss on October 15th.
Leonard Xu is going to QCon Shanghai to represent Fluss on October 24th.
Giannis Polyzos is going to Big Data Europe to present Fluss on November 19-21.
Fluss participated #hacktoberfest2025

How has the project developed since the last report?

We have completed the full migration of the website and codebase from Alibaba to Apache.

Additionally, we’ve finalized development of Fluss v0.8 which was started since the project entered ASF incubator.

This version introduces Streaming Lakehouse support with Apache Iceberg and Lance. Now, all streaming events written to Fluss are automatically converted into either Iceberg or Lance format in real-time, enabling seamless lakehouse integration.

Besides, since introducing the Fluss Improvement Proposal (FIP) process in July, we have already created 17 FIPs, many of which have been approved and implemented.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

Initial setup
Working towards first release
Community building
Nearing graduation
Other:

Date of last release:

N/A

We released fluss-shaded-1.0-incubating in August, but this is not considered an official Fluss release, as it is a shaded utility module rather than part of the core Fluss system. The community is working on the official release of Fluss core (v0.8).

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

2025-07-29

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Yes

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

N/A

Signed-off-by:

(fluss) Jean-Baptiste Onofré
Comments: Good "start" for the podling, growing the community already happens. I'm looking for the first Apache release.
(fluss) Becket Qin
Comments:
(fluss) Yu Li
Comments: Good to see new committers joining and rich community activities. Looking forward to the first apache release.
(fluss) Jingsong Lee
Comments:
(fluss) Zili Chen
Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

Gluten

Gluten is a middle layer responsible for offloading JVM-based SQL engines' execution to native engines.

Gluten has been incubating since 2024-01-11.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

5th Apache Release for Gluten v1.5.0
Community Growth
Ready for Apache TLP graduation.

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

N/A

How has the community developed since the last report?

The number of fork is from 552 to 583.
The number of star is from 1379 to 1451.
The number of contributors is from 170 to 174.
Regular Monthly Meeting Minutes(Oct.): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g-veyoNB1QYFJY4-TMdewAq8wMkQqltbEt46CPxB rfE/edit?usp=sharing

How has the project developed since the last report?

Gluten 1.5.0 is on the way as 5th Apache release.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

Initial setup
Working towards first release
Community building
Nearing graduation
Other:

Date of last release:

2025-06-19

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

2025-05-26 for vote result published

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Yes, they continue to play an active role in the project, offering helpful contributions such as reminders about the release timeline and thoughtful perspectives on the community’s overall well-being.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

Yes, everything is fine.

Signed-off-by:

(gluten) Yu Li
Comments: The community keeps developing and I believe we are on a good way towards graduation.
(gluten) Wenli Zhang
Comments:
(gluten) Kent Yao
Comments:
(gluten) Shaofeng Shi
Comments:
(gluten) Felix Cheung
Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

Livy

Livy is web service that exposes a REST interface for managing long running Apache Spark contexts in your cluster. With Livy, new applications can be built on top of Apache Spark that require fine grained interaction with many Spark contexts.

Livy has been incubating since 2017-06-05.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

Revitalization of the Community
Dependable Release Cadence
Keep the project up to date with security fixes and in terms of Spark support

Initial setup
Working towards first release
Community building
Nearing graduation
Other:

(livy) Bikas Saha
Comments:
(livy) Luciano Resende
Comments:
(livy) Jean-Baptiste Onofré
Comments: I think we should move forward on a discussion about graduation.
(livy) Madhawa Kasun Gunasekara
Comments:
(livy) Larry McCay
Comments:
(livy) Gyorgy Gal
Comments:

Grow the community by facilitating more applications being built on ResDB.
Grow the community by facilitating more applications being built on ResDB.
Grow the community by facilitating more applications being built on ResDB.

Initial setup
Working towards first release
Community building
Nearing graduation
Other:

(resilientdb) Junping Du
Comments:
(resilientdb) Kevin Ratnasekera
Comments:
(resilientdb) Jean-Baptiste Onofré
Comments:

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Shepherd Assignments