Incubator PMC report for October 2015

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

There are 44 podlings currently undergoing incubation.

* Community

  New IPMC members:

  - Josh Elser
  - Sterling Hughes

* New Podlings

  - MADlib
  - Rya
  - Unomi

* Graduations

  The board has motions for the following:

  - Calcite
  - Brooklyn

* Releases

  The following releases were made since the last Incubator report:

  - 2015-09-06 Apache Kylin 1.0-incubating
  - 2015-09-14 Apache Brooklyn 0.8.0-incubating
  - 2015-09-14 Apache HTrace-4.0.0-incubating
  - 2015-09-15 Apache TinkerPop 3.0.1-incubating
  - 2015-09-16 Apache Groovy 2.4.5-incubating
  - 2015-09-21 Apache Sentry-1.6.0-incubating
  - 2015-09-22 Apache AsterixDB Hyracks 0.2.16-incubating

* IP Clearance

  - Raytheon BBN Technologies Corp donated POI Visio, an extension module for
    Apache POI. It adds support for the Microsoft Visio .vsdx xml-based file
    format. (Current Apache POI Visio support only handled the older binary
    .vsd format). Post-import, the component will be known as XDGF.

* Infrastructure

  - It seems that an incorrect date in the Board meeting calendar caused the
    report reminders to fire a week early, requiring manual cleanup after the
    correct date was established.  There was discussion of migrating the
    reminders and other Incubator bookkeeping to Whimsy.

* Miscellaneous

  - At the height of Corinthia's crisis, several committers resigned.  The
    mailing lists have since gone silent.  Some IPMC members followed up but
    those efforts do not appear to have been successful.
  - A vote to retire the Droids podling is pending.
  - Various proposals to change the Incubator have been discussed on
    general@incubator.  The one generating the most responses, mostly in
    opposition, is a proposal which would lessen the role of Mentors with
    business affiliations to podlings during Incubator entry and exit votes.
    None of the other proposals have gotten any traction.
  - A proposal regarding the Incubator formulated during ApacheCon EU was
    discussed on board@apache.

* Credits

  - Report Manager: Marvin Humphrey

-------------------- Summary of podling reports --------------------

* Still getting started at the Incubator

  - HAWQ
  - MADlib

* Not yet ready to graduate

  No release:

  - Apex
  - FreeMarker
  - Geode
  - Myriad
  - OpenAZ

* Ready to graduate

  - Groovy

  The Board has motions for the following:

  - Calcite
  - Brooklyn

* Did not report, expected next month

  - BatchEE
  - Climate Model Diagnostic Analyzer (2 months late)
  - Cotton (2 months late)
  - DataFu
  - HORN
  - ODF Toolkit
  - Ripple (4 months late)

* Report reviewed but not signed off by Mentors, expected next month

  - Wave

* Likely to retire

  - Droids

----------------------------------------------------------------------
                       Table of Contents
Apex
FreeMarker
Geode
Groovy
HAWQ
MADlib
Myriad
ODF Toolkit
OpenAz
Wave

----------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------
Apex

Apex is an enterprise grade native YARN big data-in-motion platform that
unifies stream processing as well as batch processing.

Apex has been incubating since 2015-08-17.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Release Apex-Core, and Apex-Malhar at least twice.
  2. Grow contributors beyond the initial set.

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  None. Thanks for continual support.

How has the community developed since the last report?

  The community is very engaged with the development of the project. There
  have been 485 messages on dev@.

  The community voted and selected the APEX logo which is put on the brand
  new project website at http://apex.incubator.apache.org/
  
How has the project developed since the last report?

  Various metrics are as follows:
  +---------------------------------------------------+
  |   Metric                         | Core  | Malhar |
  +---------------------------------------------------+
  | Non Merge Commits                |  88   |   33   |
  | Contributors                     |  17   |    9   |
  | Jira Issues                      |  94   |   30   |
  | Resolved Issues                  |  30   |    4   |
  +---------------------------------------------------+

  The project is still using the Atlassian instance of JIRA. The migration to
  Apache JIRA is underway.

  The first release of the project under ASF banner (3.2.0) is targeted to be
  branched off at the end of September. 

Date of last release:

  No release under ASF-Incubation code base as yet. Apex-Core, Apex-Malhar
  were last launched on July end in pre Apache days.

When were the last committers or PMC members elected?

  Committers and Mentors came about via incubation proposal.

Signed-off-by:

  [X](apex) Chris Nauroth
  [X](apex) Alan Gates
  [X](apex) Hitesh Shah
  [X](apex) Justin Mclean
  [X](apex) P. Taylor Goetz
  [X](apex) Ted Dunning

Shepherd/Mentor notes:



--------------------
BatchEE

BatchEE projects aims to provide a JBatch implementation (aka JSR352) and a
set of useful extensions for this specification.

BatchEE has been incubating since 2013-10-03.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Finding contributors
  2. Make the community more active
  3. Do more releases

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  None

How has the community developed since the last report?

  There's no significant change since the last month.

How has the project developed since the last report?

  Several few fixes have been done.

Date of last release:

  2014-08-09 batchee-0.2-incubating

When were the last committers or PMC members elected?

  during incubation. We got a few contributions though.

Signed-off-by:

  [ ](batchee) Mark Struberg
  [ ](batchee) Olivier Lamy
  [X](batchee) Romain Manni-Bucau

Shepherd/Mentor notes:


--------------------
FreeMarker

FreeMarker is a template engine, i.e. a generic tool to generate text output
based on templates. FreeMarker is implemented in Java as a class library for
programmers.

FreeMarker has been incubating since 2015-07-01.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Finding contributors
  2. Do the first release from ASF
  3. Further infrastructure migrations (move issues to Jira, web site)

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  None

How has the community developed since the last report?

  There's no significant change since the last month.

How has the project developed since the last report?

  The IP clearance process is now complete given that:

  1) Software License Agreements have been collected (and have been filed by
     the ASF Secretary) for the former copyright owners that are no more
     active and involved in the project.
  2) Contributor License Agreements have been collected (and have been filed
     by the ASF Secretary) for the main contributors of the project, that are
     now committers of the incubating project
  3) Notices in the project mailing lists and website have been published to
     announce that the project is now incubating at ASF and to invite
     potential contributors to participate in the new home
  4) License headers have been updated to reflect the new copyright

  Git repositories were migrated to ASF, and development now goes at ASF.

  GitHub integration was configured so that we can receive pull requests.

  Mailing lists were officially moved over to ASF

  Jira was created and marked as the official issue tracker, though old
  issues weren't yet migrated.

Date of last release:

  There was no release from the Incubator yet

When were the last committers or PMC members elected?

  We only have the initial committers and initial PMC members yet.

Signed-off-by:

  [X](freemarker) Jacopo Cappellato
  [ ](freemarker) Jean-Frederic Clere
  [ ](freemarker) David E. Jones
  [ ](freemarker) Ralph Goers
  [ ](freemarker) Sergio Fernández

Shepherd/Mentor notes:



--------------------
Geode

Geode is a data management platform that provides real-time, consistent
access to data-intensive applications throughout widely distributed butt
architectures.

Geode has been incubating since 2015-04-27.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Have our first Apache (incubating) release (currently blocked on us
     solving JGroups licensing issues) GEODE-77.
  2. Expanding the community to include contributors and committers outside
     of Pivotal.
  3. Execute and manage the project according to governance model required by
     the "Apache Way"

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  None

How has the community developed since the last report?

  - The community has elected Nitin Lamba as its first Release Manager.
  - Project website is being revamped.
  - In September 73 issues were created and 26 resolved, bringing the total
    to 382 created and 164 resolved.
  - There was 1 pull requests to github in the last 30 days, for a total of
    19 pull requests.
  - There were 319 messages on the dev list and 32 messages on the user list.
  - There are now 128 subscribers on the user and 117 on the dev list.

  - Events and Conferences:
    In September:

    Four talks at "Apache: Big Data Europe"
    - An introduction to Apache Geode (incubating)
    - Building a highly scalable open-source Real-time Streaming Analytics
      system using Spark SQL, Apache Geode (incubating), SpringXD and Apache
      Zeppelin (incubating)
    - Implementing a Highly Scalable In-Memory Stock Prediction System with
      Apache Geode (incubating), R and Spring XD
    - Apache Geode (incubating):  The First Six Months

  Two talks at SpringOne:
    - Implementing a highly scalable Stock prediction system with R, GemFire
      and Spring XD <http://s.apache.org/gOc>
    - Building Highly-Scalable Spring Applications with In-Memory,
      Distributed Data Grids <http://s.apache.org/LHS>

  Geode clubhouse: Building Effective Apache Geode Applications with Spring
  Data GemFire (Sept 8th)

  Geode clubhouse (roundtable):  Sept 30th

  Meetup in Cork Ireland: http://s.apache.org/HV1
  Meetup in London: http://s.apache.org/sOM

  Upcoming in October:

    Geode Clubhouse: Transactions (Oct 6th)
    Geode Clubhouse: Roundtable (Oct ?)

How has the project developed since the last report?

  - A wiki page has been setup to track the first release:
    http://s.apache.org/2d6
  - 11 items have been identified to reach the first release.
  - Almost all unit tests now pass on feature/GEODE-77 branch (The JGroups
    feature branch).
  - Good progress has also been made on stabilizing CI, by fixing various
    intermittent failures in integration tests.

Date of last release:

   N/A - Just nightly builds.

When were the last committers or PMC members elected?



Signed-off-by:

  [x](geode) Konstantin Boudnik
  [ ](geode) Chip Childers
  [ ](geode) Justin Erenkrantz
  [ ](geode) Jan Iversen
  [ ](geode) Chris Mattmann
  [ ](geode) William A. Rowe Jr.
  [ ](geode) Henry Saputra
  [ ](geode) Roman Shaposhnik

Shepherd/Mentor notes:



--------------------
Groovy

Apache Groovy is a multi-faceted programming language for the Java platform.
Groovy is a powerful, optionally typed and dynamic language, with static-
typing and static compilation capabilities, aimed at multiplying developers’
productivity thanks to a concise, familiar and easy to learn syntax. It
integrates smoothly with any Java program, and immediately delivers to your
application powerful features, including scripting capabilities, Domain-
Specific Language authoring, runtime and compile-time meta-programming and
functional programming.

Groovy has been incubating since 2015-03-17.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  No issues left before graduating.

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  No particular issue, but our mentors suggested we think about graduating.
  We still have to launch the vote, but the consensus is positive already.

How has the community developed since the last report?

  I've started collecting the number of subscribers on the users and dev
  lists starting last July (numbers from early July till end of September).
  Groovy users have been continuing to subscribe to our mailing-lists on a
  regular basis.

         Early   end of   end of    end of
         July    July     August    September
  Users: 249     259      273       274
  Dev:   152     156      163       164

  The download numbers, which are also an interesting indicator to see how
  much a project is used, are still on an upward trend.

  Here are the figures totaling downloads from both Maven Central and Bintray
  since the Groovy project entered the incubator (full numbers from September
  not yet available):

  March April May   June   July   August
  643k  759k  877k  1.15M  1.29M  1.34M

  The download numbers doubled since Groovy entered the incubator.

How has the project developed since the last report?

  Since the last report 3 months ago, we managed to make two releases.

    1. Groovy 2.4.4 on July 9th, patching an important security issue,
       but the release wasn't yet compliant with all the good practices
       in terms of licenses & copyright information

    2. Groovy 2.4.5 on September 17th, we fixed all the problems of the
       previous release, and we took the opportunity to do a "release party"
       during the SpringOne2GX conference in Washington, DC, to spread the
       knowledge of the new release process across the team, as well as with
       our partners from JFrog.

Date of last release:

  2015-09-17: Groovy 2.4.5

When were the last committers or PMC members elected?

  We've welcomed a new committer to the project: Keegan Witt.  Keegan is also
  known in our community for his work with the Maven integration for Groovy
  (the GMavenPlus project)

Signed-off-by:

  [ ](groovy) Andrew Bayer
  [x](groovy) Konstantin Boudnik
  [x](groovy) Bertrand Delacretaz
  [X](groovy) Jim Jagielski
  [x](groovy) Emmanuel Lecharny
  [ ](groovy) Roman Shaposhnik

Shepherd/Mentor notes:

  Emmanuel Lecharny: 
  
    Nothing special. They get it, it's now time for them to graduate, IMHO. As
    a mentor, it's a pleasure to follow this podling.

--------------------
HAWQ

HAWQ is an advanced enterprise SQL on Hadoop analytic engine built around a
robust and high-performance massively-parallel processing (MPP) SQL framework
evolved from Pivotal Greenplum Database.

HAWQ has been incubating since 2015-09-04.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Produce our first Apache Release
  2. Finalize infrastructure Migration and ICLAs from committers
  3. Expand the community, increase dev list activity and adding new
     committers/pmc members

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  We have only just started the incubation, everything seems to be starting
  up, nothing urgent at this time.

How has the community developed since the last report?

  This is our first report, after having been approved for incubation roughly
  2 wks ago.

  1. Most of the core contributors have completed their ICLA's and have
     established apache ids.
  2. Several presentations and meetups at ApacheCon EU and Strata aimed at
     growing interest in the project
  3. Formal announcements from Pivotal and press briefings related to the
     move of the project into Apache aimed at growing awareness and interest
     in the project.
  4. Outreach to parties that have expressed interest previously in our open
     source initiatives
  5. Still very much at the early stages of community development, we're just
     starting to get rolling.

How has the project developed since the last report?

  This is our first report, after having been approved for incubation roughly
  2 wks ago.

  1. Initial code drop has been provided to Apache
  2. Core infrastructure has been setup including: mailing lists, git, jira,
     wiki, website
  3. 62 messages on our developer list, 3 messages on our user list
  4. 16 jiras filed, 10 open, 1 reopened, 4 resolved, 1 closed - 1 issue
     unassigned
  5. 7 commits in total, including initial commit
  6. Most discussed items on the mailing list:
      - addressing issues with getting jira configured to allow issues to be
        assigned to users
      - discussion of usage of alternate communication channels, e.g. chat.
      - discussion of RTC vs CTR models for dev process

Date of last release:

  We have not had a release yet.

When were the last committers or PMC members elected?

  Most of the initial list of committers have been onboarded, but there are
  still a few more outstanding.  We have not yet added any new members on top
  of the initial committer list.

Signed-off-by:

  [X](hawq) Alan Gates
  [x](hawq) Konstantin Boudnik
  [x](hawq) Justin Erenkrantz
  [ ](hawq) Owen O'Malley
  [ ](hawq) Thejas Nair
  [ ](hawq) Roman Shaposhnik

Shepherd/Mentor notes:




--------------------
MADlib

Big Data Machine Learning in SQL for Data Scientists.

MADlib has been incubating since 2015-09-15.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Produce a first Apache release.
  2. Finalize infrastructure migration and ICLAs from committers.
  3. Expand the community, increase dev list activity and add new
     committers/pmc members.

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  Just started incubation, nothing specific to report at this time.

How has the community developed since the last report?

  We are approximately 2 weeks into the incubation process.

    1. So still at early stage.
    2. Most of the core contributors have completed their ICLA's and have
       established apache ids.
    3. Several presentations and meet-ups at ApacheCon EU and Strata NYC to
       discuss MADlib move to ASF governance.
    4. Formal announcements from Pivotal, press briefings and blogs related
       to the move of the project into Apache aimed at growing awareness and
       interest in the project.  Specialty press have picked up the story and
       reported widely.

How has the project developed since the last report?

  Early activity:

  1. Initial code drop provided to Apache
  2. Core infrastructure is in the process of being migrated from existing
     infrastructure: mailing lists, git, jira, wiki, website

Date of last release:

  No release yet.

When were the last committers or PMC members elected?

  Most of initial list of committers have been on-boarded, some still
  outstanding.  No new members added on top of the initial committer list.

Signed-off-by:

  [x](madlib) Konstantin Boudnik
  [X](madlib) Ted Dunning
  [ ](madlib) Roman Shaposhnik

Shepherd/Mentor notes:




--------------------
Myriad

Myriad enables co-existence of Apache Hadoop YARN and Apache Mesos together
on the same cluster and allows dynamic resource allocations across both
Hadoop and other applications running on the same physical data center
infrastructure.

Myriad has been incubating since 2015-03-01.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Determine the best way to take github pull requests or ReviewBoard patch
     (chains) and apply/commit them to the Myriad git repo. We're looking at
     Mesos' apply-review.sh script, but I wonder if there's something else
     out there we should be considering. Is there a way to make github
     'Merge' integration just work, even through the mirror?
  2. Vote in and onboard new committers. Two are in progress, one from a new
     contributing organization.
  3. Prepare our first release under Apache. We'll update the code's
     copyright/namespace and packaging, but we still need to learn the other
     elements of the Apache release process. Is this "DRAFT" still the best
     resource? https://incubator.apache.org/guides/releasemanagement.html

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  None beyond the above-mentioned.

How has the community developed since the last report?

  - Mailing list traffic has significantly increased from 60-80
    messages/month in April-July to 171 in August and 227 in September. Some
    of that could be JIRA integration, but we still have 17 unique human
    authors now, up from 13 in July.
  - Increasing participation in our biweekly community syncs. We now get
    around 7-11 participants, up from the 5-8 we were getting in May-July.
    See minutes at: http://s.apache.org/8kF
    
  - Wiki: Ruth has done a wonderful job populating and organizing the wiki
    from our scattered docs. Now we have 24 wiki pages describing use cases,
    architecture, installation/configuration, administration, and the REST
    API. https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MYRIAD/Myriad+Home
  - Website under development, with awesome Myriad logo.
    https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MYRIAD-144 preview at
    http://klucar.github.io/myriad-site/
  - We started a #myriad IRC channel on Freenode, and are in the process of
    integrating it with ASFBot.
    https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/INFRA-10485
  - Well-attended talk by Mohit and Santosh at MesosCon.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU2VE08fOD4
  - Swapnil, Sarjeet, and Mitra won 1st place in freestyle category at docker
    global hack day for docker based multi-tenant YARN/Myriad clusters.
    https://blog.docker.com/2015/09/docker-global-hack-day-3-winners/

How has the project developed since the last report?

  - Finally got the SGA from Paypal and migrated our source to Apache git!
    Still need to figure how to integrate it into our commit workflow.
  - Resolved 14 JIRAs: http://s.apache.org/3dc
  - Merged the following PRs (from the old github repo)
      * Multi-project build changes (PR#108)
      * Improved unit testing (PR#112)
      * Myriad Logo update (PR#113)
      * Dynamically configurable NM Ports (PR#102)
      * Fine-grained scaling (PR#91)
      * Upgrade to Hadoop 2.7 (PR#116)
      * Complete Myriad HA Implementation (PR#123)
      * Run MyriadExecutor as NodeManager AuxService (PR#118,123)

Date of last release:

  Santosh will release manage the Myriad 0.1.0 release, our first release
  under Apache. We created a 0.1.0 version tag in JIRA, and targeted some
  pre-release issues for Apache copyright/namespace changes. We'll try to
  merge in some outstanding PRs, but there are no other feature blockers, so
  we hope to cut our first release candidate this month.

When were the last committers or PMC members elected?

  - One new committer has been privately nominated and voted in, awaiting
    IPMC Board approval. Then he/she still has to accept the invitation.
  - Another is in the midst of voting this week.

Signed-off-by:

  [ ](myriad) Benjamin Hindman
  [X](myriad) Danese Cooper
  [X](myriad) Ted Dunning
  [X](myriad) Luciano Resende

Shepherd/Mentor notes:




--------------------
ODF Toolkit

Java modules that allow programmatic creation, scanning and manipulation of
OpenDocument Format (ISO/IEC 26300 == ODF) documents

Shepherd/Mentor notes:

  Rob Weir (robweir):
  
    No report submitted, though I did remind the PPMC.   I sense some "report
    fatigue" since they missed the July report deadline, submitted then in
    time for August, but lacked a mentor sign off, and then submitted again in
    September and did get sign off.

  Drew Farris (drew):
  
    Kudos to robweir activity as a mentor, however this project could use
    another mentor. Generally little traffic or activity.

  Nick Burch (nick):

    Project has recently added a committer, which is good, but otherwise the level
    of activity remains too low. I've heard rumours of development happening
    in private elsewhere, but unless that effort returns to the project and
    activity improves, I think we're going to have to look at admitting defeat
    and retiring the podling soon.

--------------------
OpenAz

Tools and libraries for developing Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC)
Systems in a variety of languages.

OpenAz has been incubating since 2015-01-20.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Confirm 1.0.0 as the first release
  2. Get website up to attract more attention
  3. Vote to confirm if any JIRA's are needed to be closed for 1st release

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  None

How has the community developed since the last report?

  n/a

How has the project developed since the last report?

  Preparing for v1.0.0 release

Date of last release:

  XXXX-XX-XX

When were the last committers or PMC members elected?

  no new since initial

Signed-off-by:

  [ ](openaz) Emmanuel Lecharny
  [X](openaz) Colm O Heigeartaigh
  [ ](openaz) Hadrian Zbarcea

Shepherd/Mentor notes:

  P. Taylor Goetz (ptgoetz):

    The OpenAz report is pretty sparse and has not been signed off
    by any of the podling's mentors. dev@ mailing list activity is
    extremely low (15 messages in the past 3 months). I would recommend
    the top priority be for the project to expand the community.

  Colm O hEigeartaigh (coheigea):

    Agreed that activity is very sparse. It seems that most of the initial committers in the proposal have not joined the project. I think we will try to get the website up and running, triage some items to be done for an initial release, and then get the release done in the next quarter. Hopefully that will drum up more interest in the project.


--------------------
Wave

A wave is a hosted, live, concurrent data structure for rich communication.
It can be used like email, chat, or a document.

Wave has been incubating since 2010-12-04.

  [x](wave) Upayavira
  [ ](wave) Christian Grobmeier

Shepherd/Mentor notes:

  Marvin Humphrey (marvin):

    Wave's report was deliberately not signed off by its Mentors.  Mentor
    Upayavira engaged the Wave community about the possibility of retiring.
    The community preferred to continue; a timeline for making an incubating
    release was discussed.

  Upayavira (upayavira):
    As Marvin observed, I'm doubtful that Wave has the momentum to make
    any significant change nor to progress towards graduation. The community
    will need to meet some targets - the immediate one is to make a release 
    before the next board report is due.