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Outline completed 4/4/2016. Ready for content.

Goal: Make self-evaluation comments objective and demonstrable.

Overview

The purpose of this plan is to document the Apache Taverna podling's progress toward graduation from the Apache incubator. Initially, it is a roadmap for the Taverna PMC, showing completed items as well as those that have yet to be accomplished, and will help us focus our efforts to achieve project maturity. As graduation nears, the plan will be a measurable means for mentors, community members, the Incubator PMC, and the ASF Board of directors to assess Taverna's readiness to graduate. 

This Maturity Assessment Plan is based on the Apache Project Maturity Model and benefits from the experience of the Groovy Podling.

Status

 This is an initial outline of the Taverna Podling maturity plan and content needs to be added for each of the plan elements.

Assessment Summary

 When completed, this section will summarize the readiness of the Taverna podling to graduate.

Maturity Model Assessment

The Goals

A mature Apache project will meet the following goals:

  • Code: open, discoverable, fully public history, documented provenance
  • Quality: security, backwards compatibility, etc
  • Contributions: welcome from anyone based on technical quality
  • License: Apache License, dependencies must not put additional restrictions
  • Community: inclusive, meritocratic, no dictators, clear documented path to entry
  • Discussions and decisions: asynchronous, in a single central place, archived
  • Decision making: consensus, votes if needed, technical vetoes in the worst case
  • Independence: from any corporate or organizational influence
  • Releases: source code only, notices, long-lived release format

These goals are from a January 6, 2015 message from Bertrand Delacretaz on the Apache community-dev mailing list. They provide a clear and concise introduction to the maturity model.

Assessment Categories

The Apache Project Maturity Model assesses whether or not a project complies with each element in the following seven categories: code, licenses and copyright, releases, quality, community, consensus building, and independence. There are no intermediate levels: a project either complies with an element or it does not. The following sections address Taverna's status regarding each element of the model.

NOTE: Numbers in brackets ([ ]) refer to footnotes on the Apache Project Maturity page, and are reproduced at the bottom of this document.

Code

  • CD10: The project produces Open Source software, for distribution to the public at no charge. [1]
    • Apache Taverna's source code is fully licensed as Apache License 2.0 for no charge.
  • CD20: The project's code is easily discoverable and publicly accessible.
  • CD30: The code can be built in a reproducible way using widely available standard tools.
  • CD40: The full history of the project's code is available via a source code control system, in a way that allows any released version to be recreated.
  • CD50: The provenance of each line of code is established via the source code control system, in a reliable way based on strong authentication of the committer. When third-party contributions are committed, commit messages provide reliable information about the code provenance. [2]
    • Apache Taverna ...

Licenses and Copyright

  • LC10: The code is released under the Apache License, version 2.0.
    • Apache Taverna ...
  • LC20: Libraries that are mandatory dependencies of the project's code do not create more restrictions than the Apache License does. [3, 4]
    • Apache Taverna ...
  • LC30: The libraries mentioned in LC20 are available as Open Source software.
    • Apache Taverna ...
  • LC40: Committers are bound by an Individual Contributor Agreement (the "Apache iCLA") that defines which code they are allowed to commit and how they need to identify code that is not their own.
    • Apache Taverna ...
  • LC50: The copyright ownership of everything that the project produces is clearly defined and documented. [5]
    • Apache Taverna ...

Releases

  • RE10: Releases consist of source code, distributed using standard and open archive formats that are expected to stay readable in the long term. [6]
    • Apache Taverna ...
  • RE20: Releases are approved by the project's PMC (see CS10), in order to make them an act of the Foundation.
    • Apache Taverna ...
  • RE30: Releases are signed and/or distributed along with digests that can be reliably used to validate the downloaded archives.
    • Apache Taverna ...
  • RE40: Convenience binaries can be distributed alongside source code but they are not Apache Releases -- they are just a convenience provided with no guarantee.
    • Apache Taverna ...

Quality

  • QU10: The project is open and honest about the quality of its code. Various levels of quality and maturity for various modules are natural and acceptable as long as they are clearly communicated.
    • Apache Taverna ...
  • QU20: The project puts a very high priority on producing secure software. [7]
    • Apache Taverna ...
  • QU30: The project provides a well-documented channel to report security issues, along with a documented way of responding to them. [8]
    • Apache Taverna ...
  • QU40: The project puts a high priority on backwards compatibility and aims to document any incompatible changes and provide tools and documentation to help users transition to new features.
    • Apache Taverna ...
  • QU50: The project strives to respond to documented bug reports in a timely manner.
    • Apache Taverna ...

Community

  • CO10: The project has a well-known homepage that points to all the information required to operate according to this maturity model.

    • Apache Taverna ...

  • CO20: The community welcomes contributions from anyone who acts in good faith and in a respectful manner and adds value to the project.

    • Apache Taverna ...

  • CO30: Contributions include not only source code, but also documentation, constructive bug reports, constructive discussions, marketing and generally anything that adds value to the project.

    • Apache Taverna ...

  • CO40: The community is meritocratic and over time aims to give more rights and responsibilities to contributors who add value to the project.

    • Apache Taverna ...

  • CO50: The way in which contributors can be granted more rights such as commit access or decision power is clearly documented and is the same for all contributors.

    • Apache Taverna ...

  • CO60: The community operates based on consensus of its members (see CS10) who have decision power. Dictators, benevolent or not, are not welcome n Apache projects.

    • Apache Taverna ...

  • CO70: The project strives to answer user questions in a timely manner.

    • Apache Taverna ...

Consensus Building

  • CS10: The project maintains a public list of its contributors who have decision power -- the project's PMC (Project Management Committee) consists of those contributors.

    • Apache Taverna ...

  • CS20: Decisions are made by consensus among PMC members [9] and are documented on the project's main communications channel. Community opinions are taken into account but the PMC has the final word if needed.

    • Apache Taverna ...

  • CS30: Documented voting rules are used to build consensus when discussion is not sufficient. [10]

    • Apache Taverna ...

  • CS40: In Apache projects, vetoes are only valid for code commits and are justified by a technical explanation, as per the Apache voting rules defined in CS30.

    • Apache Taverna ...

  • CS50: All "important" discussions happen asynchronously in written form on the project's main communications channel. Offline, face-to-face or private discussions [11] that affect the project are also documented on that channel.

    • Apache Taverna ...

Independence

  • IN10: The project is independent from any corporate or organizational influence. [12]
    • Apache Taverna ...
  • IN20: Contributors act as themselves as opposed to representatives of a corporation or organization.
    • Apache Taverna ...

Footnotes from Apache Project Maturity Model

[1] "For distribution to the public at no charge" is straight from the from the ASF Bylaws at http://apache.org/foundation/bylaws.html.
[2] See also LC40.
[3] It's ok for platforms (like a runtime used to execute our code) to have different licenses as long as they don't impose reciprocal licensing on what we are distributing.
[4] http://apache.org/legal/resolved.html has information about acceptable licenses for third-party dependencies 
[5] In Apache projects, the ASF owns the copyright for the collective work, i.e. the project's releases. Contributors retain copyright on their contributions but grant the ASF a perpetual copyright license for them. 
[6] See http://www.apache.org/dev/release.html for more info on Apache releases 
[7] The required level of security depends on the software's intended uses, of course. Expectations should be clearly documented. 
[8] Apache projects can just point to http://www.apache.org/security/ or use their own security contacts page, which should also point to that.
[9] In Apache projects, "consensus" means widespread agreement among people who have decision power. It does not necessarily mean "unanimity".
[10] For Apache projects, http://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.html defines the voting rules.
[11] Apache projects have a private mailing list that their PMC is expected to use only when really needed. The private list is typically used for discussions about people, for example to discuss and to vote on PMC candidates privately.
[12] Independence can be understood as basing the project's decisions on the open discussions that happen on the project's main communications channel, with no hidden agendas.

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