Hi BifroMQ PPMC and mentors, This is the upcoming quarterly incubator report for BifroMQ, covering the progress made over the past three months. I have updated the wiki at the same time. Any feedback/concerns are appreciated.
## BifroMQ BifroMQ is a Java-based, high-performance, distributed MQTT broker with native multi-tenancy support, designed for large-scale connections and message delivery. BifroMQ has been incubating since 2025-04-22. ### Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:1. Complete the first Apache Incubator release and establish a regular release cadence. 2. Increase public communication on dev@ and ensure all project decisions and planning are captured on the mailing list. 3. Grow community participation beyond the original contributors, including attracting new reviewers and contributors. ### Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of? The primary concern is low traffic on the dev@ list and limited visibility of development discussions. Recent mentor feedback highlighted the need to move architectural decisions, release planning, and prioritization discussions onto dev@ to comply with ASF governance expectations. In addition, regarding the “BifroMQ” trademark transfer in China: in response to a time-limited office action from the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), Baidu submitted the requested supplemental materials before the deadline. We are now waiting for an update from ASF on the status and next steps. ### How has the community developed since the last report? Community activity on GitHub remains steady, but public communication has been low. Following mentor feedback, the PPMC began improving transparency by starting public discussion threads, including a DISCUSS thread for the first release. We also launched the “BifroMQ” WeChat Official Account to support outreach to the Chinese-speaking community. The account name currently uses “BifroMQ” (without the “Apache” prefix) because the platform requires formal authorization to use “Apache” in the account name. The account description clearly identifies the project as “Apache BifroMQ (Incubating)”. Official project discussions and decisions continue to happen on the mailing list. ### How has the project developed since the last report? Work toward the first incubator release has been completed, including architectural refactoring, API stabilization, and Apache compliance work (LICENSE/NOTICE, headers, package renaming, distribution scripts). A DISCUSS thread(https://github.com/apache/bifromq/discussions/192) for the 4.0.0-incubating release has been opened to gather community feedback before preparing RC1. A significant amount of work came from supporting an early enterprise adopter running BifroMQ in production, resulting in important optimizations and bug fixes now included in the upcoming release. ### How would you assess the podling's maturity? Please feel free to add your own commentary. - [ ] Initial setup - [X] Working towards first release - [ ] Community building - [ ] Nearing graduation - [ ] Other: ### Date of last release: 2025-02-25 ### When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?No new committers or PPMC members have been added since incubation started. ### Have your mentors been helpful and responsive? Are things falling through the cracks? If so, please list any open issues that need to be addressed. Yes. ### Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks? Are 3rd parties respecting and correctly using the podlings name and brand? If not what actions has the PPMC taken to correct this? Has the VP, Brand approved the project name? Yes. The podling name “BifroMQ” has been reviewed by the VP, Brand. We are not aware of any misuse by third parties. For outreach to the Chinese-speaking community, we have created a WeChat Official Account currently named “BifroMQ”. The platform requires an authorization document to use “Apache” in the account name, so we are temporarily using “BifroMQ” as the account name while clearly stating “Apache BifroMQ (Incubating)” in the description. We would appreciate guidance from ASF (Incubator and Brand) on the proper process to obtain authorization for using the full “Apache BifroMQ” name for this account, so that we can align fully with the Incubator publicity policy. Thanks, -- Yonny(Yu) Hao
