Hi all, An overview of the sequence as far as I understand it. Consider it a basic starting point for discussion.
Let's start by assuming we want there to be a NetBeans 9 to be released out of Apache, and as a top level project, i.e., outside the incubator, in line with the release of Java 9. That puts us in the middle of next year somewhere. The most important aspect that needs to be worked through before then is the IP, license hygiene, etc. Before we get to the point where we're working on that, we need to actually have one or more Mercurial repos that we know we want to move. Right now, the NetBeans 9 branch is being moved into trunk, once that's done we need to consider whether we should take the NetBeans trunk as our starting point -- and determine other brances we'll need. We'll then need to work through the IP issues, i.e., work through the incompatible licenses and work out solutions for those. Some features might be dropped, others can be installed via plugins, either separately or during installation. At the point where we've worked through those licensing issues and are at a stage where we either have temporary exceptions for truly problematic areas, while knowing what the ultimate solutions for those will be, or we have solved everything, we'll be at the point where Oracle's SGA (software grant agreement) can be worked on. In other words, based on the above, the SGA would be executed as one of the LAST steps of the incubation period. After all, if we do uncover insurmountable issues during the incubation period, in particular in relation to licensing, having executed such a grant too early would lead to a very difficult unwinding of the process. In parallel to the licensing process described above, since we're confident that in one way or another things will work out favorably, we could decide to move the tutorials and other content from netbeans.org to the website structure, whatever that will be, at Apache, including setting up a Wiki structure in our new Confluence environment. Comments to the above -- bring 'em on! Gj
