On 6/3/2012 7:10 AM, Richard Eckart de Castilho wrote:
uimaFIT is already under the Apache License. I suppose after the IP clearance
is through, parts could easily be integrated into core. Any advice as to IP
problems that may crop up is appreciated.
We will need a software grant - see http://www.apache.org/licenses/ .
For uimaFIT, two software grants will probably be required as the project has
been led by people from two different institutions. Source code files
correspondingly carry copyright headers from the institution that first
contributed the source file:
* University of Colorado - Philip Ogren offered to take care of
the necessary process
* Technische Universität Darmstadt - I will take care of the necessary
process
3a2) Pro: It could likely lead to some new committers :-)
Definitely. We do want to continue developing uimaFIT. The development of
uimaFIT follows a certain spirit, that we want to maintain beyond the formal
contribution. There is also a number of issues on our to do list. I suspect
that it will mostly be me doing active coding. Recently, Philip and Steven
do less coding, but still contribute with valuable comments.
New code bases come into Apache either via the Incubator, or via direct
incorporation into existing top level projects, with an IP clearance done as it
would be in the Incubator.
At the risk of saying what you may already know, the Incubator route is there to enable a
sufficient community to form around the project - Apache doesn't want
"orphaned" code with too few people able to commit to maintaining/developing
it. The Incubator also is there to enable mentoring of new people in the Apache Way.
(See http://incubator.apache.org/ ).
We have had other code bases come into the UIMA project via a direct path (with
a software grant, but not via the incubator). In one of those cases, the
people working on the code were already working on UIMA - so were part of the
community and were knowledgeable in the Apache way of doing things. In another
case (I don't quite remember the details) - we had the software in UIMA and the
contributor was contributing patches (he wasn't a committer) until we had some
confidence he understood the Apache Way and would be a good team member.
Are any of the current people working on uimaFIT already Apache committers and/or
familiar with the Apache Way? If not, can others comment on the rationale for picking
the incubator or "direct" paths?
None of us is already an Apache committer. I have been participating for quite
some time on the users and developers mailing lists, have been active on Apache
Jira and also submitted the occasional patch. I do also participate in and lead
other open source projects. Consequently, I would think myself as sufficiently
familiar with Open Source projects and with the Apache Way to comment.
I think a contribution in form of an incubator projects makes most sense for
projects that later graduate to top level projects (like OpenNLP). Given the
scope of uimaFIT, a direct contribution seems more reasonably to me.
I agree that the scope of uimaFIT implies a tight coupling to core UIMA, so it
seems less of a "subproject", and more of a core contribution.
I understand this is what has happened with the TextMarker project. It seems to
me that the direct way results is considerably less organizational overhead as
well, e.g. no need to set up a incubator project website and whatnot. There is
some more overhead because the protocol requires some time during which new
contributors provide patches before being given commit rights.
A direct contribution could lead to a loss of identity to the uimaFIT project. This is
partially something that is desired, because we want to reassure users that uimaFIT is
becoming a part of the UIMA family and that using it is not "violating the UIMA
way". It would be appreciated though if some part of the identity could be
maintained, e.g. by placing the module at the same level as UIMA-AS. This would also make
sense, as we would like to maintain an independent release cycle.
We have designed the add-ons to be releasable either all together or (more
likely going forward) as individual released things, so that's where I would
suggest hosting the original uimaFIT. Over time, of course, I hope the goal is
for it to be properly integrated into the core.
-Marshall
Here's one comment - if there is only one active developer (at the moment) for
uimaFIT, it would seem that to accept this other existing UIMA
contributors/committers would need to agree to participate enough in uimaFIT so
it had the minimal diverse community expected of Apache projects. At this
point, I'm interested enough to be one of the additional participants :-).
I think the situation here is pretty much the same as with TextMarker. At the
time of the contribution (and I think to this date) there is one active
contributor to the module. There is interest amongst the other UIMA developers
in the module though.
As the situation stands, I am the only active contributor on uimaFIT. Philip
and Steven did not officially leave the project though and may choose to pick
up their activities at a later point in time.
Marshal, it is great that uimaFIT could raise your interest to the point you
consider participating. Getting feedback, ideas or even code from core UIMA
developers is most welcome, as it paves the road towards the eventual
integration of uimaFIT features or ideas into the UIMA core in the long run. I
remember that last year, Jaroslaw Cwiklik had expressed some interest in using
uimaFIT for testing as well in the context of testing UIMA-AS.
-- Richard
