Hi Lab! I've been very pleased by the lab announcement, such an environment for internal innovation has really been missing at the ASF and the lab seems to fill that gap. And congratulation for the lab web site too, it's pretty nice!
Now come the criticisms (I hope constructive) :) Whereas I understand the rational behind the "no release" policy, I really think this is the worst solution to the problem. Innovative, one-man (or even a couple of men) projects need feedback from users more than any other project. Prohibiting releases limits drastically the opportunity for labs projects to be used, both in and outside the ASF. Not that many people are comfortable with building a project from the sources to use it. It breaks the principle of "Release early, release often" so important in the early life of a project. In short, I believe it's a good recipe for failure. An answer to this could be to develop projects in the lab and release them outside (in SourceForge for example). I don't believe this is a real solution. Why providing an environment for projects development if one of its important parts must happen outside? My (much) preferred solution would be to have all labs project release with a disclaimer saying that the ASF doesn't endorse the release and the project (or project owner) is solely responsible. I think it would make sense as it would remain consistent with the "lab" portion of the story (we're experimenting, can't guarantee what's inside). The labs projects would be responsible of their release and what they put inside and again I think this would make sense as the projects' creators are all going to be ASF committers. People who have a minimum understanding of what can and what can't be released. Besides, as stated in the labs bylaws, the previous alternative was to host outside of the ASF, which also means that the project is responsible for its releases. I have a project that I cherish and I would love to see it in the lab. However if I can't make any release, I know this is going to be a serious issue for the project to ever become something bigger. And that's far more risk than I can afford. So is this "no release" policy something that could be changed? Or is it final? Matthieu
