All it's quiet in Apache Labs.
Some of the labs have some more or less steady activity and a few have
more than one people working on it, but nothing that has yet reached the
point of requiring action on the evolution of the lab.
- o -
One interesting lab that somewhat differs from all the others is Roy's
Webarch (http://labs.apache.org/webarch/) which is now being used as
input for the work of the HTTP next-gen IETF working group.
I was, in fact, very positively surprised to see a reference to
labs.apache.org from various blog posts on the future of HTTP and I like
the fact that such links give credibility to labs.
I feel the need to outline, though, that the "no release" rule for labs
was created to avoid people from using labs as a way to route around the
incubator, yet 'code-less' labs are able, in fact, to 'release' their
own documentation artifacts, without oversight or the need for a
community around the effort.
That said, I'm only outlining the existence of such issue but I do not
think this is currently creating a problem: the Webarch pages reflect
the labs.apache.org style and in doing so clearly mark the work as
'experimental' or 'researchy', which is very similar than people
publishing stuff on their people.apache.org/~user/ pages and creates a
level of distance between any official apache position and the pages,
even if they are served off of *.apache.org domains.
Let me repeat: I think that Webarch and code-less labs are a *good
thing* and should be encouraged in any way possible, as long as the
product of their effort is clearly marked as coming from a lab (which is
the case for Webarch) and not used as a way to abuse the apache branding
to give resonance to an individual committer's effort.
I'm just mentioning this so that both labs@ and board@ consider this
food for thought and in no way I want such food for thought endanger the
ability to use labs in the way Roy has done... but it's my duty, as PMC
chair, to report changes in the project evolution that might require, in
the future, board attention that this is the closest thing to that (even
if, right now, does not require any action from any part and it's
unlikely that it will require any in the future either).
--
Stefano.
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