Hi,
On 28 Nov 2013, at 15:18, Ali Lown wrote:
@Christian:
Playing the devils advocate I ask you (again):
Is this still Devil's advocate though? I have had a very similar email
sitting in my drafts for the last month asking the same questions
about the future of Wave.
Sad :-|
Do you folks believe the incubator can ever be completed as it is
now?
If you believe yes, please let me know why or how we can achieve that
goal.
Otherwise my recommendation is to move Wave to GitHub and close the
incubation until the community around Wave has grown.
I shall answer your questions throughout this email, though it
probably suffices to say that I no longer think Apache Incubator is
the right place for Wave (in its current form).
The Incubator has a specific goal. Maybe once the project has an active
(developing!) community again, the ASF might be the right place again.
One large benefit speaking for such an org as the ASF is that we
maintain a clean IP. Its reducing risk for companies. However, if you
start carefully with that at GitHub too its no problem. Not even to come
back.
(With retirement: what happens to the project's source code license?
Does it become public domain instead of licensed to the ASF?)
In ASF terms it goes to the "attic" which is a read-only repository. The
code there remains in AL 2.0.
With AL 2.0 it is possible for you to "fork" it to GitHub which is more
or less what happens. You can
work on the code as you like and release your own packages in the way
you like.
However you can't simply change the license of some existing code. I
don't know the specifics but if you plan
to change the license it's better to ask some other folks here at the
ASF. If want to keep AL 2.0 which I would
love, then no problem.
There will be one issue to solve which is the trademarks thing. To my
knowledge the trademark has been transferred to the ASF.
We need to ask at Apache Branding if you want to keep the current names.
Usually the ASF keeps trademarks. In example, the Apache iBatis
project renamed itself to MyBatis after moving away.
However in incubating projects I have seen people taking away the names
too, like Zeta Components.
Once this has been cleared it should be no problem for you to move on.
Please note that you should set up a new mailinglist before the
retirement happens. ML are closed once the project retires. And you
certainly want to get people moving to the new resource before that
happens.
Please let me know if you have any more questions.
Cheers
Christian
@FrankR:
You already have it - wave on github. Here,
https://github.com/apache/wave
Yes, the code is on GitHub. (Though this is simply a one-mirror of the
Apache SVN tree).
[Though, if we retire the project that will no longer exist - I
suggest watching one of the personal trees (e.g. mine)
https://github.com/alown/wave].
When people are calling for GitHub, they are actually asking for the
development style that it uses: Git, Pull Requests, Quick-forking,
Less 'paperwork'. [And to some extent the 'coolness' factor - which is
not to be underestimated for getting development support].
@Fleeky:
lets finally have discussion for development happen on a public wave
;)
I agree that the dogfooding should really have been a thing, but it
hasn't been possible here. (Though I hestitate to say whether Wave is
stable enough for multiple users heavily editing a Wave - my anecdotal
data says it tends to 'get stuck' around the 100 blips mark).
@Thomas:
Speaking as someone unable to contribute code to the client as its
too
heavily tide into the server (which I cant make heads not tails of),
This is a major contention point. It is definitely too tied together,
but because of this, it is very difficult to separate it now... (But
this is something that must be done).
@Thomas/FrankR:
how will any move effect things? how will it help? wont it just be
rearranging
things again that have little, if anything, to do with getting
anything
actually done?
It would indeed seem mostly arbitrary with regards to the tooling. The
ethic however is quite different for GH projects, compared to Apache
projects. (And I would argue it is this, that is part of the reason we
struggle to maintain active developers here).
The other problem, is that at ~500,000 LOC of Java, it is not easy for
new people to get involved. (@Ewan: This ties in to your point, but it
would take more than a few weeks to get someone familiar with this
codebase [I have been focused almost exclusively on the server code
for the last ~3 years, but I still couldn't tell you exactly how it
all fits together - which is why the corruption issues are still
outstanding]).
I am still massively enthusiastic about WFP as a communication
method, and
making a good reference client and server is the way to push it.
This I agree with, but it also tells us what our actual aim should be:
A clearly separated library for using WFP to create things - of which
the client/server are examples...
Ultimately, from my point of view, a move to GitHub would provide us
with several things:
- Full Git integration (The Apache system is still very awkward to use
and git-svn still chokes on things occasionally).
- The GitHub 'ethic' - hard to explain
- The opportunity to change the working style. I feel that the
'meritocracy' approach only works well for clearly established
projects. Wave has too many options - and it is this that is dividing
the effort going in to it. Making decisions here is proving incredibly
difficult, getting votes for releases is very difficult, etc. As such,
I would push for a much clearer philosophy of the 'new project'.
Sorry about the long email. :)
Comments?
Ali
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