The Apache Software Foundation Board of Directors Meeting Minutes August 17, 2005 1. Call to order The meeting was scheduled for 10:00 PST -0800 and was begun at 10:07 when a sufficient attendance to constitute a quorum was recognized by the chairman. The meeting was held by teleconference, hosted by Jim Jagielski and Covalent. IRC #asfboard on irc.freenode.net will be used for backup purposes. 2. Roll Call Directors Present: Ken Coar Justin Erenkrantz Jim Jagielski Ben Laurie Sam Ruby Greg Stein Directors Absent: Dirk-Willem van Gulik Sander Striker Stefano Mazzocchi Guests: Cliff Schmidt 3. Minutes from previous meetings Minutes in Subversion are found under the URL: https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/foundation/board/ Append the minutes URIs to that to access them through the Web. A. The meeting of June 22, 2005 SVN - board/board_minutes_2005_06_22.txt Approved by General Consent. B. The meeting of July 28, 2005 SVN - board/board_minutes_2005_07_28.txt [not yet available] 4. Officer Reports A. Chairman [Greg] Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the "size" of the ASF. Many aspects of size can be (and are) handled just fine. Things like code size, a high traffic site, lots of email, and hardware capacity are all managed fine. However, we are now seeing issues around communication and project growth. As communities grow, consensus can be harder to reach. As a consensus-driven organization, growth can severely hamper what we are trying to accomplish. The number of stakeholders increases and/or the number of people willing to "pitch in" serve to slow down or derail effective consensus gathering. The typical response is to appoint an authority who can attempt to gather consenus, but can decide by fiat when needed. This runs counter to our culture, so another solution may be needed (with a requisite amount of navel-gazing to reach that point). Project growth places a transient burden on our infrastructure team, but it places a continuous, non-terminating burden on the Board to review those projects' quarterly reports. This burden is already quite noticable during Board meetings, and it will simply continue to grow. New structure may be required to handle the growth, and we have talked about possibilities. As an experiment to increase efficiency of review during Board meetings, this month we will assign Directors to shepherd reports during the meeting. All Directors are responsible for all reports, but this extra focus should ensure Directors are truly involved, and it will ensure that all reports get specific, detailed attention. B. President [Sander] C. Treasurer [Justin] Thanks to Robyn, we received a copy of QuickBooks Pro and it is now installed. I now have access to the Paypal accounts. Paperwork for obtaining credit cards from Wells Fargo are pending. In the last few days, I have had several conversations with Wells Fargo about our banking situation and how we can optimize both our fees and our services. An email detailing these discussions and our options will be posted to the board mailing list before the meeting. A further review of current action items for the treasurer is available in STATUS. Current balances as of 8/16/2005: Paypal $ 5,894.35 (+$ 422.57 since 6/2005) Checking $25,135.41 (-$3,009.46) Premium Mkt. $100,701.53 (+$ 111.21) Total $131,731.29 Jim asked Justin if he was still looking into moving the ASF bank accounts to a different bank, to allow for better physical access for more directors (ie: a bank with a wider range of branch locations). Justin indicated that at present it made sense to stay with Wells Fargo, but we may re-investigate moving at some point. D. Exec. V.P. and Secretary [Jim] The last month has been relatively quiet, ASF-office-wise. I've received hardcopies of some previously received FAXed documentation, as well including the agreement signed by Sander regarding our SURFnet colo, and the Spamhaus DNSBL Data Feed Subscription/Agreement signed by Justin. D&O investigation on hold, while we get the ASF financials in usable format. Full status in STATUS. E. V.P. of Legal Affairs [Cliff Schmidt] I've inserted slightly edited versions of the same MPL/NPL and LGPL resolutions, which were tabled last month. Since last month's meeting, I have: - confirmed with a second member of ASF's legal counsel that the proposed LGPL policy does not put our product licensing at risk; - posted and discussed the proposed LGPL policy on the legal-discuss list, where no new concerns were raised about the licensing ramifications; however there was concern raised by both outside lawyers and Apache committers that dependencies on LGPL libraries was not in the best interests of some Apache users; - engaged with representatives of the Mozilla Foundation to discuss the proposed MPL/NPL licensing policy. While they have *not* yet formally indicated their agreement with our interpretation, they have not yet raised any new concerns. Future action items include resolving the BXA/crypto issue and investigating and proposing policies for the CPL, EPL, and CDDL licenses. Finally, one of my short-term objectives is to overhaul the legal STATUS file to reflect the current priorities and status. 5. Committee Reports A. Apache Ant Project [Conor MacNeill / Ken] See Attachment A Approved by General Consent. B. Apache Cocoon Project [Sylvain Wallez / Justin] See Attachment B Approved by General Consent. C. Apache Forrest Project [David Crossley / Dirk] See Attachment C Approved by General Consent. D. Apache HTTP Server Project [Sander Striker / Jim] See Attachment D Approved by General Consent. E. Apache Lenya Project [Gregor Rothfuss / Ben] See Attachment E Approved by General Consent. F. Apache Logging Project [Mark Womack / Stefano] See Attachment F No Report Submitted G. Apache Perl Project [Geoffrey Young / Sam] See Attachment G It was noted that Infrastructure is using Apache::Qpsmtpd which has been very successful. Jim mentioned that the "lessons learned" were being folded into the Google SoC SMTP protocol module effort. Approved by General Consent. H. Apache Xalan Project [Brian Minchau / Greg] See Attachment H Approved by General Consent. I. Apache Xerces Project [Gareth Reakes / Stefano] See Attachment I Approved by General Consent. J. Apache XML Project [Berin Lautenbach / Jim] See Attachment J Jim noted that according to the report, it appears that the project may be in danger of stagnation. The report notes that people are "too busy" for example. However, the report also states that they hope to reinvigorate the project. Approved by General Consent. K. Apache XML Graphics Project [Jeremias Maerki / Dirk] See Attachment K Approved by General Consent. L. Public Relations Committee [Brian W. Fitzpatrick / Sam] See Attachment L Approved by General Consent. M. Apache Maven Project [Jason van Zyl / Justin] See Attachment M Approved by General Consent. 6. Special Orders A. Change the HTTP Server Project Chair WHEREAS, the membership of the Apache HTTP Server Project Management Committee (PMC) have nominated Roy T. Fielding to serve as chairman of the Apache HTTP Server PMC; and WHEREAS, the previously appointed chairman of the Apache HTTP Server PMC, Sander Striker, has resigned his position as Vice President, Apache HTTP Server, in favor of Roy T. Fielding's appointment to that position. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that Roy T. Fielding be and hereby is appointed to the office of Vice President, Apache HTTP Server, to serve in accordance with and subject to the direction of the Board of Directors and the Bylaws of the Foundation until death, resignation, retirement, removal or disqualification, or until a successor is appointed. Special Order 6A, Change the HTTP Server Project Chair, was Approved by Unanimous Consent. B. Allow redistribution of MPL- and NPL-licensed executables WHEREAS, some Project Management Committees (PMCs) within The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) expect to better serve their mission through the use and redistribution of the executable form of existing source code licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL) or Netscape Public License (NPL); and WHEREAS, it is the ASF's interpretation that the MPL and NPL licenses permit distribution of such executables under the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0, provided the terms applicable to the associated source code have been complied with and that appropriate entries made in the ASF distribution's NOTICE file; and WHEREAS, the current ASF licensing policy discourages the distribution of intellectual property by the ASF under terms beyond those stated in the Apache License, Version 2.0. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that PMCs may use and redistribute the executable form of existing source code licensed under the MPL 1.0, MPL 1.1, NPL 1.0, or NPL 1.1; and be it further RESOLVED, that PMCs must ensure such redistribution only occurs after appropriate entries have been made in the ASF distribution's NOTICE file and only if the PMC finds that the MPL/NPL terms applicable to the associated source code appear to have been satisfied. Special Order 6B, Allow redistribution of MPL- and NPL-licensed executables, was Approved by Unanimous Consent. C. Allow product dependencies on LGPL-licensed libraries WHEREAS, some Project Management Committees (PMCs) within The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) expect to better serve their mission through the occasional dependency on existing LGPL-licensed libraries when no other practical alternative exists under terms covered by the Apache License, Version 2.0; and WHEREAS, research into the impact of distributing ASF products that depend on the presence of LGPL-licensed libraries indicates that the product licensing terms are not affected by such a dependency; and WHEREAS, the current ASF licensing policy discourages the distribution of intellectual property by the ASF under terms beyond those stated in the Apache License, Version 2.0. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that PMCs may develop and distribute products that depend on the presence of LGPL-licensed libraries when no other practical alternative exists under terms covered by the Apache License, Version 2.0; and be it further RESOLVED, that PMCs will register such use of an LGPL-licensed library with the Vice President of Legal Affairs prior to the PMC's next regularly scheduled Board report, and in no case less than two weeks prior to the distribution of the applicable product(s); and be it further RESOLVED, that PMCs will continue to reevaluate whether a practical alternative exists under terms covered by the Apache License, Version 2.0, which could be substituted in place of the LGPL-licensed library; and be it further RESOLVED, that PMCs must continue to ensure that they do not distribute LGPL-licensed libraries or any other intellectual property that is only available under licenses with terms beyond those stated in the Apache License, Version 2.0. Special Order 6C, Allow product dependencies on LGPL-licensed libraries, was Tabled. The main discussion points were whether the permission of dependencies invalidated the spirit of the ASF and the Apache License. Discussion was to be continued on the Board mailing list. 7. Discussion Items A. Copyright notices The Board is to create a Resolution detailing our position on this issue. Justin volunteered to craft this resolution. B. Retain counsel to review our 501(c)3 legal status Justin volunteered to take the time to review this issue and determine the course of action. 8. Review of Current Action Items Items in the Board STATUS file were reviewed. Updates are folded into the file for accounting and historical purposes. 9. Unfinished Business No Unfinished Business. 10. New Business No New Business. 11. Announcements No Announcements. 12. Adjournment Scheduled to adjourn by 12:00 PDT -0700. Adjourned at 12:06. ============ ATTACHMENTS: ============ ----------------------------------------- Attachment A: Status report for the Apache Ant Project Status Report for the Ant project o Releases Ant 1.6.4 was released on May 19, 2005 Ant 1.6.5 was released on June 2, 2005 and is the current release. Both Ant 1.6.4 and Ant 1.6.5 are bug fix releases. o Ant 1.7 Ant 1.7 development continues in the CVS head. We have recently voted to migrate the Ant core to Subversion. This will be added to the existing Ant SVN repository which was set up for the Antlibs subproject. We have also closed the Ant 1.6 branch after the Ant 1.6.5 release and will not be creating any subsequent Ant 1.6.x releases. o Subversion conversion We'll be working with Henri Yandell to perform the conversion. o Legal Issues None. o Committers?PMC No new committers or PMC members have been added since the last status report. o Community Community is healthy - no issues. ----------------------------------------- Attachment B: Status report for the Apache Cocoon Project Community: - No new release in this quarter. Cocoon 2.1.8 should be released shortly though. - We have two new committers, Helma van der Linden and Jorg Heymans - Daniel Fagerstrom joined the PMC - Nicola Ken Barozzi left the PMC - we have 3 Google Summer of Code students working on Cocoon. They each have write access to a separate sandbox in the Cocoon svn repository, allowing them to work efficiently without having the full committer privileges. - cocoon.zones.apache.org has been set up and hosts live demos of Cocoon and a Cocoon-based CMS (Daisy) for the docs (see below). - a important documentation effort has started, based on a live CMS that eases the document writer's job and allows non-committers to participate in the process. Legal: The NPL issue we have with Rhino has been taken care of by Cliff Schmidt (great job BTW!) and we're now waiting for the official policy statement from the board. Misc: The next major release of Cocoon is very likely to be using OSGi, and a number of Cocoon committers are participating in the Oscar incubation, which looks like a very interesting cross-project effort. ----------------------------------------- Attachment C: Status report for the Apache Forrest Project Issues needing board attention ------------------------------ None New committers and new PMC members ---------------------------------- Diwaker Gupta [2005-07-19] Tim Williams [2005-07-20] Cyriaque Dupoirieux (received CLA, account still not established) General community status ------------------------ * ApacheCon was a great success. Our first presentation about Forrest. Two of our committers combined well to present an overview. There was plenty of interest at the BoF. * The mailing lists seem to be gaining momentum. Capable new developers are assisting and contributing. * Ongoing discussion of what it means to be a committer at Forrest and the ASF in general. Good to see people involved who are not yet committers. Issues still to be dealt with by the Forrest PMC ------------------------------------------------ * Continue our project guidelines document. Progress of the project ----------------------- * Apache Forrest 0.7 was released on 2005-06-23. An architecture for Plugins which enables a smaller Forrest core and the ability to add new features in a modular way. * Moved our Jira Issues over from cocoondev.org Thanks to Outerthought and Steven Noels for providing the service. Thanks to Jeff Turner for the flawless export/import. * forrest.zones.apache.org is established and starting to demonstrate some of our wares. * We have one Google Summer of Code person working with us to assist with enabling Forrest to be used with Eclipse. General observations during last quarter ---------------------------------------- * The delay with creating new committer accounts is causing anguish. Are there ways that the PMC can assist? ----------------------------------------- Attachment D: Status report for the Apache HTTP Server Project The Apache HTTP Server Project almost did a lot of things this past quarter. We have made no official changes to the PMC, but that will change soon once some invites have been accepted. We published one alpha release called httpd 2.1.6. Other releases are expected soon after the next release of APR. libapreq2-2.06-dev was released this quarter. Nothing else to report from there, other than increased demand to see it integrated into the httpd distribution. We have added several restricted-scope committers for the Google Summer of Code projects that are progressing well and are adding life back into the developers mailing list. We moved mod_mbox back to the main list where it is now getting significant updates. Sander Striker has decided to step down as chair and VP of the HTTP server project after having been volunteered into being President of ASF. Roy Fielding has been asked to come out of retirement and be the new conveyer of choice words between our project and the board. However, Roy is going on vacation for the next two weeks with limited e-mail access. ----------------------------------------- Attachment E: Status report for the Apache Lenya Project Community: - Lenya continues to release maintenance versions of lenya 1.2 on a 2 month schedule. We have begun to release alpha versions of 1.4 as well - No new committers in the report period - we have 2 Google Summer of Code students working on Lenya. They each have write access to a separate sandbox in the Lenya svn repository, allowing them to work efficiently without having the full committer privileges. - lenya.zones.apache.org has been set up and hosts live demos of Lenya. Misc: We are gearing up for the 1.4 release and have made good progress with jackrabbitt integration. ----------------------------------------- Attachment F: Status report for the Apache Logging Project ----------------------------------------- Attachment G: Status report for the Apache Perl Project -- mod_perl 1.0 -- The mod_perl 1.x is a maintenance track designed to work with httpd 1.3.x. Nothing much happening on that track. No new mod_perl 1.x releases since the last report. mod_perl 1.0 was migrated to subversion on May 23, 2005 thanks to the efforts of Philippe Chiasson and the Infrastructure team. --- mod_perl 2.0 -- May 20, 2005 marked the official release of mod_perl 2.0. Recent releases: 2.0.1 - June 17, 2005 2.0.0 - May 20, 2005 mod_perl 2.X is designed to work with all httpd 2.X branches. --- Apache-Test -- Apache-Test provides a framework which allows module writers to write test suites than can query a running mod_perl enabled server. It is used by mod_perl, httpd and several third party applications, and includes support for Apache modules written in C, mod_perl, PHP and Parrot. Recent releases: 1.25 - June 17, 2005 1.24 - May 20, 2005 -- Development -- mod_perl continues to be an active and healthy development community. We added a new committer this quarter - Philip Gollucci - who has shown strong dedication to mod_perl, and other related projects such as httpd-apreq, as well as the ability to integrate seamlessly with our development process. Other than that, bugs are found, bugs are fixed, development moves forward as usual. -- Users -- The mod_perl users list is, as always, thriving. The release of 2.0.0 was greatly anticipated but seems to have affected our userbase only minimally - most httpd 2.0 users had migrated their codebase using pre-releases and worked out the kinks beforehand. In general, users continue to associate mod_perl with quality, robust code, and are simply pleased to have a 2.0.0 release to show to their employers. On an interesting note, the ASF's incoming mail service is being handled by mod_perl 2.0 and Apache::Qpsmtpd. Prior to switching to mod_perl 2.0 the services were handled usign qpsmtpd-forkserver and were running continuous load averages > 70, with processes hanging and segfaulting, resulting in service delays and outages. Using mod_perl 2.0 and Apache::Qpsmptd the load averages are closer to 0.7, the mail service is no longer lagging, and everyone seems happy with the change. All of us over in mod_perl land are just happy to be doing our part to support the ASF. -- PMC -- Philip Gollucci was added as a committer on July 14, 2005, further expanding the number of active developers committed to mod_perl's future. ----------------------------------------- Attachment H: Status report for the Apache Xalan Project Xalan ===== Two people have resigned from the Apache Xalan PMC: Matt Hoyt (Resigned from PMC on June 30, 2005) Berin Lautenbach (Resigned from PMC on August 7, 2005) although both are still committers for Apache Xalan. The PMC now has these members: Arun Yadav Brian Minchau (Chairperson) Dmitry Hayes Henry Zongaro John Gentilin Ramesh Mandava Santiago Pericas-Geertsen As part of migration from an XML subproject to a top level project the webpage http://xalan.apache.org now exists. It is a rather small page but points to the home pages of the two XSLT processors that previously existed, as well as an HTML page of the Apache Xalan Charter. Xalan-C ======= Xerces-C has announced the Xerces-C 2.7 for the end of August, Xalan-C committers are starting discussions for a Xalan-C 1.10 release for around the end of August, but this still needs to be proposed and voted on. The upcomming release would have: > XML 1.1 support > Serializer redesign > performance fixes > support for Xerces-C 2.7 XML parser > the usual bug fixes Xalan-J ======= A monthly tele-conference continues. It is open to all active Xalan-J committers to discuss JIRA issues. The Apache Xalan PMC chairperson was made aware that there were concerns about the possibility of decisions being made at this meeting. No "decisions" or votes are made at this meeting. Decisions or votes are done on the appropriate mailing list and follow the Apache Xalan Charter. These meetings are purely technical. Xalan-J 2.7 was released August 8, 2005. The previous release was Xalan-J 2.6 on February 29, 2004, about 17 months before. New features in the 2.7 release are: > Support for JAXP 1.3 (thanks to Sun for donating JAXP 1.3) including new default error handling behavior required as part of JAXP 1.3 support. > Support for XML 1.1 in input XML documents, output XML documents and stylesheets themselves (previously only XML 1.0 was supported) > Updates to the SQL extension an SQL samples to support the Apache Derby database. > Support for alternate BSF (Bean Scripting Framework) implementations. > The code that does the serialization (writes the output to a file) was separated into an independent serializer.jar that can be used to write out a DOM, or SAX events into a file, or stream of characters without dependencies on any XSLT processor. Perhaps in the future Xerces-J will use this serializer. > Minor restructuring of the source and binary distributions. > Various performance fixes, and memory leak fixes, and others. A full list is at http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/readme.html > Upgrade to Xerces-J 2.7.1 and a new version of xml-commons (xml-commons-external-1.3.02). ----------------------------------------- Attachment I: Status report for the Apache Xerces Project Xerces-J The appropriate parts of JAXP 1.3 have now been integrated. 2.7 and 2.71 (which contains several fixes for schema related bugs as well as a fix for a bug related to XInclude) have been released Xerces-C More progress has been made on the build system and work on implementing the final draft of DOM Level 3 is underway. We are releasing a bug fix release, 2.7, at the end of the month. Xerces-P The only committer on Xerces-P does not have a lot of time at the moment so we are investigating what should happen with the project. ----------------------------------------- Attachment J: Status report for the Apache XML Project Overview ======== Again, the PMC and general lists have been very quiet. Everyone has been too busy on other things to look at how to move the overall federation forward. Given a high work load elsewhere, the chair of the PMC has announced his intention to resign for the chair. This appears to be an ideal opportunity to reconstitute the PMC now that the Federation has been running for a while and get some new people in who are focussed on the Federation itself. Commons ======= XML Commons has been migrated to SVN. XML Commons Externals is now updated to the latest JAXP version 1.3 and released, after bugfixes, as 1.3.02 (which is used by the latest releases of Xerces-J 2.7.1 and Xalan-J 2.7.0). It is planned to move additional W3C-licensed packages to Externals from Batik. There are no other events worth mentioning for the other parts of XML Commons (Resolver for example). They have been very quiet in the last quarter. Axkit ===== AxKit is preparing for a 1.7 release in the very near future, and is going through a testing phase in preparation. Once the release is out, the code base will be converting to SVN. We're also investigating a new codebase for AxKit 2.0, but this is preliminary stages just now. Xindice ======= Xindice was converted from CVS to Subversion, site updated to reflect this. Little developer activity this quarter, most questions on user list are anwered. One of those who are answering questions is Todd Byrne , who is also author of several patches. He is on the short 'committer candidates list'. XML-Security ============ Version 1.2 of the The C++ library has been released, and includes new code for XKMS message handling code. Since the release, a large amount of work has been concentrated on optimisation of the library to better handle "normal" use cases. For the Java library, a 1.3beta has been cut, incorporating the new JSR 105 API + a number of performance improvements. ----------------------------------------- Attachment K: Status report for the Apache XML Graphics Project General Comments All of XML Graphics is now on Subversion. Current PMC watch items: * MPL/NPL issues (Mozilla's Rhino in Batik) * Better documentation of the sources and licenses of external dependencies in Batik. Everything is in order but not very well documented. W3C-licensed code in Batik is about to be moved into XML Commons Externals just like the other W3C-licensed packages (DOM-related) used by Xerces/Xalan. XML Commons is now also migrated to SVN and the move will happen very soon. WIP. * Creation of a XML Graphics Commons (shared code between Batik and FOP) is imminent. Batik No releases. Mostly bugfixing against Batik 1.6 and some tweaking. The SVG 1.2 branch became the new trunk. Fixes for JDK 1.5 compatibility. DOM Level 3 support in the trunk. FOP No releases. We are finally planning a first preview release of the redesigned FOP (not feature-complete) which should be available within about one or two months. Progress is good, the community has started to review the new code and we've managed to attract a few new contributors. We're on the right track now. ----------------------------------------- Attachment L: Status Report for the Public Relations Committee The PRC has seen quite a bit of activity over the last few months. Gluecode/IBM donated booth space to us for JavaOne and it was staffed by ASF volunteers. We printed up folded brochures to hand out as well as some signage for the booth. A "light" version of this booth was setup and staffed at ApacheCon Europe. We still haven't come up with a comprehensive budget, but discussions continue slowly. The Google Adwords Grant ended on 7/25/2005. Our total grant "expenditures" were $13,212.08. This comprised 20,577 click-throughs and 1,045,418 impressions. Apache James was the big ad "winner" with $6,041.60 "spent". Google's Summmer of code program kicked off with Apache mentoring 38 individuals as part of the program. Upon completion, this will result in a $19,000 donation to the ASF (based on $500 per award mentored, whether or not the award was successfully completed). We renewed our license agreement with the "Rodent's Cache" for another year. We licensed the ASF logo for use on KernelConcepts T-shirts at the rate of 1 EUR per shirt sold. We appointed Susie as our Chief Media Officer via board resolution in July. We continue to monitor press releases and work with companies crafting releases around ASF software. ----------------------------------------- Attachment M: Status Report for the Apache Maven Project New projects No new projects New PMC members No new PMC members New Committers * Kenney Westerhof * Stephane Nicoll Releases * Maven 2.0-alpha-3 (beta-1 coming soon) * Continuum 1.0-alpha-3 (alpha-4 coming soon) * A raft of Maven 2.x plug-ins which are now being tracked here: http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Maven+Plugin+Matrix Goings On There has been a great deal of activity in Maven land of late. The mailing lists are hopping and we've got a ton of involvement from the community. If you look at the plug-in matrix link you'll see all sorts of people are involved in getting Maven 2.x up to speed. The Maven community has expressed some interest in Oscar. The consideration of using OSGi as the component model instead of of Plexus which is currently used as the component model for Maven 2.x. We have a new website which is now being created by our new tools: http://maven.apache.org/maven2 ------------------------------------------------------ End of minutes for the August 17, 2005 board meeting.