Incubator PMC report for March 2024

The Apache Incubator is the entry path into the ASF for projects and codebases wishing to become part of the Foundation's efforts.

TODO add narrative

Community

New IPMC members:

People who left the IPMC:

New Podlings

Podlings that failed to report, expected next month

Graduations

• list podling here

The board has motions for the following:

• Your podling here?

Releases

The following releases entered distribution during the month of February:

IP Clearance

Legal / Trademarks

Infrastructure

Miscellaneous

Credits

Table of Contents

Answer
Baremaps
Fury
Gluten
HoraeDB
KIE
Nemo
ResilientDB
Uniffle
Wayang
XTable

Answer

A Q-and-A platform software for teams at any scales.

Answer has been incubating since 2023-10-09.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

1. Release more ASF-compliant versions.
2. Build and grow a diverse community, attracting more committers and PPMC members.

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

Currently no.  

How has the community developed since the last report?

• 1 new contributor have joined the community (52 in total).

How has the project developed since the last report?

• The third ASF-compliant version (v1.2.5) was released.
• 2 new features, 5 bug fixes, 5 improvements.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

•  Initial setup
•  Working towards first release
•  Community building
•  Nearing graduation
•  Other:

Date of last release:    

18 Feb, 2024

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

There was no new committer or PPMC members elected.

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Yes, all the mentors are helpful and responsive.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

There are no known brand and naming issues.

Signed-off-by:

•  (answer) Willem Ning Jiang
  Comments: The project is in the good track.
•  (answer) tison
  Comments: Running well. I saw a few users starting to use this software. The releases are smooth. PPMC may try to extend the community with more developers.
•  (answer) Justin Mclean
  Comments:
•  (answer) Christofer Dutz
  Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

Baremaps

Apache Baremaps is a toolkit and a set of infrastructure components for creating, publishing, and operating online maps.

Baremaps has been incubating since 2022-10-10.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

1. Reviewing the changes made to make the code and documentation website compliant with Apache standards

2. Growing the community

3. Making releases

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

We underestimated the effort required to make the project compliant with Apache guidelines. In particular, some datasets used in the code (EPSG) and in the tests (OpenStreetMap, NaturalEarth, Ripe, etc.) were causing licensing issues. We hope that closing these issues will help us increasing the release frequency and focusing on growing the community.

How has the community developed since the last report?

No new committer joined the project.

How has the project developed since the last report?

We have now been able to remove all the licensed datasets with synthetic ones, and we should be able to remove the disclaimer-wip soon. We improved the style and the tileset of the basemap. We introduced a new workflow for the daylight map distribution (Microsoft and Google Building Footprints, Facebook Experimental ML Roads, etc.) [1, 2]. We added support for the PMTiles format.

[1] https://daylightmap.org/

[2] https://daylight.baremaps.com/

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

•  Initial setup
•  Working towards first release
•  Community building
•  Nearing graduation
•  Other:

Date of last release:

2023-08-31

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

When we joined the incubator.

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Yes, the mentors' advice has been helpful, especially in removing the problematic datasets.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

Yes

Signed-off-by:

•  (baremaps) Bertrand Delacretaz
  Comments:
•  (baremaps) Martin Desruisseaux
  Comments:
•  (baremaps) Julian Hyde
  Comments:
•  (baremaps) Calvin Kirs
  Comments:  Good to see the team is making progress on License-related work.
•  (baremaps) George Percivall
  Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

Fury

A blazing fast multi-language serialization framework powered by jit and zero-copy

Fury has been incubating since 2023-12-15.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

1. Standardize cross-language serialization protocol of Fury.
2. Align the serialization implementation of Java/Python/JavaScript/C++/Golang/Rust to the cross-language serialization protocol.
3. Grow the community (attracting more committers, contributors, users)

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

None

How has the community developed since the last report?

This is the first report for Fury. We attracted about 10 new contributors since Fury started incubating in 2023-12-15.

How has the project developed since the last report?

This is the first report for Fury. The main progress are:

1. Standardized Fury java serialization protocol.
2. Optimized Fury JavaScript performance.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

•  Initial setup
•  Working towards first release
•  Community building
•  Nearing graduation
•  Other:

Date of last release:

We haven't make a release since Fury joined Apache incubator.

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

We haven't elected new committers or PPMC members. Currently all the committers and PPMC members are the initial committers.

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Yes.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

No.

Signed-off-by:

•  (fury) tison
  Comments: Let's try to make the first release in the following two months.
•  (fury) PJ Fanning
  Comments: All looking good
•  (fury) Yu Li
  Comments: Good to see all necessary infra are set for the project and the team is working towards the first release as an incubator project.
•  (fury) Xin Wang
  Comments: The team is working towards the first Apache release.
•  (fury) Enrico Olivelli
  Comments: LGTM, Probably points 1 and 2 are not strictly needed for graduation (they look more nice-to-have)

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

jmlean: Points 1 and 2 don't relate to graduation. In the next report, try not to focus on functionality.

Gluten

Gluten is a middle layer responsible for offloading JVM-based SQL engines' execution to native engines.

Gluten has been incubating since 2024-01-11.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

1. Complete Code Transfer to Apache
2. Publish 1st Apache release
3. Community Growth Initiative  

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

N/A

How has the community developed since the last report?

This is 1st report for Gluten.

How has the project developed since the last report?

This is 1st report for Gluten.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

•  Initial setup
•  Working towards first release
•  Community building
•  Nearing graduation
•  Other:

Date of last release:

N/A

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

2024-01-11, when the project was accepted into the incubator.  

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Yes, Gluten's mentors actively participate in the project, contribute insights, and help advance the project towards graduation.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

Yes,

• The name "Gluten" has been approved by Mark Thomas, the VP of Brand Management.(https://issues.apache.org/jira/plugins/servlet/mobile#issue/PODLINGNAMESEARCH-220)
• Gluten's logo is currently being designed.

Signed-off-by:

•  (gluten) Yu Li
  Comments: The podling setup is in good progress and the team actively cooperates. Hopefully we could complete the code transfer and website setup, and start preparing the first apache release in the next report cycle.
•  (gluten) Wenli Zhang
  Comments:
•  (gluten) Kent Yao
  Comments:
•  (gluten) Shaofeng Shi
  Comments:
•  (gluten) Felix Cheung
  Comments: good to see code transfer in progress.

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

HoraeDB

HoraeDB is a high-performance, distributed, cloud native time-series database.

HoraeDB has been incubating since 2023-12-11.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

1. Implement a new table engine, designed for high-throughput, low-latency workloads
2. Support Prometheus query protocol(a.k.a PromQL) natively
3. Implement toolset to deploy/maintain HoraeDB cluster, mainly for Kubernetes.

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

No

How has the community developed since the last report?

This is the first report for HoraeDB.

How has the project developed since the last report?  

This is the first report for HoraeDB.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

•  Initial setup
•  Working towards first release
•  Community building
•  Nearing graduation
•  Other:

Date of last release:

We haven't make a release since join Apache incubator.

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

2023-12-27

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Yes, they are very kind to work with.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

No

Signed-off-by:

•  (horaedb) tison
  Comments: Already made a release for the horaedb-proto subproject, working at the main repo release.
•  (horaedb) Shaofeng Shi
  Comments:
•  (horaedb) Gang Li
  Comments:
•  (horaedb) Von Gosling
  Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

jmclean: None of the unfinished issues relate to graduation.

KIE

KIE (Knowledge is Everything) is a community of solutions and supporting tooling for knowledge engineering and process automation, focusing on events, rules, and workflows.

KIE has been incubating since 2023-01-13.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

1. Releasing our first Apache release.
2. Continuing to build the community.
3. Improve the website.

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

No

How has the community developed since the last report?  

We added a new committer and we published a basic Apache website. We're also having weekly calls via Zoom, available for everyone to attend. Minutes and agendas are available on GitHub for all to read and add to.

How has the project developed since the last report?

We're ever moving toward our first release. Hopefully, we'll have that started and voted on by the next report. The community is growing, slowly, but still growing. I believe the main contributors are really learning how the mailing lists work and how things are done at the ASF. Alex opened a discussion on the general incubator list about a dependency issue, thank you for those who contributed to the discussion.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

•  Initial setup
• [o] Working towards first release - Ongoing
• [o] Community building - Stable and Ongoing
•  Nearing graduation - No
•  Other: - No

Date of last release:

N/A, hopefully soon

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?  

Earlier in February 2024.

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive? Are things falling through the cracks? If so, please list any

open issues that need to be addressed.

Mentors have been very helpful. We're getting to the point of not having to ask them much, it feels good.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

Yes, branding has not been a problem. Names, brands, trademarks, etc. are doing fine. The ASF isn't managing it just yet, won't until we graduate, as per the agreement with Red Hat and IBM.

Signed-off-by:

•  (kie) Brian Proffitt
  Comments:
•  (kie) Claus Ibsen
  Comments:
•  (kie) Andrea Cosentino
  Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

jmclean: Zoom and timezones, by their very natural nature, are not available for everyone to attend.

Nemo

Nemo is a data processing system to flexibly control the runtime behaviors of a job to adapt to varying deployment characteristics.

Nemo has been incubating since 2018-02-04.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

1. Motivate growth in the community
2. Address remaining items before graduation  

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

The issue raised in our previous podling report (Dec. 2023) still exists. This is a project initiated from academia, and many of the committers have graduated with their degree and moved on to something else. The project itself is very promising, known that many outstanding academic papers have been developed on top of Apache Nemo [1-5], so it would be ideal if it finds its purpose, however it seems quite challenging at this particular moment. It is quite disappointing to see the project lose its momentum during the covid-19 pandemics, which made it extremely challenging for us to build the community. Nevertheless, the project itself, I believe, deserved to be in the TLP, but it seems like if there is no breakpoint for the project regarding the project community, I think we could start discussing about sending it to the attic. Any suggestions or opinions are welcome!

[1] https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc19/presentation/yang-youngseok [2] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3468144 [3] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3064176.3064181 [4] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3546591.3547524 [5] https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc23/presentation/song

How has the community developed since the last report?

Trying to have a discussion towards the issue raised above

How has the project developed since the last report?

Trying to have a discussion towards the issue raised above

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

•  Initial setup
•  Working towards first release
•  Community building
•  Nearing graduation
•  Other:

Date of last release:

2022-09-02

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

September 28, 2021

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Please refer to the issue raised above.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

The PPMC manages the polling's brand / trademarks.

Signed-off-by:

•  (nemo) Hyunsik Choi
  Comments:
•  (nemo) Byung-Gon Chun
  Comments:
•  (nemo) Jean-Baptiste Onofré
  Comments:
•  (nemo) Markus Weimer
  Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

ResilientDB

ResilientDB is a distributed blockchain framework that is open-source, lightweight, modular, and highly performant.

ResilientDB has been incubating since 2023-10-21.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

1. Transfer related websites to Apache domain.
2. Grow the community by facilitating more applications being built on ResDB.
3. Improve and extend documentation.

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

No

How has the community developed since the last report?

Regular meeting continues every week.

How has the project developed since the last report?

Many applications built on ResDB have been launched, like Desktop Wallet, CrypGo, Rust SDK, and TypeScript SDK. More application details can be found in resilientdb

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

•  Initial setup
•  Working towards first release
•  Community building
•  Nearing graduation
•  Other:

Date of last release:

None

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?  

November of 2023

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

The mentors helped tremendously throughout the project build-up and transfer.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

There are no known brand and naming issues as reported here

Signed-off-by:

•  (resilientdb) Junping Du
  Comments:
•  (resilientdb) Calvin Kirs
  Comments:
•  (resilientdb) Kevin Ratnasekera
  Comments:
•  (resilientdb) Roman Shaposhnik
  Comments:
•  (resilientdb) Christian Grobmeier
  Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

Uniffle

Uniffle is an unified Remote Shuffle Service

Uniffle has been incubating since 2022-06-06.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

Promote the project and grow the user and dev community.

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

No.

How has the community developed since the last report?

1. Regular meeting every two weeks
2. 5 new contributors

How has the project developed since the last report?

1. 113 pull requests are created and 92 pull requests are merged.
2. 68 issues are created and 61 issues are closed.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

•  Initial setup
•  Working towards first release
•  Community building
•  Nearing graduation
•  Other:

Date of last release:

2023-12-13, we released 0.8.0 version

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

Qing Liu, elected as the committer on 2024.02. Junfan Zhang, elected as the PPMC on 2023.06.

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Yes, they are helpful in guiding the podding project.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

Yes

Signed-off-by:

•  (uniffle) Felix Cheung
  Comments:
•  (uniffle) Junping Du
  Comments:
•  (uniffle) Liu Xun
  Comments:
•  (uniffle) Weiwei Yang
  Comments:
•  (uniffle) Zhankun Tang
  Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

jmclean: For the next report, please list the three most important unfinished issues.

Wayang

Wayang is a cross-platform data processing system that aims at decoupling the business logic of data analytics applications from concrete data processing platforms, such as Apache Flink or Apache Spark. Hence, it tames the complexity that arises from the "Cambrian explosion" of novel data processing platforms that we currently witness.

Wayang has been incubating since 2020-12-16.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

1. Growing community

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

No.

How has the community developed since the last report?

There are new multiple contributors since last report. We are also in process of adding new committers and PPMC members.

How has the project developed since the last report?

We've added new features, re-structured the code and have now released 1.0. We also have a new website now.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

•  Initial setup
•  Working towards first release
•  Community building
•  Nearing graduation
•  Other:

Date of last release:

2024-02-05

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

2023-06-05

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Are things falling through the cracks? If so, please list any open issues that need to be addressed.

Yes, No issues here

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

Yes, no issues here.

Signed-off-by:

•  (wayang) Christofer Dutz
  Comments:
•  (wayang) Lars George
  Comments:
•  (wayang) Bernd Fondermann
  Comments:
•  (wayang) Jean-Baptiste Onofré
  Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

XTable

Apache XTable (incubating) is a cross-table converter for lakehouse table formats that facilitates interoperability across data processing systems and query engines.

XTable has been incubating since 2024-02-11.

Three most important unfinished issues to address before graduating:

1. Complete tasks related to code base and website migration to ASF.
2. Publish a release under ASF.
3. Foster community growth.

Are there any issues that the IPMC or ASF Board need to be aware of?

None at present.

How has the community developed since the last report?

This is the first report for XTable, so there's no history of community development to report on.

How has the project developed since the last report?

Similarly, as this is the first report, there's no previous project development to compare with.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

•  Initial setup
•  Working towards first release
•  Community building
•  Nearing graduation
•  Other:

Date of last release:

There hasn't been any release for XTable yet.

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

No new PPMC members or committers have been elected.

Have your mentors been helpful and responsive?

Yes.

Is the PPMC managing the podling's brand / trademarks?

Yes, the PPMC members have been overseeing the management of the podling's brand and trademarks, ensuring compliance with ASF conventions, such as guidelines for project name references on the documentation, website, etc.

Signed-off-by:

•  (xtable) Jesús Camacho Rodríguez
  Comments:
•  (xtable) Hitesh Shah
  Comments:
•  (xtable) Stamatis Zampetakis
  Comments:
•  (xtable) Jean-Baptiste Onofré
  Comments: Good start for xtable, things are moving forward smoothly.

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

Projects mailing list conversation looks good to me, the project is in a good sharp.