General Comments
As requested by the Board, the XML Project has been looking at ways to improve oversite within the project.
Much discussion has occurred in the PMC list around the proposal for federating the XML project. A vote has been undertaken over the last few weeks within the PMC to determine in-principle support this proposal (13 +1s, 1 -0, no -1s).
The proposal is attached as Appendix A. The XML Project requests that the board consider this proposal. Should this be acceptable, the XML PMC will look to implement the plan over the coming quarter.
Should it go ahead, this will be an interesting experiment in cooperation between multiple TLPs. If it works well, it could lead to the XML project becoming a community that other Apache TLPs use to foster new ideas, cross-polination and new projects. It is also a recognition that most of the sub-projects in XML have active, thriving developer communities that require no additional oversite from an "external" PMC.
PMC
The PMC has been concentrating on the board request to increase oversite. Some discussion on the Apache 2.0 license has also occurred as the sub-projects work on converting over.
Issues needing attention:
Re-Licensing
The migration to the Apache 2.0 license has turned out to be a useful way to uncover discrepencies in code licensing. Some code has been found in the Xindice code base that didn't go through a software grant process. Similarly, some Sun code was found in Xalan-J (looks like it was there in the initial code import). In the latter case, it was determined the 2 files are not used within Xalan-J, and the code was immediately removed from CVS by infrastructure@apache. In the former case, the Xindice team is following up with the owners of the code to formalise their donation.
Commons We need to ask our JCP rep (or the board/licensing opinion?) about shipping JCP-derived interface-only releases - do they need to certify passing of the relevant TCK or not? Commons would like to ship some updated versions of the popular xml-apis.jar file, however it includes the interface files (but not any implementations) of the JAXP spec. If we only ship the interface, do we still have to pass the TCK? (This may have been answered before, but I don't recall where). Note that Xalan and Xerces - which re-ship xml-apis.jar with their own implementations of JAXP - should already be independently passing the TCK. Axkit AxKit is trying to move towards a 1.6.3 release (we might call it 1.7) to include a few bug fixes, but most importantly to migrate to the new Apache 2.0 license. Work continues on AxKit 2.0 (to fit around the Apache 2.0 httpd). We are currently battling against porn spammers adding links to our Wiki. We have put some measures in place to prevent this so we hope to see this situation improving soon (it's certainly got my goat!). Batik Working on bug fixes and patches in preparation of the next stable release, 1.5.1. Commons No releases; very quiet on the xml-commons front. We do have some committers from Xerces and Xalan with interest in working on updating the common xml-apis that they (and many other ASF projects) share, but have not yet fully organized the volunteers. This may become a minor support issue with different projects getting slightly different XML interfaces, although it should be easy to fix them. Our previous Resolver release is proving to be popular, now officially shipping in Xerces as well as other products. Also: see the TCK issue under legal at the top of the report. FOP There were talks about the possibility of FOP and Batik to share some code and to go together under a new PMC (code-named "XML Graphics", see XML Federation Proposal). No releases, but the redesign has finally gained some momentum again. Three new committers: Finn Bock, Chris Bowditch and Andreas L. Delmelle. On the other side of the equation we lost a committer due to infighting. Forrest Forrest has been progressing slowly but steadily towards 0.6, kept afloat by the usual small band of developers. Changes include: Ross Gardler was voted in as committer in December. Updating to ASL 2.0 has been discussed but not yet implemented (no problems anticipated). Xalan-C++ Xalan-C++ 1.7 became available on January 19, 2004. Xalan-C++ version 1.7 is an implementation of the W3C Recommendations for XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 1.0 and the XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0. It was tested for compatible with the Xerces-C++ XML parser version 2.4.0. Changes for this release include: Details are at http://xml.apache.org/xalan-c/readme.html. A new committer, Matthew Hoyt, was nominated and voted in as a committer on Xalan-C++ in December 2003. Xalan-J/XSLTC The committers continue to fix reported bugs. Voting has started on the having a new release, 2.6.0 in the near future. A new committer, Bhakti Mehta was nominated and voted in as a committer on Xalan-Java in January. Xerces-C++ 2.4.0 was released in Dec, 2003, with lots of bug fixes, performance enhancements, and new features such as PSVI support, stateless grammar and grammar serialization/deserializaton. 2.5.0 is to be released in weeks. Xerces-J It's been a relatively busy time in the Xerces-J subproject since the last report in November. On November 21, 2003, we released Xerces-J 2.6.0 which included the finalization of the XML Schema API (which was recently published as a W3C Member Submission), as well as implementing: DOM L3 Core & Load/Save CR, XML 1.1 PR, Namespaces in XML 1.1 PR and SAX 2.0.1. On Jan. 30, Xerces-J 2.6.1 was released, featuring support for OASIS XML Catalogs, well-formedness checking for LSSerializer (DOM Level 3) and an experimental implementation of the XML Inclusions (XInclude) W3C Last Call Working Draft excluding support for XPointer. XML Catalogue support was implemented by leveraging the XML Commons 1.1 component, the jar of which we now distribute. The committers also decided that this would be the last Xerces-J release that will run on JDK 1.1. We also added a new committer, Kohsuke Kawaguchi. Xerces-P Only minor work has been done this quarter. There were a number of major memory leaks reported for the latest version of the code that have not been tracked down. It was first determined that these were not the fault of Xerces-C. Due to important bug fixes in the upcoming Xerces-C-2.5 release no attempt is being made to release Xerces-P-2.4, but instead we will focus on making 2.5 available. Xindice Thanks to the impressive work of Vadim, Xindice has finally a 1.1. release on radar. A beta has been officially released already, and work is progressing steadily, even if it's mostly a one man show (but thanks so much anyway!) of Vadim. Code is being migrated to ASL 2.0 license, which raised a possibly important legal issue about a previous donation of an Eclipse GUI (Attrezzo for Xindice) which didn't seem to follow the proper way of entering Apache: this needs to be sorted out ASAP and, in any case, before the final release. Finally, no new committers were added from the last board report. XML-Security Only minor activity in the last quarter. Bug fixes and moving code to new license. We have also sent e-mails to BIS notifying them of our intent to release encryption code. The current plan is to release betas of the Java and C++ libraries with Encryption code this quarter.
The XML PMC has been requested by the board to examine methods for ensuring code changes, releases and other such decisions are being made by groups appropriately authorised by the bylaws of the ASF. The current PMC is not actively involved in such activities, and added measures therefore need to be put in place. One of the proposals that has been put forward is that the XML project be broken into a set of Top Level Projects reporting directly to the board. However, the current sub-projects have all expressed a desire to stay as an integrated group. In order to do this, it is proposed that a Federation of projects be created. This document briefly discusses this approach and how it might be implemented.
The XML Project is currently divided into 12 sub-projects, with a 13th (XML-Beans) in incubation. These projects are : As the first main step, the following Top Level Projects would be created : This would leave Forrest and XML-Commons. The Forrest sub-project is heavily integrated with the Cocoon project, and the developers have indicated an interest in moving to that project. It is proposed that XML Commons remain within the XML project, as it is felt by the project that it is important a focus remains on XML related common code. The above is a suggested breakup. Note that it would not be necessary to completely remove all the sub-projects. It would be enough to reduce the XML project to a set of small projects that can sensibly and realistically be oversited by a single PMC. Additional ideas There are projects in jakarta.apache.org and ws.apache.org which deal with XML. The XML project could host links to these projects.
Rather than create new web sites and mailing lists for the newly created projects, these would remain as they are today. Over time, those projects that desire to migrate to a top level website or set of mailing lists can do so, on the decision of their PMCs. Some work would need to be done on the front web-page to document the changed status of the sub-projects and the XML project itself. The focus of the site would also move to one of a single spot for collaborating XML based projects. The current pmc@xml.apache.org would be cut back to just those developers involved in the sub-projects remaining in the XML projects. All those on pmc@ would be required to be subscribed to all *-dev@ mailing lists of the remaining sub-projects. New pmc@ lists would need to be created for the new projects. These could either be under new Top Level names (e.g. pmc@xerces.apache.org) or remain under the XML name (xerces-pmc@xml.apache.org). The general@xml.apache.org mailing list would still be used for general discussions on XML and for discussion between the developers working on different XML related projects. The general@xml.apache.org mailing list would also be used for discussion of shared XML infrastructure (xml.apache.org and mailing lists).
The XML project would still remain as a catalyst for new XML related projects and activities and as a holder for code in XML-Commons. New projects (that do not arrive by the Incubator) could be started and managed within the XML project and then migrated to TLPs if (and when) they became ready. However the XML PMC would need to remain heavily involved in all such growth projects to ensure the XML project does not return to its current state. Appendix A - Federation Proposal
Federation of the XML Project
Introduction
Creation of Top Level Projects
Infrastructure
The XML project