Incubator PMC report for January 2018

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

There are currently 53 podlings in the inubator.  We added two new podlings in December, and executed four podling releases.  Two new PMC members joined, in support of mentoring podlings.

* Community

  New IPMC members:

  - Stefan Bodewig
  - Carl Johan Erik Edstrom

  People who left the IPMC:



* New Podlings

  - PLC4X
  - SkyWalking

* Podlings that failed to report, expected next month

  - Airflow - Report received, but not signed off.
  - Livy - Low on list activity.
  - Milagro - Low on list activity.
  - Myriad - Low on list activity.
  - Spot - Low on list activity.
  - Wave - Retirement vote under way.

* Graduations

  The board has motions for the following:

  - None

* Releases

  The following releases entered distribution during the month of
  December:

  - 2017-12-03 Apache MXNet 1.0.0
  - 2017-12-13 Apache BatchEE 0.5
  - 2017-12-14 Apache Edgent 1.2.0
  - 2017-12-17 Apache Pulsar 1.21.0

----------------------------------------------------------------------
                       Table of Contents
Amaterasu
Annotator
BatchEE
Crail
DataFu
FreeMarker
Gobblin
Gossip
HAWQ
HTrace
MXNet
NetBeans
ODF Toolkit
PageSpeed
PLC4X
Pony Mail
Rya
SDAP
SensSoft
ServiceComb
SkyWalking
Traffic Control
Weex

----------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------
Amaterasu

Apache Amaterasu is a framework providing continuous deployment for Big
Data Pipelines.

It provides the following capabilities:

Continuous integration tools to package pipelines and run tests.
A repository to store those packaged applications: the applications
repository.
A repository to store the pipelines, and engine configuration (for
instance, the location of the Spark master, etc.): per environment - the
configuration repository.
A dashboard to monitor the pipelines.
A DSL and integration hooks allowing third parties to easily integrate.

Amaterasu has been incubating since 2017-09.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Prepare the first release
  2. Grow up user and contributor communities
  3. Prepare documentation

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  None

How has the community developed since the last report?

  * A planning meeting for the next version was held online and most tasks
have been assigned to contributors
 * Tow new contributors have started setting up their dev environment and
are getting support from the community

How has the project developed since the last report?

  * YARN support is almost completed and a PR is planned to be issued
within the next couple of weeks
  * The Amaterasu cli tools for version 0.2.0-incubating is awaiting YARN
support to be completed for integration
  * the above tasks are the last two outstanding issues before releasing
version 0.2.0 and the community is getting ready for its first release in
the incubator

Date of last release:

  N/A

When were the last committers or PMC members elected?

  N/A

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

  [ ] Initial setup
  [X] Working towards first release
  [ ] Community building
  [ ] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:


Signed-off-by:

  [X](amaterasu) Jean-Baptiste Onofré
     Comments:
  [X](amaterasu) Olivier Lamy
     Comments:
  [X](amaterasu) Davor Bonaci
     Comments: visible progress in the last month

IPMC/Shepherd notes:



--------------------
Annotator

Annotator provides annotation enabling code for browsers, servers, and humans.

Annotator has been incubating since 2016-08-30.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. figuring out how to get our newest committer setup with all the things
  2. determining how to publish to NPM during development and after releases
  3. engaging with other "promised" initial committers who have been AWOL

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

None.

How has the community developed since the last report?

There is growing interest in our JavaScript libraries being available
via [[http://npmjs.com/|NPM]] and we're sorting through how best to
manage that among the committers. We are also working on ''finally''
getting our newest committer (who was +1'd back in late October) setup
with an ASF account, GitHub permissions, etc.

How has the project developed since the last report?

We have a basis API roughed in and the key dependency code will be
added to our repository once we have our NPM situation sorted.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [ ] Initial setup
  [X] Working towards first release
  [X] Community building
  [ ] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  XXXX-XX-XX

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

We elected a new committer on 2017-10-30, but have yet to
sort out how to get him properly added to the project.

Signed-off-by:

  [ ](annotator) Nick Kew
     Comments:
  [ ](annotator) Brian McCallister
     Comments:
  [ ](annotator) Daniel Gruno
     Comments:
  [X](annotator) Jim Jagielski
     Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:



--------------------
BatchEE

BatchEE projects aims to provide a JBatch implementation (aka JSR352) and a
set of useful extensions for this specification.

BatchEE has been incubating since 2013-10-03.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

None

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

No

How has the community developed since the last report?

Community is stable. We still get feedback and have active people around.

How has the project developed since the last report?

We got some bugfixes.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [ ] Initial setup
  [ ] Working towards first release
  [ ] Community building
  [X] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  2017-12-01 batchee-0.5-incubating

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?
  
  2015-12-01 Reinhard Sandtner


Signed-off-by:

  [ ](batchee) Jean-Baptiste Onofré
     Comments:
  [ ](batchee) Olivier Lamy
     Comments:
  [X](batchee) Mark Struberg
     Comments:


--------------------
Crail

Crail is a storage platform for sharing performance critical
data in distributed data processing jobs at very high speed.

Crail has been incubating since 2017-11-01.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Finish project setup
  2  Community building
  3. Create a first release

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be aware
of?

  None

How has the community developed since the last report?

  * Got contacted by a few individuals and companies trying Crail for their
    internal use. Not much more activities since last month, presumably
    due to holidays.

How has the project developed since the last report?

  * Working on project website
  * Working on Crail code renaming for code landing at Apache
  * Incubator status page updates
  * Apache ICLA signed by almost all contributors (7 of 9)
  * Submitted abstract on Crail project for 2018 DataWorks Summit in Berlin

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

 [X] 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?
 2017-11-01 (entering incubation)

Signed-off-by:

  [x](crail) Julian Hyde
     Comments:
       It took a while to get ICLAs signed and accounts created (thanks
       Luciano for your help) but the project is getting through the
       red tape and real work is starting to surface on the dev list
       and in JIRA.
  [x](crail) Luciano Resende
     Comments:
  [ ](crail) Raphael Bircher
     Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:



--------------------
DataFu

DataFu provides a collection of Hadoop MapReduce jobs and functions in higher
level languages based on it to perform data analysis. It provides functions
for common statistics tasks (e.g. quantiles, sampling), PageRank, stream
sessionization, and set and bag operations. DataFu also provides Hadoop jobs
for incremental data processing in MapReduce.

DataFu has been incubating since 2014-01-05.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Address IPMC feedback raised during graduation discussion
  2. Positive IPMC recommendation vote for graduation
  3. Continue releases

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  None

How has the community developed since the last report?

  One new contributor (Yuval Allweil)

How has the project developed since the last report?

  Upgraded Guava and Gradle versions.
  Addressed many website issues raised in graduation discussion.  Whimsy report now mostly green.
  Rat task automatically run as part of build.
  New UDFs for diffing tuples and computing hashes.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [ ] Initial setup
  [ ] Working towards first release
  [ ] Community building
  [x] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  2017-03-10

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

  July 2016 (Eyal Allweil)

Signed-off-by:

  [ ](datafu) Ashutosh Chauhan
     Comments:
  [X](datafu) Roman Shaposhnik
     Comments: In my view the podling is ready to graduate at this point.
  [ ](datafu) Ted Dunning
     Comments:

IPMC/Shepherd notes:


--------------------
FreeMarker

FreeMarker is a template engine, i.e. a generic tool to generate text output
based on templates. FreeMarker is implemented in Java as a class library for
programmers.

FreeMarker has been incubating since 2015-07-01.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  We have a large user base but a rather small group of committers.
  This was actually expected, given the maturity (and topic) of the project.
  While the FreeMarker 3 branch, which was started 11 month ago, will be much
  more appealing for contributors, development and growth due to that will
  certainly take a long time. In other respects the project is mature and
  ready for graduation.
  
Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  We are eager to graduate but we're afraid that the number of active
  contributors will prevent that in the foreseeable future. But remaining in
  the incubator for several years is a growing problem as well, so at this
  point we will attempt graduation.

How has the community developed since the last report?

  We have two new PPMC members, Jacques Le Roux and Woonsan Ko.

How has the project developed since the last report?

  There was further discussion about graduation, and we will very soon have a graduation vote on
  the podling list. We have done some preparations, like we have switched from freemarker.org
  to freemarker.apache.org as our official domain, created the DOAP file, adjusted home page
  content to align better with the recommendations.
  
  We have also made a new release (2.3.27-incubating).

How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [ ] Initial setup
  [ ] Working towards first release
  [ ] Community building
  [X] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  2017-11-03

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

  2017-11-13 Jacques Le Roux (PPMC)
  2017-11-09 Woonsan Ko (PPMC)

Signed-off-by:

  [X](freemarker) Jacopo Cappellato
     Comments:
  [ ](freemarker) Jean-Frederic Clere
     Comments:
  [X](freemarker) David E. Jones
     Comments:
  [X](freemarker) Ralph Goers
     Comments:
  [X](freemarker) Sergio Fernández
     Comments: I feel that the podling is ready for graduation.

IPMC/Shepherd notes:

--------------------
Gobblin

Gobblin is a distributed data integration framework that simplifies common
aspects of big data integration such as data ingestion, replication,
organization and lifecycle management for both streaming and batch data
ecosystems.

Gobblin has been incubating since 2017-02-23.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Make frequent releases

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  None

How has the community developed since the last report?

* Gobblin has seen an exciting growth on the community front. It has grown into a diverse self-sustained community, where non-committer members are often seen helping out each other on mailing lists and Gitter IRC (on most days more than the committers). Many contributors have also stepped up and contributed with important features and taken up ownership of critical components. 
* 70% of commits have been from non-committer contributors. 
* Email stats since last report: 
  user@gobblin.incubator.apache.org : 92 
  dev@gobblin.incubator.apache.org : 671
* Heavy activity on Gitter IRC channel (while the community uses Gitter IRC, it also does self policing and consciously moves any discussion-thread beyond casual chatter to the mailing lists)
* There have been 148 Commits since last report:
    git log --format='%ci' | grep -cE '(2017-0(9))|(2017-1(0|1|2)|(2018-0(1)))'
* 103 ie. 70% of those commits were by non-committers:
   git log --format='%ae %ci' | grep -E '(2017-0(9))|(2017-1(0|1|2)|(2018-0(1)))' | cut -d ' ' -f 1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
* Recurring video conference based meetup has been happening every month with healthy attendance.
* Gobblin was presented and well received in various conferences eg. Strata etc.
* More companies have adopted Gobblin, and different members of PPMC have received positive feedback and interest.

How has the project developed since the last report?

* Several new powerful features have been added to Gobblin that have enhanced Gobblin to be more valuable in Stream processing as it is in batch data world.
* Gobblin interestingly has started to evolve into an ecosystem rather than a singular platform with addition of major sub-systems such as Gobblin-as-a-Service (PaaS for Gobblin as well as non-Gobblin systems), Global Throttling (can be used with any distributed system) and existing Gobblin metrics.
* Documentation and stability has improved across the board. 
* Release v0.12.0 is being voted on right now. 
* The Apache way has become the normal way of doing things. 

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

Gobblin has made good progress on the Community front and overall as a project. However, before calling it nearing graduation, we will like to make atleast couple of releases. 

  [ ] Initial setup
  [X] Working towards first release
  [X] Community building
  [ ] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  v0.12.0 is being voted on right now.

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

  Joel Baranick in December, 2017. 
  (We have a few more strong contributors that we are looking to vote in soon)

Signed-off-by:

  [ ](gobblin) Jean-Baptiste Onofré
     Comments: 
  [X](gobblin) Olivier Lamy
     Comments:
  [X](gobblin) Jim Jagielski
     Comments:

--------------------
Gossip

Gossip is an implementation of the Gossip Protocol.

Gossip has been incubating since 2016-04-28.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Continue making releases
  2. Grow community by getting more active committers
  

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

No

How has the community developed since the last report?

There have been a few code additions that are in the review process

How has the project developed since the last report?

Activity has slowed since the last report. 

How would you assess the podling's maturity?

We need more active committers to become more mature.
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

The GSOC period had several spurts of activity. We need to begin creating more tickets that new committers can get involved in and find more people to do diligent code reviews. 

  [ ] Initial setup
  [ ] Working towards first release
  [X] Community building
  [ ] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  2017-03-01

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

Feb 2017

Signed-off-by:

  [X](gossip) P. Taylor Goetz
     Comments: Activity is indeed slow. I'll work with the community to brainstorm ways to increase interest.
  [X](gossip) Josh Elser
     Comments: Activity has definitely tapered off over the last quarter. Not sure if a short-term lull or a sign that all activity will fall off soon.
  [ ](gossip) Drew Farris
     Comments:

--------------------
HAWQ


HAWQ is an advanced enterprise SQL on Hadoop analytic engine built around a
robust and high-performance massively-parallel processing (MPP) SQL framework
evolved from Pivotal Greenplum Database.

HAWQ has been incubating since 2015-09-04.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards
graduation:

  1. Continue to improve the project's release cadence. To this
     end we plan on expanding automation services to support
     increased developer participation. (HAWQ-127)
  2. Licenses: Check Apache HAWQ mandatory libraries to match LC20, LC30 license criteria. (HAWQ-1512)


Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need
to be aware of?

     Nothing urgent at this time.

How has the community developed since the last report?

1. Conference Talks (2):

 * The nature of cloud database. The 7th Data Technology Carnival (Speaker: Lei Chang, Nov 17, 2017)
 
 * New Data Warehouse: Apache HAWQ. 2017 Global Internet Technology Conference (Speaker: Lei Chang, Nov 24, 2017)

 
2. Active contributions from approximately 20 different community
   contributors since the last report.

3. Three committer candidates passed the voting process:

   1) Amy BAI
   2) ChunLing WANG 
   3) Hongxu MA
   

How has the project developed since the last report?


1. The scope of 2.3 release is finalized, and is under development

  1) New Feature: HAWQ Ranger supports RPS HA.  (Done)
  2) New Feature: HAWQ Ranger supports Kerberos authentication. (Done)
  3) New Feature: HAWQ Core supports plugable external storage framework. (Almost Done HAWQ-786)
  4) New Feature: HAWQ Core supports HDFS TDE (Transparent Data Encryption) through libHdfs3. (Done, HAWQ-1193)
  5) Licenses: Fix PXF license files located in PXF jar files. (Done HAWQ-1496)
  6) Licenses: Check Apache HAWQ mandatory libraries to match LC20, LC30 license criteria. (Not started HAWQ-1512)
  7) Build: Release build project (On going HAWQ-127)
  8) Bug fixes. (On going)

Project page link: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/HAWQ/Apache+HAWQ+2.3.0.0-incubating+Release


2. The community discussed the future of PXF with the addition of the pluggable storage feature: Pluggable storage formats and files systems vs. PXF


How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [ ] Initial setup
  [ ] Working towards first release
  [ ] Community building
  [X] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  2017-07-12, Apache HAWQ 2.2.0.0
  
When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

   1) Amy BAI:  Nov 1, 2017
   2) ChunLing WANG: Nov 1, 2017
   3) Hongxu MA: Nov 4, 2017


Signed-off-by:

  [X](hawq) Alan Gates
     Comments:
  [ ](hawq) Konstantin Boudnik
     Comments:
  [ ](hawq) Justin Erenkrantz
     Comments:
  [ ](hawq) Thejas Nair
     Comments:
  [X](hawq) Roman Shaposhnik
     Comments: 

--------------------
HTrace

HTrace is a tracing framework intended for use with distributed systems
written in java.

HTrace has been incubating since 2014-11-11.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

 1. Continue to grow the Apache HTrace community
 2. Further engagement with projects integrating Apache HTrace
 3. Continue to develop and release stable Apache HTrace incubating artifacts

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be aware
of?

Several months of stagnation have raised repeated conversations about
retiring HTrace. If nothing materializes before the end of Q1 2018 HTrace
will be retired.

How has the community developed since the last report?

 Mailing lists continue quiet (bar the above noted conversations).

How has the project developed since the last report?

 No development.

How would you assess the podling's maturity? Please feel free to add your own
commentary.

 [X] Initial setup
 [X] Working towards first release
 [x] Community building
 [ ] Nearing graduation
 [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

 2016-09-15

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

 2016-10-03

Signed-off-by:

  [ ](htrace) Jake Farrell
     Comments:
  [ ](htrace) Todd Lipcon
     Comments:
  [x](htrace) Lewis John Mcgibbney
     Comments: HTrace is very quiet. There is opportunity to continue
     work is we engage with projects already using HTrace. If that does not
     happen, we should retire the podling.
  [ ](htrace) Andrew Purtell
     Comments:
  [x](htrace) Billie Rinaldi
     Comments:
  [X](htrace) Michael Stack
     Comments:

--------------------
MXNet

Apache MXNet is an open-source, scalable, distributed and high-performance deep learning framework that allows you to define, train, and deploy deep neural networks on a wide array of devices, from cloud infrastructure to mobile devices. It is highly scalable, allowing for fast model training, and supports a flexible programming model and multiple languages. Apache MXNet allows you to mix symbolic and imperative programming flavors to maximize both efficiency and productivity. Apache MXNet is built on a dynamic dependency scheduler that automatically parallelizes both symbolic and imperative operations on the fly. A graph optimization layer on top of that makes symbolic execution fast and memory efficient. The Apache MXNet library is portable and lightweight, and it scales to multiple GPUs and multiple machines.


Apache MXNet has been incubating since 2017-01-23.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Establish a predictable release process consistent with Apache Way -- ONGOING.
  2. Grow the community -- ONGOING.
  3. Bring website up to Apache standard -- ONGOING
  4. Identify remaining ICLAs or SGAs that need signing -- ONGOING

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

 Request the Incubator PMC to add more mentors to the project, preferably mentors employed with Open Source companies like Hortonworks that have prior experience in handling multiple open source projects that were part of an ecosystem. 

How has the community developed since the last report?

a) Various Slack channels, dev@ mailing lists, and user discussion forums (http://discuss.mxnet.io) are being used actively. The contributors have been working on having all discussions on the public dev@ mailing list as much as possible. If some discussions happen in private, they are eventually brought out on dev@ with all perspectives well-represented. This is an ongoing improvement process where the discussion will be put on the public dev@ mailing list so that the Apache MXNet community gets a fair chance in influencing the final outcome/decision of the discussion.

 
 b) O’Reilly published a series of blogs about MXNet, including ones with deep matrix factorization using Apache MXNet:
https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/sentiment-analysis-with-apache-mxnet
https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/deep-matrix-factorization-using-apache-mxnet
https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/apache-mxnet-in-the-wolfram-language
 
 c) A blog post published on 25-Oct about MXNet – an open source binary neural network implementation based on MXNet: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/ai/research-spotlight-bmxnet-an-open-source-binary-neural-network-implementation-based-on-mxnet/
 
 d) A blog post published on 01-Nov about the availability of Nvidia Volta GPU support and Sparse Tensor support: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/ai/apache-mxnet-release-adds-support-for-new-nvidia-volta-gpus-and-sparse-tensor/
 
 e) A new blog post published on 08-Nov showing MXNet 0.12 extends Gluon Functionality: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/ai/apache-mxnet-version-0-12-extends-gluon-functionality-to-support-cutting-edge-research/
 
 f) A blog post published on 08-Nov introducing Model Server for MXNet: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/ai/introducing-model-server-for-apache-mxnet/
 
 g) A blog post published on 7-Nov demonstrating performance and scalability of MXNet: https://techburst.io/mxnet-the-real-world-deep-learning-framework-2690e56ef81f
 
 h) Members of the community have conducted open meetups to share information on Apache MXNet: https://www.meetup.com/Apache-MXNet-learning-group/
 
i) Talks on Apache MXNet have been held in various universities and conferences across the world including US, China, etc.:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me1qOzSg8MU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IrvDHRQaaA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PbSZRYXa3o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRy-3VXA0nw
 
j)  MXNet 1.0 was released on 04-Dec, 2017 with extensive support and help from various community members and timely guidance from the Apache MXNet Mentors.

How has the project developed since the last report?

a.  The community released MXNet 1.0 that is production ready, simplifies deep learning experience, and significantly improves performance with cutting-edge features described here: https://blogs.apache.org/mxnet/entry/milestone-v1-0-release-for
 
b. Documentation- Architecture guides, How To’s, Tutorials, and APIs continue to be improved.

c. Support for Perl language bindings - contributed by Sergey Kolychev.
 
d. More advanced features (e.g. sparse tensor, advanced indexing, gradient compression) and bug-fixes requested by the user community continue to be added.

e. Community took complete end-to-end ownership of the continuous integration process in order to enable reliable testing on a wide set of back ends (IoT devices to GPU clusters).



How would you assess the podling's maturity?

  Podling is still being established in Apache and no efforts being made in increasing community - hence maturity == Low.

Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [ ] Initial setup
  [ ] Working towards first release
  [X] Community building
  [ ] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  2017-12-04

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

Sergey Kolychev was elected as a committer and PPMC member in October 2017 for contributing the Perl language bindings. 
There is a plan to convert more contributors into committers in early 2018.


Signed-off-by:

  [X](mxnet) Sebastian Schelter
     Comments:
  [X](mxnet) Suneel Marthi
     Comments: 1. All design decisions and project roadmap seem to be done internally at team huddles and rarely the community is ever involved in making any decisions.
               2. There is no effort being made to discuss roadmap or project issues on public mail lists.
               3. All roadmap planning seems to happen internally. 
               4. No effort is being made to build a diverse community around the project.
               5. Most committers (all of whom are employed by a single vendor) appear to be resistant in moving to using apache tools such as JIRA or adopting the Apache Way of growing diverse community.
  [X](mxnet) Henri Yandell
     Comments:
  [X](mxnet) Markus Weimer
     Comments:

--------------------
NetBeans

NetBeans is a development environment, tooling platform and application
framework.

NetBeans has been incubating since 2016-10-01.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Donating remaining NetBeans code from Oracle to Apache.
  2. Moving netbeans.org to Apache.
  3. Voting in new committers.

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  None.

How has the community developed since the last report?

  - Voting process for new committers has been documented for the first time, with mentors: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Becoming+a+committer
  - The start has been made in voting on new committers, though because the process wasn't clear, we stopped and put together the document above before continuing.
  - All NetBeans.org mailing lists have been contacted and everyone has been encouraged to move to Apache NetBeans mailing lists.
  - NetBeans.org mailing lists scheduled to be deleted (they're backed up on MarkMail) in the first week of 2018.
  - A new Apache NetBeans announce mailing list has been created for those who want high level occasional announcements only, not day to day NetBeans e-mails.
  - GitHub commits and notifications are now sent to new dedicated mailing lists to reduce the noise in the Apache NetBeans dev mailing list.
  - Standard footers have been added to mails with info about how to unsubscribe and where to get all the mailing list info (https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Mailing+lists).
  - Currently over 550 on Apache NetBeans users mailing list and over 350 on Apache NetBeans dev mailing lists
  - Continual activity on mailing lists, new pull requests coming in and being integrated, i.e., continually active community.
  - Status report done live with several Apache NetBeans community members, plus one Apache NetBeans mentor, at Devoxx Belgium December 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkfX-W0tgNo

How has the project developed since the last report?

  - Audit of 2nd code donation from Oracle is complete and is being processed for donation, see end of this page: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Apache+Transition
  - Alpha of Apache NetBeans (incubating) has been released: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Apache+NetBeans+9.0+Alpha
  - Beta of Apache NetBeans (incubating) is nearing completion and ready for vote threads: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Apache+NetBeans+9.0+Beta
  - A special aspect of Apache NetBeans (incubating) 9.0 Beta is the ability for the user to need to specify whether they want to use the GPL-ed nb-javac (which is an Apache requirement, i.e., the user needs to take the onus of using binaries that are not compliant with Apache licensing requirements) or javac directly from JDK 9 (which thus complies with Apache licenses, though has less solid integration with NetBeans): https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Java+Editor+Using+JDK+javac - see also https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-279
  - Plan was to work on Beta release during last week of the year, but holiday season got in the way.
  - Repo created for cleaning up netbeans.org website, with content and instructions included: https://github.com/apache/incubator-netbeans-website-cleanup
  - New Apache NetBeans wiki-export tool has been added to apache-netbeans-incubator-tools: https://github.com/apache/incubator-netbeans-tools

How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [X] Initial setup
  [X] Working towards first release
  [X] Community building
  [ ] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  2017-11-29 Apache NetBeans (incubating) 9.0 Alpha [RC2]

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

  Process for becoming a committer has been documented (https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/Becoming+a+committer) and can now be followed.

Signed-off-by:

  [X](netbeans) Ate Douma
     Comments:
  [X](netbeans) Bertrand Delacretaz
     Comments: +1 to Mark's comments
  [ ](netbeans) Daniel Gruno
     Comments:
  [X](netbeans) Mark Struberg
     Comments: The understanding of ASF 'mechanics' grows steadily. Think they are on a good way!

--------------------
ODF Toolkit

Java modules that allow programmatic creation, scanning and manipulation of
OpenDocument Format (ISO/IEC 26300 == ODF) documents

ODF Toolkit has been incubating since 2011-08-01.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Fulfil the 1.0 version - (collaboration scheduled for end of March) 
  2. Attract more developers
  3. Have frequent releases

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  None.

How has the community developed since the last report?
  No community enhancements. Ongoing SVN to GIT transition, with read-only repository. 
	

How has the project developed since the last report?
    Ongoing SVN to GIT transition to improve visibility on GitHub and archive better mergeability for feature branches.
	Svante Schubert continued sponsorship by German government's prototypefund.org developing a new collaboration feature for the ODF Toolkit till end of March.
  
  
Date of last release:

  2017-04-10

When were the last committers or PMC members elected?

  2017-08-02

Signed-off-by:

  [ ](odftoolkit) Nick Burch
     Comments:
  [ ](odftoolkit) Yegor Kozlov
     Comments:
  [x](odftoolkit) Tom Barber
     Comments:

--------------------
PageSpeed

PageSpeed represents a series of open source technologies to help make the web
faster by rewriting web pages to reduce latency and bandwidth.

PageSpeed has been incubating since 2017-09-30.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1.  Finish project setup
  2.  Community building
  3.  Create a first release

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  None


How has the community developed since the last report?

- Continued healthy activity has shown on the x-pagespeed-discuss groups and
  github issue system.
- There have been limited contributions to pagespeed repositories from outside
  of the current committer group. 

How has the project developed since the last report?

- There have been bug fixes and feature progress
- Transfers of the pagespeed repositories to the ASF have been initiated
- RAT has been successfully run and an in-detail review of project 
  dependencies is in progress. So far no blockers or critical issues have
  been identified.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [X] Initial setup
  [X] Working towards first release
  [X] Community building
  [ ] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:
  N/A

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?
  2017-09-30 (entering incubation)


Signed-off-by:

  [x](pagespeed) Jukka Zitting
     Comments:
  [x](pagespeed) Leif Hedstrom
     Comments:
  [X](pagespeed) Nick Kew
     Comments:
  [x](pagespeed) Phil Sorber
     Comments:

--------------------
PLC4X

PLC4X is a set of libraries for communicating with industrial programmable logic controllers (PLCs) using a variety of protocols but with a shared API.


PLC4X has been incubating since 2017-12-18.

Most important issues to address while moving towards graduation:

  *   Building the community: The PPMC and committer group has a large percentage of codecentric employees, we have been recruiting people from other companies, but will have to continue these efforts for establishing a healthy Apache community.
  *   Onboarding of new committers: With PLC4X several people on the team are not very familiar with the Apache Way. We have started and will continue our efforts on this onboarding.
  *   Podling name search: We have invested a lot of time on the name search prior to starting to work on the project, but we still need the official OK that we’re allowed to keep the Name of Apache PLC4X.
 *    Make our first release

Any Issues the Incubator PMC or ASF Board might wish/need to be aware of:

  *   In order to get access to some of the specifications the ASF will eventually have to become Members of some external foundations: OPC, EtherCat, Modbus … these memberships usually have a free level, that allows us to use the specifications but doesn’t result in any regular costs. We will have to discuss these details with the ASF and the other foundations.
  *   One of the external foundations (Profinet) doesn’t have a free membership. In general, the CEO of the European branch of the Profinet Foundation has signaled that it should be possible for the ASF to become a member and have an outside company pay the membership fees, but we have to discuss the details (With them as well as the ASF).

How has the community developed since the last report?

  *   We have been accepted into the Apache Incubator just a week before Christmas, we are still in the process of setting up
  *   Prior to joining the Apache Incubator however, we have managed to recruit people from other Apache projects and are working on getting other people familiar with the protocols and the industry involved. After the Christmas break we are planning on contacting a big group of people that have claimed to be wanting to be involved (A list of about 20 Companies, but we can’t tell how many will be using and how many would also be willing to contribute)
  *   We have started the onboarding of new committers and will be continuing to do this (extended emails with a lot of explanations on why we are doing things the way we are)
  *   Project has bootstrapped quickly and we have mailing lists, website, JIRA etc. all set up and running.
  *   Testing coverage has been improved over the initial code base

How has the project developed since the last report?

  *   There was no last report.

How does the podling rate their own maturity?

  *   We have a mix of new participants and experienced Apache people involved.
  *   So far, the new participants have shown great willingness and success in adopting the Apache Way.
  *   However, we still need to continue:
     *   the on-boarding
     *   increasing the diversity of the team
  *   Also, will we need to decide and establish all the processes involved in releasing software at Apache


Date of last release:

  N/A

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

  N/A

Signed-off-by:

  [X](plc4x) Greg Trasuk
     Comments:
  [X](plc4x) Justin Mclean
     Comments:
  [x](plc4x) Luciano Resende
     Comments:
  [X](plc4x) Stefan Bodewig
     Comments:

--------------------
Pony Mail

Pony Mail is a mail-archiving, archive viewing, and interaction service, that
can be integrated with many email platforms.

Pony Mail has been incubating since 2016-05-27.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Grow the community
  2. Get the 0.10 release out
  3. Address issues

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  There's been a bit of a lull as of late in the project.
  I'm hopeful that it will pick up some speed soon.

How has the community developed since the last report?

  No noticeable change since last report.

How has the project developed since the last report?

  N/A. Working on it!

How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [x] Initial setup
  [x] Working towards first release
  [ ] Community building
  [ ] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  XXXX-XX-XX

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?



Signed-off-by:

  [ ](ponymail) Andrew Bayer
     Comments:
  [X](ponymail) John D. Ament
     Comments: Would be good to get this podling moving.  Needs more committers to be truly viable.

--------------------
Rya

Rya (pronounced "ree-uh" /rēə/) is a cloud-based RDF triple store that
supports SPARQL queries. Rya is a scalable RDF data management system built on
top of Accumulo. Rya uses novel storage methods, indexing schemes, and query
processing techniques that scale to billions of triples across multiple nodes.
Rya provides fast and easy access to the data through SPARQL, a conventional
query mechanism for RDF data.

Rya has been incubating since 2015-09-18.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:
  1. Have more releases as part of the Apache Foundation
  2. Increase diversity of contributors.


Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

No

How has the community developed since the last report?

  * Working on the next release 
  * Starting discussions about graduation

How has the project developed since the last report?

  * Implemented a cache for Fluo query metadata
  * Added a Twill App for running the periodic service
  * Fixed several bugs 

How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [ ] Initial setup
  [ ] Working towards first release
  [ ] Community building
  [x] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  2017-10-10

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

 * PPMC member Caleb Meier elected on Jan 3rd, 2017

Signed-off-by:

  [x](rya) Josh Elser
     Comments: Have been pushing community towards graduation. IMO, they are ready.
  [ ](rya) Edward J. Yoon
     Comments:
  [ ](rya) Venkatesh Seetharam
     Comments:
  [ ](rya) Billie Rinaldi
     Comments:

--------------------
SDAP

SDAP is an integrated data analytic center for Big Science problems.

SDAP has been incubating since 2017-10-22.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Grow community
  2. Make formal SDAP (Incubating) releases
  3. Evangelize SDAP as an integrated data analytic center for Big Science problems

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  No

How has the community developed since the last report?

Over the Christmas holidays not work has been done. SDAP is 
however being presented at the ESIP Winter 2018 meeting taking
place in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.A. this is a community building
opportunity.

How has the project developed since the last report?

All infrastructure and codebase(s) have successfully been
transitioned over to the ASF. We are still working on 
branding, trademarks and source code compliance.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [X] Initial setup
  [X] Working towards first release
  [X] Community building
  [ ] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  XXXX-XX-XX

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

No new committers or PPMC have been added other than the
original SDAP committers.

Signed-off-by:

  [ ](sdap) Jörn Rottmann
     Comments:
  [ ](sdap) Raphael Bircher
     Comments:
  [ ](sdap) Suneel Marthi
     Comments:
  [X](sdap) Lewis John McGibbney
     Comments: SDAP is doing pretty well. Branding,
     trademarks and source code compliance are the
     primary issues right now. Once these are addressed
     SDAP can focus on the first Incubating release.

--------------------
SensSoft

SensSoft is a software tool usability testing platform

SensSoft has been incubating since 2016-07-13.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Moving towards the first Incubating release of the source code and other
     release artifacts to NPM/Bower, etc.
  2. Grow the Apache SensSoft (Incubating) community.
  3. Complete the issues highlighted at the SensSoft Roadmap
     https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SENSSOFT/Roadmap

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

  No

How has the community developed since the last report?
  
  The community continues development via the scrum method. 
  We are aiming for the generation of the first release candidate 
  for UserALE.js. No new community members have come onboard with
  development swamping the mailing lists. SensSoft is currently
  being worked into a NASA ACCESS proposal which we hope will 
  further community use and development.

How has the project developed since the last report?

  The project is making sustainable progress. Project members
  are driving towards generation of a release candidate for 
  UserALE.js 0.1.0. 

How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [X] Initial setup
  [X] Working towards first release
  [X] Community building
  [ ] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  XXXX-XX-XX

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

  Arthi Vezhavendan was added to PPMC and Committer base on 2017-01-24

Signed-off-by:

  [ ](senssoft) Paul Ramirez
     Comments:
  [X](senssoft) Lewis John McGibbney
     Comments:
  [ ](senssoft) Chris Mattmann
     Comments:

--------------------
ServiceComb

ServiceComb is a microservice framework that provides a set of tools and
components to make development and deployment of cloud applications easier.

ServiceComb has been incubating since 2017-11-22.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Finish apache project setup
  2. Community building
  3. Create a first release

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

   None.

How has the community developed since the last report?

   N/A

How has the project developed since the last report?

  This is the first report.
* Apache ICLA signed by all contributors from Huawei.
* Corporate Contributor License Agreement signed by Huawei.
* Software Grant Agreement signed by Huawei.
* Infrastructure setup 
* ServiceComb codes are transferred Apache.


How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [X] 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?

  2017-11-22 (entering incubation)

Signed-off-by:

  [X](servicecomb) Roman Shaposhnik
     Comments:
  [X](servicecomb) Jean-Baptiste Onofre
     Comments:
  [X](servicecomb) Timothy Chen
     Comments:

--------------------
SkyWalking

Skywalking is an APM (application performance monitor), especially for
microservice, Cloud Native and container-based architecture systems. Also
known as a distributed tracing system. It provides an automatic way to
instrument applications: no need to change any of the source code of the
target application; and an collector with an very high efficiency streaming
module.

SkyWalking has been incubating since 2017-12-08.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Upload website
  2. IP clearance.
  3. First ASF release.

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?
 None. Some branding issues around publicity of incubation were raised 
 and have been corrected.


How has the community developed since the last report?
  1. First Incubator report.
  2. Git repositories and mailing lists in place.
  3. Website ready and in transition to ASF infra.
  4. Apache ICLA signed by all contributors from Huawei.


How has the project developed since the last report?
 Still in initial setup stage.


How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [x] 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?
  2017-12-09 Sheng Wu (PMC)
  2017-12-09 DongXue Si (committer)
  2017-12-09 Hongtao Gao (committer)
  2017-12-09 Kai Wang (committer)
  2017-12-09 Shinn Zhang (committer)
  2017-12-09 Yang Bai (committer)
  2017-12-09 Yongsheng Peng (committer)
  2017-12-09 Sheng Wang (committer)
  2017-12-09 Yuntao Li (committer)
  2017-12-09 Zhang Kewei (committer)


Signed-off-by:

  [X](skywalking) Luke Han
     Comments:
  [X](skywalking) Willem Ning Jiang
     Comments:
  [x](skywalking) Mick Semb Wever
     Comments:

--------------------
Traffic Control

Traffic Control is a set of components that can be used to build, monitor, configure, and provision a large scale content delivery network (CDN). 

Traffic Control has been incubating since 2016-07-12.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

1. Enhance automation to make it easier to build, install, and configure each component.
2. Improve documentation to ease ramp-up time for new community members and make it easier for existing community members to find what they are looking for.
3. Complete at least two releases without license issues.

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?  

None.

How has the community developed since the last report (October 2017)?

We held a fall summit in October in Atlanta.  This summit was attended by over 20 participants from 5 different companies.  The discussions were great and we made sure to take any discussion that could potentially affect the community to the mailing lists.

We cleaned up our mentors a bit by removing a few mentors who have asked to be removed and/or have not contributed at all.

We have seen a few new users join our community, and our community has done a good job of helping the new users get Traffic Control up and running.

The community has been working hard to get a new release out, which will be Traffic Control 2.1.  

How has the project developed since the last report?

  Since the last report (October 2017), we have

  * Merged 218 Pull Requests with 392 commits from 34 contributors
  * Opened 135 Github issues
  * Closed 70 Github issues
  * 233 emails sent by 36 people on the dev@ list
  * 25 emails sent by 12 people on the users@ list

How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

We have started discussions about graduation and we all agree that we should try to focus on graduating in 2018.  As we see it, the biggest hurdles we still face are: 
    1) Getting releases through the incubator without licensing issues - we would like to be able to get at least two releases through without licensing issues.
    2) Removing dependencies with incompatible licenses; specifically JSON.org and jdnssec (https://github.com/dblacka/jdnssec-tools/blob/master/licenses/java-dnssec-tools-LICENSE.txt) - our plan is to have these two mitigated by the end of Q1 2018.

  [ ] Initial setup
  [ ] Working towards first release (wip)
  [] Community building (wip)
  [x ] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  Traffic Control 2.0 was released on July 7th, 2017.

  Traffic Control 2.1 has passed the PPMC vote and was submitted to IPMC on January 2nd.

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

In October, Traffic Control added 1 new committer: Nir Sopher.

Signed-off-by:

  [x](trafficcontrol) Phil Sorber
     Comments:
  [](trafficcontrol) Eric Covener
     Comments:
  [x](trafficcontrol) Leif Hedstrom
     Comments:

--------------------
Weex

Weex is a framework for building Mobile cross-platform high performance UI.

Weex has been incubating since 2016-11-30.

Three most important issues to address in the move towards graduation:

  1. Develop more non-Chinese contributors and committers, to bring diversity to the community.
  2. Replace Facebook's Yoga(Category X) dependency and release more while in Incubator.
  3. Improve the developer's activity in mailing list, more "bad ideas".

Any issues that the Incubator PMC (IPMC) or ASF Board wish/need to be
aware of?

The community is still learning the Apache Way,  we are making progress and need more guidance from Mentors. 
An additional active Mentor would be good.

How has the community developed since the last report?

• We voted one new committer: wentao shi
• We have encouraged people to discuss more in the JIRA and dev mailing list. There is an obvious growth. 186(110 new issues since the last report) issues have been reported on JIRA, and 93(56 since the last report) of them are resolved or closed. And for dev@ mailing list,  more discussions were made in the past quarter.  Some of the discussions are about important decisions such as Community building roadmaps, whether to use Github issues, how to develop plugins conveniently, how to replace Facebook/Yoga, whether to create a project channel, etc. More and more non-alibaba and non-Chinese guys were participating in the discussions.
• More non-alibaba developers are using Weex and reporting issues, including developers from Tencent, Geekbang, SNDA, etc.
• Our Github repo has growth in contributors (135), forks (974), watchers (377) and stars (7108)
• WebSite Trends Month Active, PV(440482), UV(68347), IP(59082), New  
Unique Visitor(36063) , Session(114824)


How has the project developed since the last report?

• We have seperated the code for ducumentation & website from main repo to weex-incubator-site, which will be easier to contribute.
• 9 authors have pushed 36 commits to master and 36 commits to all branches. The community are intentionally making the committing work more slow and deliberate.
• Replacing Facebook's Yoga is nearly done.

How would you assess the podling's maturity?
Please feel free to add your own commentary.

  [ ] Initial setup
  [ ] Working towards first release
  [X] Community building
  [ ] Nearing graduation
  [ ] Other:

Date of last release:

  2017-06-08

When were the last committers or PPMC members elected?

wentao shi,  19 Oct 2017

Signed-off-by:

  [X](weex) Luke Han
     Comments:
  [ ](weex) Willem Jiang
     Comments:
  [ ](weex) Stephan Ewen
     Comments:
  [ ](weex) Raphael Bircher
     Comments: