The Apache Software Foundation Board of Directors Meeting Minutes October 20, 2004 1. Call to order The meeting was scheduled for 10:00 PDT -0700 and was begun at 10:06 when a sufficient attendance to constitute a quorum was recognized by the chairman. The meeting was held via teleconference, hosted by Jim Jagielski and Covalent: IRC #asfboard on irc.freenode.net was used for backup purposes. 2. Roll Call Directors Present: Brian Behlendorf Ken Coar Dirk-Willem van Gulik Jim Jagielski Geir Magnusson Jr. Stefano Mazzocchi Greg Stein Sander Striker Directors Absent: Sam Ruby Guests: Chuck Murcko At 11:00 Greg had to leave the meeting and Jim took over as meeting chair. 3. Minutes from previous meetings A. The meeting of July 21, 2004 CVS - board/board_minutes_2004_07_21.txt Approved by General Consent. B. The meeting of August 18, 2004 CVS - board/board_minutes_2004_08_18.txt Approved by General Consent. C. The meeting of September 22, 2004 CVS - board/board_minutes_2004_09_22.txt Approved by General Consent. 4. Officer Reports A. Chairman [Greg] The ASF appears to be moving along, producing code and resolving other issues, as we would hope and expect. B. President [Dirk] Dirk reported that the ASF also appears to be moving along quite well. Infrastructure support still can be a bottleneck, but issues are being resolved. C. Treasurer [Chuck] Chuck reported that following account balances: Business Account: $93,750.94 Checking Account: $ 5,500.00 PayPal Account: $ 1,255.51 Chuck also reported that the ASF taxes were in the process of being completed and submitted, after requesting and receiving a submission extension. D. Exec. V.P. and Secretary [Jim] We continue to get a few CLAs occasionally. Sometimes we receive unreadable ones, which is a pain. We received a letter from "Car Program, LLC," the company handling car donations for the ASF. We have met the requirements for the "optional listing" on their website www.donateacar.com, and should be active November 2004. If we decide we do not want to be listed on the site, we need to let them know. I will forward this info to the Fund Raising Committee. 5. Special Orders A. Establish the Apache XML Graphics Project WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it to be in the best interests of the Foundation and consistent with the Foundation's purpose to establish a Project Management Committee charged with the creation and maintenance of open-source software related to the conversion of XML formats to graphical output, for distribution at no charge to the public. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that a Project Management Committee (PMC), to be known as the "Apache XML Graphics PMC", be and hereby is established pursuant to Bylaws of the Foundation; and be it further RESOLVED, that the Apache XML Graphics PMC be and hereby is responsible for the creation and maintenance of software for managing the conversion of XML formats to graphical output, and for related software components, based on software licensed to the Foundation; and be it further RESOLVED, that the office of "Vice President, Apache XML Graphics" be and hereby is created, the person holding such office to serve at the direction of the Board of Directors as the chair of the Apache XML Graphics PMC, and to have primary responsibility for management of the projects within the scope of responsibility of the Apache XML Graphics PMC; and be it further RESOLVED, that the persons listed immediately below be and hereby are appointed to serve as the initial members of the Apache XML Graphics PMC: Chris Bowditch (cbowditch@apache.org) Thomas DeWeese (deweese@apache.org) Christian Geisert (chrisg@apache.org) Clay Leeds (clay@apache.org) Keiron Liddle (keiron@apache.org) Jeremias Maerki (jeremias@apache.org) Glen Mazza (gmazza@apache.org) Simon Pepping (spepping@apache.org) Joerg Pietschmann (pietsch@apache.org) NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Jeremias Maerki be and hereby is appointed to the office of Vice President, Apache XML Graphics, 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; and be it further RESOLVED, that the initial Apache XML Graphics PMC be and hereby is tasked with the creation of a set of bylaws intended to encourage open development and increased participation in the Apache XML Graphics Project; and be it further RESOLVED, that all responsibility pertaining to the Batik and FOP sub-projects and encumbered upon the Apache XML PMC are hereafter discharged. RESOLUTION 5A, Establish the Apache XML Graphics Project, was APPROVED by Unanimous Vote. Both Dirk and Stefano agreed to join the PMC and Dev list to monitor progress. B. Establish the Apache Xalan Project WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it to be in the best interests of the Foundation and consistent with the Foundation's purpose to establish a Project Management Committee charged with the creation and maintenance of open-source software related to XSLT processors, for distribution at no charge to the public. NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that a Project Management Committee (PMC), to be known as the "Apache Xalan PMC", be and hereby is established pursuant to Bylaws of the Foundation; and be it further RESOLVED, that the Apache Xalan PMC be and hereby is responsible for the creation and maintenance of software related to creation and maintenance of open-source software related to XSLT processors based on software licensed to the Foundation; and be it further RESOLVED, that the office of "Vice President, Apache Xalan" be and hereby is created, the person holding such office to serve at the direction of the Board of Directors as the chair of the Apache Xalan PMC, and to have primary responsibility for management of the projects within the scope of responsibility of the Apache Xalan PMC; and be it further RESOLVED, that the persons listed immediately below be and hereby are appointed to serve as the initial members of the Apache Xalan PMC: Brian Minchau Arun Yadav Dmitry Hayes Henry Zongaro Matthew Hoyt Ramesh Mandava Santiago Pericas-Geertsen Berin Lautenbach John Gentilin NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, than Brian Minchau appointed to the office of Vice President, Apache Xalan, 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; and be it further RESOLVED, that the initial Apache Xalan PMC be and hereby is tasked with the creation of a set of bylaws intended to encourage open development and increased participation in the Apache Xalan Project; and be it further RESOLVED, that the initial Apache Xalan PMC be and hereby is tasked with the migration and rationalization of the Apache XML PMC Xalan subproject; and be it further RESOLVED, that all responsibility pertaining to the XML Xalan sub-project and encumbered upon the Apache XML PMC are hereafter discharged. RESOLUTION 5B, Establish the Apache Xalan Project, was APPROVED by Unanimous Vote. C. Establish the Date and Time for the ASF Member's Meeting Jim proposes a time-slot of November 14th, 4:30pm (Las Vegas time) @ the Alexis Park for the Annual ASF Members Meeting. This has been confirmed as available. The proposed date and time were approved by the board. Therefore, the ASF Board has schedule an ASF Special Member's Meeting for November 14th, 2004 at 4:30pm (Las Vegas local time). Jim will send out such notice and reminders of new-member nominations and proxy requests to the members list. D. Affirm Intent to Own Copyright to all ASF Distributions WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it to be in the best interests of the Foundation and consistent with the Foundation's purpose that the Foundation receives assignment of copyright of all contributions to the Foundation NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Board of Directors does affirm that ownership of copyright by the ASF is in the best interest of the Foundation, and will work to create documentation and agreements for contributors to the ASF incorporating this basic principle. The above resolution created some discussion, not on the basic principles, but on how it would affect the current impact on new and proposed projects. In particular, such basic questions as whether this meant that any and all new projects would have to be "delayed for inclusion" until the legal ramifications of owning copyright and how it affects the current codebase of all ASF projects. A vote was held on whether the ASF should, for the short time being, continue "business as usual" regarding the form and wording of the ASF Copyright statement as well as accepting new projects, codebases and contributions, until such time that these questions are answered to satisfaction. A vote of Yea was for continuing "business as usual;" Nay was for holding off until the questions have been answered. Yea: Brian, Dirk, Jim, Stefano, Sander Nay: Ken, Geir By majority vote, the issue passed. It should be noted that all directors agreed very strongly that the copyright issue is extremely important and a high priority issue to be resolved. It is expected that discussion will be held via the mailing lists regarding this in anticipation of a final resolution in time for the November board meeting. E. Appoint Brian W. Fitzpatrick as a Vice President of the PRC WHEREAS, the Board of Directors deems it to be in the best interests of the Foundation and consistent with the Foundation's purpose to establish the office of "Vice President, Public Relations;" and be it further RESOLVED, that the office of "Vice President, Public Relations" be and hereby is created, the person holding such office to serve at the direction of the Board of Directors as the chair of the Apache Public Relations Committee, and to have primary responsibility for management of public relations, press, and fundraising activites within the scope of responsibility of the Public Relations Committee; and be it further RESOLVED, that Brian W. Fitzpatrick be and hereby is appointed to the office of Vice President, Public Relations, 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. RESOLUTION 5E, Appoint Brian W. Fitzpatrick as a Vice President of the PRC, was APPROVED by Unanimous Vote. 6. Committee Reports A. Apache DB Project [John McNally] See Attachment A Project Report Approved by General Consent. B. Apache Geronimo Project [Geir Magnusson Jr] See Attachment B Project Report Approved by General Consent. C. Apache Incubator Project [Noel Bergman] See Attachment C There was discussion regarding the fact that the Directory PPMC has added "subprojects." It was agreed that all Incubator projects should be flat, not hierarchical. Even well established ASF projects have troubles as umbrella projects, and it is quite reasonable to assume that Incubator projects will have extreme difficulty being an umbrella PPMC. Project Report Approved by General Consent. D. Apache James Project [Serge Knystautas] See Attachment D Project Report Approved by General Consent. E. Apache Maven Project [Jason van Zyl] See Attachment E Project Report Approved by General Consent. F. Apache Struts Project [Craig McClanahan] See Attachment F Project Report Approved by General Consent. G. Apache TCL Project [David Welton] See Attachment G Project Report Approved by General Consent. H. Conference Planning [Ken Coar] See Attachment H It was noted, for the record, that the ASF does not currently have a written contract with Security Travel regarding ApacheCon 2004. Instead, the ASF has been working under a verbal agreement with ST. Project Report Approved by General Consent. I. Security Team [Ben Laurie] No report was provided. It was agreed that Greg or Dirk would send a polite but firm reminder that these reports are required, and that the Security Team does not have a good track record of providing these reports. J. Apache Avalon Project [J Aaron Farr] See Attachment J Project Report Approved by General Consent. 7. Discussion Items There was continued dicussion regarding the LGPL and the depth at which an ASF project/codebase can require it. There was also continued discussion on how the LGPL is interpreted in a Java environment and whether such basic Java concepts as extending a Class or implementing an Interface marks the essential LGPL distinction between using a function and being "based" on it. 8. Unfinished Business None. 9. New Business None. 10. Announcements None. 11. Adjournment Scheduled to adjourn by 1200 PDT -0700. Adjourned at 11:43. ============ ATTACHMENTS: ============ ----------------------------------------- Attachment A: Status report for the Apache DB Project The DB project continues with its primary task of oversight of the OJB and Torque subprojects. The mailing lists for both projects remain active and with no conflict to note. OJB released a 1.0.1 maintenance release and continues work towards a 1.0.2 release as well as a 1.1 release. Torque has tagged a couple release candidates this quarter, but the 3.1.1 release will likely fall into the first week of next quarter. The PMC recently voted for the nomination of Henning P. Schmiedehausen to serve on the PMC and is awaiting acceptance prior to official notification. The PMC also voted to update its bylaws. The changes were primarily to clarify the status quo. I'll finish the report with the resulting text: Project Management Committee Bylaws The Project Management Committee (PMC) was formed by the Apache Board on 17 July 2002. The bylaws were last amended on 7 October 2004. There is no preset number of seats on the PMC. The PMC will strive to add every committer within DB that, in the opinion of the PMC as determined by a vote, displays the capability and desire to help guide the DB project. The PMC will present the board with a recommendation of a chairperson from amongst their ranks. The list of current members can be found in our Project Credits. Roles The PMC is responsible for the strategic direction and success of the DB Project. This governing body is expected to ensure the project's welfare and guide its overall direction. The PMC may not necessarily participate in the day-to-day coding but is involved in the overall development plans, the alleviation of any bottlenecks, the resolution of conflicts, and the overall technical success of the project. The PMC is responsible for any and all official releases by any part of the DB project. Implicit approval by the PMC for a release can be assumed if at least three committers voting for the release also serve on the PMC and there are no negative votes. Explicit approval by vote on the PMC mailing list is required prior to the release, if the preceeding conditions are not met. The PMC must be notified of all releases. The PMC is answerable to the Apache Board with its Chairman serving as primary liaison. Meetings The PMC discusses issues and determines strategic direction via mail list. Discussions and votes specific to a particular codebase associated with a subproject generally occur on subproject dev lists. All binding votes happen on the PMC list except release votes can occur on the subproject dev list with a summary of results posted to the PMC list. Voting The call for a vote on issues not detailed here may specify requirements for passage. The minimum and default requirement for a passing vote is simple majority of PMC members casting ballots. The default voting period is 10 days and the minimum is 7 days unless the success or failure is arithmetically known. Membership PMC members may resign at any time. A committer will remain on the DB PMC until removed by desire of the committer, action of the board, or vote by the PMC. The Chairman may resign as Chairman at any time without resigning membership to the PMC. The chairperson will serve until voluntary resignation, action of the board, or vote by the PMC. The Chairman or any member may be removed from the PMC by a 3/4 vote of the PMC. In order to be elected to the PMC, a person must have served as a Committer and be nominated by a PMC Member. The nominee must receive 3/4 positive vote with a minimum of 3 positive votes. Abstaining or non-participating PMC voters do not affect the result. Creation of Subprojects PMC members may propose the creation of new subprojects. Creation of a new subproject requires approval by 3/4 positve vote with a minimum of 3 positive votes of the PMC. Abstaining PMC voters do not affect the result. New code enters the DB project in accordance with ASF policy. (End of bylaws text) ----------------------------------------- Attachment B: Status report for the Apache Geronimo Project The Geronimo community is returning to healthy activity after a brief slowdown during the summer. I attribute the slowdown due to summer doldrums, and that a few major contributors found gainful employment during the summer and were focused on the new jobs. The project released milestone release M2, considered by the projects as a 'technology refresh' for the larger community. This release included : - many bugfixes - EAR deployment support (major feature) - simplified deployment - MDB support - JACC support - EJB 2.1 timers - hot deployment of WARs and RARs The big news is that the TCK work is now going formally, with steady progress being made. We have established a private email list and private SVN repository accessible to those that have signed the NDA. Progress on the TCK testing is going well. We have completed major sections of testing, and working on continuing development of the pieces that are missing, as well as fixing bugs in the code that is there. Another bright spot is that we've been successful in working with the Apache Tomcat community in bringing basic Tomcat support to Geronimo. We are working to increase the integration to let users of Geronimo + Tomcat take advantage of all the deployment and management features of Geronimo. On the community front, while we have no new committers, the new activity is bringing both new people, and thus we are starting to identify new candidates, as well as bringing back older committers that had gone inactive. We are struggling with the licensing of JavaMail, as we don't want to implement this JSR due to the widely held opinion that the spec is insufficient for correct implementation, and there is no source to reference. I am [still] working with Sun on this. It appears that a complete fix of the Sun binary license won't be possible, so another alternative is being explored. Specifically, instead of transferring the RI to the ASF, Sun could contribute a copy to help bootstrap a compatible independent implementation of the software. There are difficulties with this proposal (hardheaded obstinacy, IMO), but work is still going on. On the lighter side, I'll note that according to a recent survey by The Middleware Company, Geronimo is [amazingly] now more widely used in production than Sybase and Borland :) ----------------------------------------- Attachment C: Status report for the Apache Incubator Project Since the last report to the Board, Lenya has become ready to fly the nest; and new projects such as Agila, Derby, JackRabbit and iBATIS have begun Incubation. Infrastructure bottlenecks continue to effect the Incubator. I say this without pointing fingers, since as a member of the Infrastructure Team, I am one of the people responsible for being or removing those bottlenecks. It is simply that we can create a rash of requests for project resources, and we (the Infrastructure Team) are short-staffed. One thing that should help will be improved scripts for mailing list creation. Hopefully, we will have some time at the Hack-a-thon to work those tools. Licensing and other IP related issues were reported as an on-going topic of discussion in the last report, at which time I mentioned that it would help to have some legal resource(s) participating with the Incubator. IP issues have come up this quarter that make it even more imperative that we have sufficient legal resources working with the Incubator, and the ASF in general, to address IP issues. - 0 - The list of projects in the Incubator is at http://incubator.apache.org/projects/. Here are the STATUS reports from the PPMCs that have sent one in. Status report from the Directory PPMC ====================================== Our last report was posted here: http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?listName=general@incubator.apache.org&msgNo=3919 Since then we have ... o Vetted all IP issues within the project, namely where Snacc4J was concerned. Snickers, the Snacc4J replacement subproject, now supports BER and, in a branch maintained by Alan Cabrera, DER as well. Alan Cabrera has been progressing on his ASN.1 compiler but for the time being we have hand coded LDAP stubs. We have also integrated the new Snickers based LDAP provider as the default BER codec for the ldap-common project. This is a major step for us on the path toward exiting the incubator. o We have retrofitted the old LDAPd code base with the newly modified ldap-common code along with Snickers. This primitive precursor to Eve now runs as it did while at sourceforge however there are no IP issues with this functional server. Users can now kick the tires on an LDAP server that works. We however see this server as more of a demo rather than the real deal which will be Eve. o We have also made progress on another major aspect that demonstrates the viability of this project: building community. BTW, all new committers have signed and submitted their CLAs which are on file and software grants were submitted where appropriate. We have added three new committers to the project of which two are still active. - Trustin Lee joined us to work on the frontend networking code and is making progress adding UDP support to the new SEDA subproject. He will be continuing to work on making Eve's front end code serve as a gateway/proxy server to other LDAP servers soon. - Enrique Rodriguez became a committer as well and is working on the new integrated Kerberos server which plugs into Eve for network authentication. He is also persuing the goal of writing wrappers for Eve to embed Eve into OSGi containers. - Niclas Hedman became a commiter and started work on decoupling Eve's backend from Merlin, however some Avalon commitments have taken his time. o We have begun to pull the backend subsystem out of the sandbox: this is almost complete. A new schema subsystem design has been added while making the move. I have also removed all depenencies on Avalon and Merlin while maintaining the wrappers for Merlin. o Vincent continues to maintain Janus and is getting into some of the LDAP code base while writing unit test cases for them. Vincent is also working on getting all projects rigged into Gump. o We added two new subprojects. The first is called the SEDA framework. It is basically the LDAP frontend networking code with all LDAP dependencies removed so it can run any protocol. In fact it can run multiple protocols on the same plumbing. This is what Trustin is working on most of all. The second subproject is a Kerberos server that Enrique and I had been working on just toying with from within Eve but it wound up being something very attractive so we added it to our project rather than leaving it out there. We don't expect these projects to stay under the directory umbrella forever. We feel this way especially since SEDA can be reused anywhere a Java based protocol server is needed and the Kerberos server can run in stand alone mode one day. Until then we are comfortable having them here indefinately. o On the Naming subproject front, Phil Steitz has integrated Naming with Gump. Phil has been very busy in jakarta-commons working on getting an excellent new addition, the commons math project, out the door. Meanwhile he has been supporting inquiries about Naming and Jira issues posted on it. Conclusions and goals ... [We] are doing really well and are very close to our goals. Perhaps before ApacheCon or by the next status report at the latest we should have all of Eve's parts up and running. Meanwhile we're growing the community and getting more comfortable working together to support our code base. More people are contacting us about various directory subprojects than before so ... if we build it they will come. Status report for Beehive ======================================== Status file is up to date; see http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/public/trunk/site-author/projects/beehive.cwiki, or http://incubator.apache.org/projects/beehive.html when site is regenerated) Code & Infrastructure - initial code drop was made in mid-July. Ongoing development is very active. - over the last three months, we've set up svn, jira, the web site and a wiki. - we're just starting to make more use of jira. - docs and tutorials have been recently contributed Legal - all code shows ASF copyright notice. - software grant, individual CLAs, and corporate CLAs, are in place for all active committers (one initial committer has no account while we wait for his employer to complete review of CLA and CCLA) Community - Web services metadata subproject has participation from key members of Axis community; however, NetUI and Controls subprojects are still primarily driven by BEA employees. We expect this to begin to change after getting out an initial release for the community to experiment with and digest. We have several ApacheCon presentations that we also hope will invite more non-BEA developers to be actively involved. Release Plans - The community has decided to cut a pre-1.0 release out for ApacheCon. This release will follow the incubation release rules requiring a) incubator disclaimer in README and from any download links, b) filename to include 'incubating', and c) ppmc vote (providing the incubator pmc approval since all interested incubator pmc members should be on the beehive ppmc mailing list. - We've also had a generic release plan proposed and discussed. Also work has started on a roadmap document to make it easier for new developers to get the big picture and figure out where they can help. Status report for MyFaces ======================================== All needed CLAs are on file. A code grant is in transit. Accounts for the committers have been created. Mailing lists are created. Committers are subscribed. The Jira setup for the project is being finalized. The project incubator page is created. Committers are preparing the SourceForge CVS for import to Apache. One account's credentials were lost in transit (grantsmith). Request to root@ to resend the credentials to an alternate address was made 14/Oct/2004. Status report for iBATIS ======================================== All needed CLAs are on file. Code grants are in transit. Accounts for the committers are created. Mailing lists are created. Committers are subscribing. The Jira setup for the project is being finalized. The project incubator page is created. Committers are preparing the SourceForge CVS and third-party SVN for import to Apache. Status report for JackRabbit ======================================== The Jackrabbit project has completed all of the Incubator checklist items in terms of moving to Apache and getting the IP transfer done. With the help of Maven, we have a full website set up at http://incubator.apache.org/jackrabbit/ with a few link bugs due to the svn/viewcvs integration. Our big task from now to graduation is to get the community more involved in development, planning features, integrating with some of the DB projects, and scoping out interesting applications to build on top of the interface. ----------------------------------------- Attachment D: Status report for the Apache James Project Mostly quiet quarter. No releases, nothing particularly exciting except for watching the Avalon project like a Red Sox fan. We are planning to import a Java mime parser, add it as a subproject and incorporate into James at some point. This is still early on, and we've run by the incubator checklist. No issues, but just wanted to mention it. ----------------------------------------- Attachment E: Status report for the Apache Maven Project o New projects None. o New PMC members None. o New Committers Felipe Leme (plugins) Carlos Sanchez (m1 plugins / m2 core) o Goings on Brett is preparing for a 1.0.1 release shortly and a 1.1 release soon afterward. The 1.1 release will be the first 1.x release to incorporate code from m2. Post 1.1 maven1 and maven2 will share the same tools for generating maven's datamodel which is the first step in the merger of maven2 code back into maven1. Maven2 development is continuing as per usual and we're shooting for a first alpha release in late Q1 2004. ----------------------------------------- Attachment F: Status report for the Apache Struts Project The Struts community has recently released Struts 1.2.4 as the latest stable version, focused on cleaning up deprecations from previous versions, refactoring utility classes to improve separability of the core framework from view tier dependencies, and incorporating the latest Commons libraries on which we are dependent. We recently completed a migration of our source code repository from CVS to Subversion, and are leveraging its capabilities to refactor the source code into separately releaseable components. The first such separate release is likely to be the Struts-Faces integration library (an adapter between Struts and JavaServer Faces). The community is busy planning an evolutionary path that focuses on fundamentally backwards compatible improvements, and a revolutionary ("Struts 2") path that will leverage the industry wide lessons in how web application frameworks should architected in the four years since Struts was created. The discussions are proceeding harmoniously and productively. ----------------------------------------- Attachment G: Status report for the Apache TCL Project Not a lot to say here. All projects are more or less in maintainance mode for the moment. Questions on mailing lists are answered promptly, which indicates that everyone is active and available, but working on other things. ----------------------------------------- Attachment H: Status report for the Conference Planning ApacheCon 2004 US is less than a month away. This year we have more than doubled the number of tutorials being offered, having them on both Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, the lateness of publishing the schedule, and some suboptimal tutorial titling, and who knows what other causes, have resulted in registrations being disappointingly low. As of today, there are 245 people registered for the conference. This includes the speakers, however, and so is misleading. Historically, there is an uptick in registrations during the last few weeks before the conference, but I doubt we'll get many more than 500 delegates, if that. For keynote speakers, we have Wil Wheaton opening on Monday, Miguel de Icaza on Tuesday, and Doc Searls closing on Wednesday. There will also be a Sun keynoter, but, as usual, Sun is quite delinquent on providing details. IBM is back as a sponsor, primarily as a result of the Derby submission and IBM's Data Management Systems' marketing department's support. IBM will be sponsoring the Hackathon, and (according to current plans) an interesting contest challenge. The fact that there will be a contest will be broadly announced shortly; the actual terms of the contest will be announced at the opening plenary, submission deadline to be Tuesday evening, and prizes to be awarded during the closing plenary. The top prize is a maximally tricked-out latest-model ThinkPad. The Java Community Process is a sponsor again this year, and in fact they want to sponsor several thousand dollars' worth of 'scholarships.' ApacheCon 2005 Europe is tentatively scheduled for 18 July 2005, in Stuttgart, Germany. We have received requests from Brasil to bring an ApacheCon event there (no surprise, this is not new). ----------------------------------------- Attachment I: Status report for the Security Team ----------------------------------------- Attachment J: Status report for the Apache Avalon Project In response to the Board's comments and recommendations of 23 Sept 2004: "The Board hereby requests that the Avalon PMC step up and properly manage the Avalon framework. Support your existing users of that framework, including the other projects at the ASF." The Avalon PMC, in its current condition, is not capable of complying with this request. Consequently, the PMC is working with the Excalibur project to transfer the Avalon framework code and other Avalon utilities (LogKit and Cornerstone) to Excalibur which has shown a willingness and capacity to perform such support. With respect to the Merlin TLP, the proposals have been withdrawn. The Merlin developers have decided to not further seek TLP status in the ASF but rather create a fork of Merlin dubbed Metro to be hosted at DPML.net [1]. Seeing as the development of existing software under Avalon now has or will soon have new hosts, we recommend to the Board the Avalon project be closed. With that in mind, the following points should be noted: 1. The Apache James project currently uses Avalon Phoenix which has not been under active development or support for some time. There is a fork of Phoenix at Codehaus.org called Loom. A support solution for James (either hosting Phoenix itself or migrating to Loom) should be found before Avalon's closure. 2. The Metro fork has been announced but is not yet active. We would prefer that Avalon not be closed until the fork is active and Merlin users have been notified. 3. The transfer of code between Avalon and Excalibur has not yet taken place, though positive votes on the matter have occurred in both projects. 4. We have not yet determined what site resources if any should remain available following Avalon's closure. An example "closed" Avalon site is at http://www.apache.org/~farra/avalon . We are unaware of any policy or precedent we should turn to for this decision. Consequently, we ask the Board give the Avalon PMC until the next Board meeting (14 November 2004) to handle the points above before official closure of the project. At that time, the Avalon project resources (site, svn repository, mailing lists, wiki, jira, ...) can be deactivated or made read-only by the infrastructure group. We appreciate the patience and support of the Board on this matter. ------------------------------------------------------ End of minutes for the October 20, 2004 board meeting.