Re: [VOTE]: motion to transform Xerces into a top-level project as a member of the "federation" of XML projects

Neil Graham <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.text.xml.general
Message-ID <OFAB212882.2EC5B1E5-ON85256E9B.0061B324__20061.1093933277$1085164099@ca.ibm.com>




Hi Andy and all,

I've now rolled some of the points that we seem to have consensus on into
the original charter I suggested back at the beginning of April.  I've
posted it on the Wiki page [*] where Berin had kindly placed his reworking
of that document.

I'm also attaching a diff of my original suggestion to the modified one, in
case that makes review easier for people:  (See attached file:
charter-changes.txt)


If we can get agreement on that, then I for one would be cool for actually
voting on the resolution Berin drafted for us (which I've included below,
with a few modifications, chief among them an attempt at specifying the
composition of the PMC based on who it seems to me are the active
committers these days).  I haven't tried to fill in the field for PMC Chair
though.  :)

As always, feedback more than appreciated!

Cheers,
Neil
[*]:
http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?XMLProjectPages/XercesCharterDiscussion


************* Draft Motion on Xerces **************
  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 XML parsers, for distribution
  at no charge to the public.

  NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that a Project Management
  Committee (PMC), to be known as the "Xerces PMC", be and
  hereby is established pursuant to Bylaws of the Foundation;
  and be it further

  RESOLVED, that the Xerces PMC be and hereby is responsible
  for the creation and maintenance of open-source software related
  to XML parsing and closely related technologies based on
  software licensed to the Foundation; and be it further

  RESOLVED, that the office of "Vice President, Xerces" 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
  Xerces PMC, and to have primary responsibility for management
  of the projects within the scope of responsibility of the
  Xerces 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 Xerces PMC:

  * Neeraj Bajaj <[email protected]>
  * James Berry <[email protected]>
  * Andy Clark <[email protected]>
  * Sandy Gao <[email protected]>
  * Michael Glavassevich <[email protected]>
  * Neil Graham <[email protected]>
  * Kohsuke Kawaguchi <[email protected]>
  * Elena Litani <[email protected]>
  * Alberto Massari <[email protected]>
  * Khaled Noaman <[email protected]>
  * K.Venugopal Rao <[email protected]>
  * Gareth Reakes <[email protected]>
  * Jason Stewart <[email protected]>
  * PeiYong Zhang <[email protected]>

  NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that REPLACE WITH CHAIR
  be and hereby is appointed to the office of Vice President, Xerces,
  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 Xerces PMC be and hereby is tasked
  with the creation of a set of bylaws intended to encourage open
  development and increased participation in the Xerces Project;
  and be it further

  RESOLVED, that the initial Xerces PMC be and hereby is tasked
  with the migration and rationalization of the Apache XML PMC
  Xerces subproject; and be it further

  RESOLVED, that all responsibility pertaining to the XML
  Xerces sub-project and encumbered upon the Apache XML PMC
  are hereafter discharged.




Neil Graham
XML Parser Development
IBM Toronto Lab
Phone:  905-413-3519, T/L 969-3519
E-mail:  [email protected]




                                                                                                                                       
                      Andy Clark                                                                                                       
                      <[email protected]        To:       [email protected]                                                   
                      et>                      cc:       [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]       
                                               Subject:  Re: [VOTE]:  motion to transform Xerces into a top-level project as a member  
                      05/12/2004 01:44          of the "federation" of XML projects                                                    
                      PM                                                                                                               
                      Please respond to                                                                                                
                      pmc                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                       



Neil Graham wrote:
>>So "Xerces" would be the project whereas "Xerces-J" would
>>be a product release of Xerces in Java. An example sub-project
>>would be "HTML" which, again, would have products based on the
>>implementation language. They would be bundled together for
>>organizational reasons, not for releases.
>
> Conceptually, the only difficulty I'd have with this is that it's no
longer
> crystal clear what the commonality between the subprojects is.  I'd
thought

It's not clear to *you*, is what you mean. It's perfectly clear
to me. ;)

> that the "Xerces" TLP would be all about Apache's offerings related
> specifically to XML parsing first, and perhaps very closely related
> technologies second.

That sounds exactly like what I'm proposing through my use of
the terms "project" and "sub-project". Parsing is the project
and things related to parsing are sub-projects. Products is
the way that the implementations are separated from each other
within the project.

So someone comes to the website looking for XML parsers and
they go the the Xerces Project. Then they decide what language
they need, Java, so they download the Xerces-J product. Next,
they want to be able to parse HTML, so they look at the Xerces
HTML sub-project. There they see that there is an implementation
in Java for use with the XML parser they just downloaded.

In this situation, of course there are things that need to be
broken out of Xerces-J as it stands today. But once that is
done, they are each developed and packaged separately. It's
primarily the website organization that reflects the hierarchy
and relationships between these separate things.

>>I'm specifically trying to organize the Xerces TLP so that
>>I can formally donate NekoHTML to the Xerces project for the
>>Xerces-J product.
>
> I'd been guessing that.  :)

I'm asked on a regular basis if/when it will be merged into
Xerces-J so this is a perfect opportunity to do that.

>     * project:     the top level project (TLP), charged with XML parsing
> and closely allied technologies
>     * sub-project: either
>             o an XML parser implementation in a particular language, or
>             o a "tools" subproject containing useful products that are
> tightly bound, usually by nonstandard API's, to one of the other
> subprojects

But this puts dependent products at the same level as the
parser. You would think they would be *under* the parser
because of the dependency.

> The tools subproject could contain products from as many languages as
there
> were parsers.  I'm also fine with removing the restriction that we have
one
> parser per language; we may want a Xerces-J-Pull at some point.

Well, that was certainly one of my biggest problems with the
original draft.

> Once again, I'd love to call on other folks from Xerces-land.  Andy and I
> are having a good time talking among ourselves, but it's tough to gauge
the
> consensus of a community when you only ever hear two voices...

It does seem rather quiet around here. I'm surprised that
noone else has added their ideas to the discussion. Perhaps
they're scared of me. ;)

--
Andy Clark * [email protected]

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charter-changes.txt (application/octet-stream, 7.5 KB)
--- charter-original.txt	2004-05-21 13:33:40.899953800 -0400
+++ charter.txt	2004-05-21 13:38:17.970731800 -0400
@@ -2,8 +2,8 @@
 ==============
 1.1 Apache Xerces is a collaborative software development project
 dedicated to providing robust, full-featured, commercial-quality, and
-freely available XML parsers on a wide variety of platforms supporting
-several languages.  This
+freely available XML parsers and closely related technologies 
+on a wide variety of platforms supporting several languages.  This
 project is managed in cooperation with various individuals worldwide
 (both independent and company-affiliated experts), who use the
 Internet to communicate, plan, and develop XML software and related
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@
 knowledge. The ability to transform raw data into usable information
 has great potential to improve the functionality and use of
 information systems. We intend to build freely available XML
-parsers in order to engender such improvements.
+parsers and closely related technologies in order to engender such improvements.
 
 2.2 The Apache Xerces parsers support standard APIs (formal, de facto, 
 or proposed). 
@@ -50,10 +50,11 @@
 =========
 3.1 The Apache Xerces project was originally part of the Apache XML Project. 
 In early 2004, reflecting the growth both in the Apache
-XML project and in Apache Xerces, Apache Xerces became a formal
-project of the Apache Software Foundation.  However, Apache Xerces still 
+XML project and in Apache Xerces, Apache Xerces became a top-level
+Project of the Apache Software Foundation.  However, Apache Xerces still 
 shares much infrastructure with the Apache XML project and the 
-other subprojects of Apache XML that have become projects in their own right.
+other former subprojects of Apache XML that have become projects in 
+their own right.
 
 4 TERMS
 =======
@@ -63,14 +64,26 @@
 4.2 The Project.  The Apache Xerces Project; intended
 to refer to the source code, website and community that are Apache Xerces.
 
-4.3 Subproject.  Apache Xerces is comprised of a number of subprojects,
-corresponding to each of the languages for which a parser has been 
-produced.  Currently, there are parsers for Java, C/C++ and Perl.
+4.3 Subproject.  Apache Xerces is comprised of a number of subprojects
+which fit into one of two categories:
 
-4.4 Contributor.  Anyone who makes a contribution to the development
+a) An XML parser implementation in some particular programming 
+   language.  There may multiple parsers for a given
+   language, if the API's the parsers support are sufficiently
+   dissimilar.  At the time of writing, there is one parser for 
+   each of Java, C/C++ and Perl.
+b) Componentry that is not an XML parser, but involves related
+   applications and is tightly bound, usually through internal
+   API's, to one of the parser subprojects.  
+
+4.4 Product.  Some deliverable (usually a binary or source
+package) that a subproject releases to the public.  Subprojects
+may have multiple products.
+
+4.5 Contributor.  Anyone who makes a contribution to the development
 of the Apache Xerces project or a subproject.
 
-4.5 Committer.  Apache Xerces has a set of committers.  Committers
+4.6 Committer.  Apache Xerces has a set of committers.  Committers
 are contributors who have read/write access to the source code
 repository.  
 
@@ -139,13 +152,10 @@
 
 6 SUBPROJECTS
 =============
-6.1 Apache Xerces is composed of subprojects; a subproject is
-responsible for an XML parser implementation in a particular language.
-
-6.2 A new subproject proposal is submitted to the PMC, and then accepted
-by a two-thirds vote.
+6.1 When a new subproject proposal is submitted to the PMC, it
+may be accepted by a two-thirds vote of the PMC.
 
-6.3 A subproject may be removed by unanimous vote of the PMC, subject to the
+6.2 A subproject may be removed by unanimous vote of the PMC, subject to the
 approval of the ASF board.  
 
 7 CONTRIBUTORS
@@ -164,14 +174,18 @@
 have read/write access to the source code repository. New committers
 are added when a contributor is nominated by a committer, approved by
 at least 50 percent of the active committers for that subproject with no
-opposing votes, and files a signed Contributor License Agreement with the Secretary of the Corporation.  In most cases, new committers will already be participating in the development process by submitting suggestions
-and/or fixes via the bug report page or mailing lists.
+opposing votes, and files a signed Contributor License Agreement 
+with the Secretary of the Corporation.  In most cases, new 
+committers will already be participating in the development 
+process by submitting suggestions and/or fixes via the bug report 
+page or mailing lists.
 
 8.2 Although committers have write access to all Apache Xerces subprojects,
 they are only permitted to make changes to the subprojects to which they
 have been elected committers.  A committer may be elected to multiple
-subprojects, but, except that no new access need be granted,
-the process is the same as for any other contributor.
+subprojects, but, except that no new access need be grantedand
+the CLA need not be updated, the process is the same as for any 
+other contributor.
 
 8.3 For the purposes of voting, committers will be classed as "active" or
 "inactive". Only active committers will be included in the totals used to 
@@ -189,8 +203,8 @@
 
 8.5 An inactive status will not prevent a committer committing new code
 changes or posting to the mailing lists.  Either of these activities will
-automatically re-activate the committer for the purposes of voting, and necessitate
-their addition to the PMC mailing list.
+automatically re-activate the committer for the purposes of 
+voting, and necessitate their addition to the PMC mailing list.
 
 9 INFRASTRUCTURE
 ================
@@ -229,18 +243,22 @@
 same terms. All contributed files must contain the full text of the ASF
 Source Code License.
 
-10.2 When a committer is considering integrating a contribution from a contributor who has no CLA on file with the Corporation, it is the responsibility of the committer, in consultation with the PMC, to conduct due diligence on the pedigree of the contribution under consideration.
+10.2 When a committer is considering integrating a contribution 
+from a contributor who has no CLA on file with the Corporation, 
+it is the responsibility of the committer, in consultation with 
+the PMC, to conduct due diligence on the pedigree of the 
+contribution under consideration.
 
 11 THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
 ==========================
 11.1 The development process is intentionally lightweight; like other
 Apache projects, the committers decide which changes may be committed
 to the repository. Three +1 ('yes' votes) with no -1 ('no' votes or
-vetoes) are needed to approve a significant code change. For efficiency, some code
-changes from some contributors (e.g. feature additions, bug fixes) may
-be approved in advance, in which case they may be committed first and
-changed as needed, with conflicts resolved by majority vote of the
-committers.
+vetoes) are needed to approve a significant code change. For 
+efficiency, some code changes from some contributors (e.g. 
+feature additions, bug fixes) may be approved in advance, in 
+which case they may be committed first and changed as needed, 
+with conflicts resolved by majority vote of the committers.
 
 12 SUBPROJECT REQUIREMENTS
 ==========================
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