a VOTE. Please vote on the acceptance of Bloodhound into the Apache
Incubator.
The proposal is available at [1] and its content is also included
below for your convenience.
Please vote:
[ ] +1 Accept Bloodhound for incubation
[ ] +0 Don't care
[ ] -1 Don't accept Bloodhound for incubation (please explain)
The vote is open for 72 hours.
-Hyrum
[1] http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/BloodhoundProposal
= Bloodhound - Collaborative development tools based on Trac =
== Abstract ==
Bloodhound will be a software development collaboration tool,
including issue tracking, wiki and repository browsing. Essentially
an improved distribution of the well-known Trac project, Bloodhound
will include the common and useful plugins to enable a more complete
distribution than a typical Trac installation.
== Proposal ==
Bloodhound will be a software development collaboration tool, based on
the existing Trac project, which will include a repository browser,
wiki, and defect tracker. In addition to the standard Trac
installation, Bloodhound will incorporate a number of popular modules
into the core distribution, and include additional improvements
developed (as [[http://trac-hacks.org/|plugins]]) outside the Trac
project.
== Background ==
The [[http://trac.edgewall.org/|Trac project]] is a BSD-licensed
collaboration tool used to assist in software development. It has a
wide user base, a pluggable infrastructure, and is generally
considered stable.
By it's own recognition, however, the development community
surrounding Trac has largely dissipated, with little mailing list
traffic, and very few commits to the source code repository. Private
efforts to engage the existing developers in implementing features
have been negatively received. At the same time, other individuals
and companies, such as [[http://www.wandisco.com|WANdisco]], have
expressed interest in helping continue to develop Trac. These
entities would prefer this effort to be at a vendor-neutral location,
with the clear process for intellectual property management that comes
from the Foundation. As such, the Apache Software Foundation feels
like the best fit for this new project based on Trac.
Discussion about this proposal on the Trac developers' mailing list
has been largely ambivalent (see
[[http://groups.google.com/group/trac-dev/browse_thread/thread/14268355c6e1d494|this
thread]]). Trac has already
[[http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/BloodHound|included]] a potential
Bloodhound project on the list of its derivatives.
== Rationale ==
As discussed earlier, the current Trac development community is small
and reluctant to accept outside contributions. Given the Foundation's
reputation for building and maintaining communities, we feel a new
project, based on Trac but incubated under the Apache umbrella, would
help re-build the developer community, jump started by developer time
donated by WANdisco. Additionally, as a developer tool, Bloodhound is
a good fit with other, similarly-focused developer tools at the ASF.
Private discussions have shown there is some interest by third-parties
to release internal improvements to Trac, and Bloodhound gives them an
additional venue to do so.
== Initial Goals ==
The initial goals for Bloodhound primarily revolve around migrating
the existing code base and integrating external features to make the
project easy to deploy. Additional ideas will of course follow, but
the following goals are sufficiently difficult to be considered early
milestones.
Some of the initial goals include:
* Migrate the existing BSD-licensed Trac code base to the ASF.
* Attract developer and user interest in the new Bloodhound project.
* Incorporate externally developed features into the core Bloodhound project.
* Package the most popular plugins into the core project, so
installations and administration of Bloodhound becomes dead simple.
= Current Status =
== Meritocracy ==
Although initially corporate-sponsored, any interested developers
would be granted commit access. Even developers employed by the
sponsoring companies would be required to demonstrate competency to
gain commit privileges. Individuals with corporate affiliations would
understandably be known within the community, but would not have
bearing on the granting of commit privileges.
== Community ==
One of the primary purposes of this proposal is to develop a strong
developer community around the Trac code base. The current developers
and supporting institution have moved on to other things, and this has
caused stagnation in the existing community. We want to use the
experience of the Incubator PMC, and the incubation process, to reboot
the developer community, while at the same time incorporating
oft-requested features into the existing product.
Building communities carries with it an initial investment, and the
corporate sponsors behind this proposal are willing to make that
investment in seeing a vibrant and self-sustaining community result
from incubation. We recognize this as something of an experiment, and
that incubation is not a guarantee of success and graduation a given.
However, we feel that the ASF represents the best opportunity to build
the vibrant community that this project needs.
== Core Developers ==
The initial set of developers will be primarily individuals from
WANdisco, and may be augmented with other interested persons we have
privately contacted. This list contains at least one Apache Member,
as well as others who have participated in Apache projects in various
capacities (patch contributors, bug reports, etc.). It also includes
people who are familiar with open source development, but have not
previously participated in Apache projects.
Realizing that incubation is an opportunity to grow the community, we
plan to make every attempt possible to invite additional developers
from the existing Trac user and developer communities, including those
involved in plugin development.
== Alignment ==
Bloodhound aligns well with the Apache Software Foundation. It makes
extensive use of Apache Subversion, and includes tools to browse and
interact with Subversion repositories. As previously mentioned,
Bloodhound is primarily a developer-oriented tool, which follows the
historical Apache philosophy of providing high-quality developer
tools. Eventually, Bloodhound could become a viable alternative to
Jira or Bugzilla for projects hosted at Apache.
= Known Risks =
This proposal is not without its risks, some of which are outlined below.
== Orphaned Projects ==
The current Trac project lacks much developer interest. Although the
entities behind this proposal desire to make a viable developer
community, there is no guarantee that such a community will develop.
Should this happen, there will likely be insufficient heterogeneity in
the project to warrant graduation.
== Inexperience with Open Source ==
The initial groups of developers have extensive experience with open
source, primarily with the [[http://subversion.apache.org/|Apache
Subversion]] project. The target audience for growing the developer
community is the current Trac user and developer communities, many
members of which are familiar with open source in general. There may
be some learning curve as community members familiarize themselves
with the ASF and the Apache Way, including individuals employed
specifically to work on the project.
== Homogeneous Developers ==
The current list of committers are primarily from WANdisco. One of
the key purposes of proposing Bloodhound for incubation is to
resurrect a currently-small (~3 key developers, but very few commits
per week) development community by attracting and infusing it with new
code and new individuals. The ASF has a well-deserved reputation of
fostering and building open source communities, which makes it the
ideal location to attempt this community reboot.
== Reliance on Salaried Developers ==
Most of the initial committers are supported by their employers to
work on Bloodhound, and may be assigned to work on other projects in
the future. However, the employers of these salaried individuals have
an interest in seeing Bloodhound thrive as a long-term, sustaining
project. WANdisco understands that their employees are acting as
individuals when contributing to Apache projects, but has already
brought additional staff on board to assist with Bloodhound
development.
== Relationship with Other Apache Projects ==
Bloodhound integrates heavily with Apache Subversion, although that
integration is becoming more de-coupled making it possible to replace
with other version control systems. Bloodhound optionally runs on
Apache httpd.
== An Excessive Fascination with the Apache Brand ==
One of the primary motivators in creating the Bloodhound project as
part of the Incubator is to leverage the vendor-neutral nature of the
Apache Software Foundation. The ASF has a strong and recognized brand
as being a leader in open source, and by hosting Bloodhound at the
Foundation, we hope to attract developers to build a viable community
for the project.
= Initial Source =
The original Trac code base has been under development for more than 8
years, though development has become minimal over the past 2 years.
We have sync'd the existing Trac repository, including history, and
are using it as the basis for Bloodhound. We also plan to incorporate
appropriately-licensed plugins into the core Bloodhound system.
== Source and Intellectual Property Submission Plan ==
The initial source will be from the Trac repository. Additional
functionality may come from private development, and will be folded
into the open source version after Bloodhound is loaded in the main
ASF repository. Any relevant Trac-hacks with appropriate licenses may
also be migrated.
Most of the source code being imported from the Trac repository is
licensed under the BSD license, which has been
[[http://www.apache.org/legal/resolved.html#category-a|approved]] by
the Apache Legal team for use in Apache-distributed products. In
fact, existing projects at the ASF have been doing so for a number of
years. Potential concerns about patents embodied in the Trac code at
best, and a change of license or software grant would not defray them.
(See [[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-general/201112.mbox/%3CCABD8fLXs%2BCz3qQkR20bS2%2BSAW0N3yiTGkTH7iTxGwTUUwTADSQ%40mail.gmail.com%3E|this
mail]] for a better explanation.)
== External Dependencies ==
The bulk of the initial code will be from the Trac project, which is
licensed under the BSD license. Bloodhound also relies upon
BSD-licensed subcomponents for HTML templating.
= Required Resources =
== Mailing lists ==
The initial set of mailing lists will be:
* bloodhound-private (with moderated subscriptions)
* bloodhound-dev
* bloodhound-commits
* bloodhound-user
== Subversion Directory ==
https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/bloodhound
== Issue Tracking ==
Bloodhound would like to self-host its issue tracking, see below.
== Other Resources ==
In the interests of eating our own dogfood, Bloodhound would like to
self-host the issue tracker and related tools. The team will work with
Infrastructure to define and manage this configuration.
== Initial Committers ==
* Mat Booth (mat.booth at wandisco dot com)
* Mark Poole (mark at wandisco.com)
* Hyrum Wright (hyrum.wright at wandisco dot com)
* John Chambers (john.chambers at wandisco.com)
* Gary Martin (gary.martin at wandisco.com
* Gavin McDonald (gavin at 16degrees.com.au)
== Affiliations ==
* Mat Booth, WANdisco
* Mark Poole, WANdisco
* Hyrum Wright, WANdisco
* John Chambers, WANdisco
* Gary Martin, WANdisco
* Gavin McDonald, Independent
= Sponsors =
== Champion ==
Hyrum K. Wright
== Nominated Mentors ==
* Hyrum K. Wright
* Greg Stein
== Sponsoring Entity ==
The Apache Incubator
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