Board Report due within the half of January

[Jacopo Cappellato]

Hi,

this is just a reminder for the Status Reports that the OFBiz PMC has to
prepare and submit to the ASF Board within the half of this month (the
Board meeting is scheduled, if I'm not wrong, in 2007-01-17, Wed).

This is our first report as a TLP and I think we have a lot of things to
log; here is just a draft:

Exiting from Incubator:
*) interaction with Infrastructure for the creation of new DNS entry for
ofbiz.apache.org (done)
*) interaction with Infrastructure for the migration of the web site (done)
*) interaction with Infrastructure for the migration of the Jira issue
tracker (done)
*) interaction with Infrastructure for the migration of the svn server
(done)
*) updated all the resources of the ASF site to refer to OFBiz as a TLP;
submitted request to the projects.apache.org to be listed there, still
waiting
*) interaction with Infrastructure for the migration of the mailing
lists (pending)
*) interaction with Infrastructure for the migration of the

Community:
*) a lot of activity in the user and dev mailing lists
*) public discussion and plans for a new release happening in early
2007; the idea is to issue one realease per year (TODO: add more details)
*) the task of cleaning up the project website and documentation has
been started
*) plans for a Developers Conference (TODO: add more details)

Unfortunately I will not have time to prepare the report so this draft
is just my small contribution to it.

Jacopo

[David E Jones-2]

Jacopo,

That's great, thank you for taking the time to start this summary.

As I understand it I am ultimately responsible for reporting to the  
board, so I'll start with this take care of the rest. They have  
automated notices for these, which is pretty cool, and I have already  
received the one for the January report. I'll be reviewing the  
instructions related to that, and it will be interesting doing our  
first report... Just as in the incubator it looks like we will have  
one report per month for the first 3 months, and then once each  
quarter after that.

On a side note, thanks again Jacopo for your efforts in keeping the  
incubation status page updated, and in taking care of the reporting  
during the incubation process. I welcome your continued involvement  
in this and as I go through the first pass I'll look for a way to  
make this more collaborative, perhaps using a page on docs.ofbiz.org  
to maintain draft reports and comments.

BTW, the Developers Conference is not really an official ASF  
conference or event, but rather just an event that Hotwax is  
sponsoring in order to further collaboration and help move the  
community forward and so on. In the past the Users Conferences have  
been similar: someone in the community proposes the conference and  
coordinates it with others in the community and simply invites any  
who would like to attend. Going forward we plan to continue  
similarly, and of course in addition to any such events also  
participate in ApacheCon and where possible other things such as  
OSCON, etc.

-David


On Jan 7, 2007, at 1:02 AM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:

> Hi,
>
> this is just a reminder for the Status Reports that the OFBiz PMC  
> has to prepare and submit to the ASF Board within the half of this  
> month (the Board meeting is scheduled, if I'm not wrong, in  
> 2007-01-17, Wed).
>
> This is our first report as a TLP and I think we have a lot of  
> things to log; here is just a draft:
>
> Exiting from Incubator:
> *) interaction with Infrastructure for the creation of new DNS  
> entry for ofbiz.apache.org (done)
> *) interaction with Infrastructure for the migration of the web  
> site (done)
> *) interaction with Infrastructure for the migration of the Jira  
> issue tracker (done)
> *) interaction with Infrastructure for the migration of the svn  
> server (done)
> *) updated all the resources of the ASF site to refer to OFBiz as a  
> TLP; submitted request to the projects.apache.org to be listed  
> there, still waiting
> *) interaction with Infrastructure for the migration of the mailing  
> lists (pending)
> *) interaction with Infrastructure for the migration of the
>
> Community:
> *) a lot of activity in the user and dev mailing lists
> *) public discussion and plans for a new release happening in early  
> 2007; the idea is to issue one realease per year (TODO: add more  
> details)
> *) the task of cleaning up the project website and documentation  
> has been started
> *) plans for a Developers Conference (TODO: add more details)
>
> Unfortunately I will not have time to prepare the report so this  
> draft is just my small contribution to it.
>
> Jacopo
>

[Jacopo Cappellato]

David E Jones wrote:

>
> ...
> BTW, the Developers Conference is not really an official ASF conference
> or event, but rather just an event that Hotwax is sponsoring in order to
> further collaboration and help move the community forward and so on. In
> the past the Users Conferences have been similar: someone in the
> community proposes the conference and coordinates it with others in the
> community and simply invites any who would like to attend. Going forward
> we plan to continue similarly, and of course in addition to any such
> events also participate in ApacheCon and where possible other things
> such as OSCON, etc.
>

I agree that this is an important point that should be stressed in the
report (i.e. it is not an event officially promoted by the ASF), however
I think that it is an important event for the community and it is worth
of a mention in the report.

Jacopo

[David E Jones-2]

On Jan 7, 2007, at 1:23 AM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:

> David E Jones wrote:
>> ...
>> BTW, the Developers Conference is not really an official ASF  
>> conference or event, but rather just an event that Hotwax is  
>> sponsoring in order to further collaboration and help move the  
>> community forward and so on. In the past the Users Conferences  
>> have been similar: someone in the community proposes the  
>> conference and coordinates it with others in the community and  
>> simply invites any who would like to attend. Going forward we plan  
>> to continue similarly, and of course in addition to any such  
>> events also participate in ApacheCon and where possible other  
>> things such as OSCON, etc.
>
> I agree that this is an important point that should be stressed in  
> the report (i.e. it is not an event officially promoted by the  
> ASF), however I think that it is an important event for the  
> community and it is worth of a mention in the report.

Yeah, good point, it is still definitely worth mentioning.

-David

[Jacopo Cappellato]

Maybe we could also add a note about the discussion we had about the
possibility of implementing an OFBiz store to sell books for the ASF...

Jacopo

David E Jones wrote:

>
> On Jan 7, 2007, at 1:23 AM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
>
>> David E Jones wrote:
>>> ...
>>> BTW, the Developers Conference is not really an official ASF
>>> conference or event, but rather just an event that Hotwax is
>>> sponsoring in order to further collaboration and help move the
>>> community forward and so on. In the past the Users Conferences have
>>> been similar: someone in the community proposes the conference and
>>> coordinates it with others in the community and simply invites any
>>> who would like to attend. Going forward we plan to continue
>>> similarly, and of course in addition to any such events also
>>> participate in ApacheCon and where possible other things such as
>>> OSCON, etc.
>>
>> I agree that this is an important point that should be stressed in the
>> report (i.e. it is not an event officially promoted by the ASF),
>> however I think that it is an important event for the community and it
>> is worth of a mention in the report.
>
> Yeah, good point, it is still definitely worth mentioning.
>
> -David
>

[Jacques Le Roux]

Good idea, +1

Jacques

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jacopo Cappellato" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2007 11:50 AM
Subject: Re: Board Report due within the half of January

> Maybe we could also add a note about the discussion we had about the
> possibility of implementing an OFBiz store to sell books for the ASF...
>
> Jacopo
>
> David E Jones wrote:
> >
> > On Jan 7, 2007, at 1:23 AM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
> >
> >> David E Jones wrote:
> >>> ...
> >>> BTW, the Developers Conference is not really an official ASF
> >>> conference or event, but rather just an event that Hotwax is
> >>> sponsoring in order to further collaboration and help move the
> >>> community forward and so on. In the past the Users Conferences have
> >>> been similar: someone in the community proposes the conference and
> >>> coordinates it with others in the community and simply invites any
> >>> who would like to attend. Going forward we plan to continue
> >>> similarly, and of course in addition to any such events also
> >>> participate in ApacheCon and where possible other things such as
> >>> OSCON, etc.
> >>
> >> I agree that this is an important point that should be stressed in the
> >> report (i.e. it is not an event officially promoted by the ASF),
> >> however I think that it is an important event for the community and it
> >> is worth of a mention in the report.
> >
> > Yeah, good point, it is still definitely worth mentioning.
> >
> > -David
> >
>

[cjhowe]

--- David E Jones <[hidden email]>
wrote:

> BTW, the Developers Conference is not really an
> official ASF  
> conference or event, but rather just an event that
> Hotwax is  
> sponsoring in order to further collaboration and
> help move the  
> community forward and so on. In the past the Users
> Conferences have  
> been similar: someone in the community proposes the
> conference and  
> coordinates it with others in the community and
> simply invites any  
> who would like to attend. Going forward we plan to
> continue  
> similarly, and of course in addition to any such
> events also  
> participate in ApacheCon and where possible other
> things such as  
> OSCON, etc.
>
> -David
>

For your consideration:
Being that the Developer's Conference isn't an
official Apache event you may want to consider the
licensing ramifications as the contribution scenario
appears very similar to the sandbox.  

If you'd like to follow the discussion that is on the
general incubator list here is the nabble link
http://www.nabble.com/Making-a-non-ASF-project%2C-ASF-friendly-tf2930136.html


Regards,
Chris

[Anil Patel]

Chris,
How is the work done at the developer's conference is different then work
done at my Home. As long as I create a Jira Issue and submit a patch there.
The advantage will be I'll have commiter accros the table who can get it
from Jira and review and apply the patch.

Anil Patel


On 1/7/07, Chris Howe <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
>
> --- David E Jones <[hidden email]>
> wrote:
>
> > BTW, the Developers Conference is not really an
> > official ASF
> > conference or event, but rather just an event that
> > Hotwax is
> > sponsoring in order to further collaboration and
> > help move the
> > community forward and so on. In the past the Users
> > Conferences have
> > been similar: someone in the community proposes the
> > conference and
> > coordinates it with others in the community and
> > simply invites any
> > who would like to attend. Going forward we plan to
> > continue
> > similarly, and of course in addition to any such
> > events also
> > participate in ApacheCon and where possible other
> > things such as
> > OSCON, etc.
> >
> > -David
> >
>
> For your consideration:
> Being that the Developer's Conference isn't an
> official Apache event you may want to consider the
> licensing ramifications as the contribution scenario
> appears very similar to the sandbox.
>
> If you'd like to follow the discussion that is on the
> general incubator list here is the nabble link
>
> http://www.nabble.com/Making-a-non-ASF-project%2C-ASF-friendly-tf2930136.html
>
>
> Regards,
> Chris
>

[Yoav Shapira-2]

Hi,
FYI, regarding a decent process for Board reports: I've found it
useful when I was/am the PMC chair to write a first draft and send it
to the dev list for discussion and comments.  I usually do another
iteratio or two, incorporating the comments, and then send it to the
Board, CC'ing the dev list with the final version.  In other words,
it's definitely a collaborative effort writing the report, not just
one person's job.

Yoav

On 1/7/07, Anil Patel <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Chris,
> How is the work done at the developer's conference is different then work
> done at my Home. As long as I create a Jira Issue and submit a patch there.
> The advantage will be I'll have commiter accros the table who can get it
> from Jira and review and apply the patch.
>
> Anil Patel
>
>
> On 1/7/07, Chris Howe <[hidden email]> wrote:
> >
> >
> > --- David E Jones <[hidden email]>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > BTW, the Developers Conference is not really an
> > > official ASF
> > > conference or event, but rather just an event that
> > > Hotwax is
> > > sponsoring in order to further collaboration and
> > > help move the
> > > community forward and so on. In the past the Users
> > > Conferences have
> > > been similar: someone in the community proposes the
> > > conference and
> > > coordinates it with others in the community and
> > > simply invites any
> > > who would like to attend. Going forward we plan to
> > > continue
> > > similarly, and of course in addition to any such
> > > events also
> > > participate in ApacheCon and where possible other
> > > things such as
> > > OSCON, etc.
> > >
> > > -David
> > >
> >
> > For your consideration:
> > Being that the Developer's Conference isn't an
> > official Apache event you may want to consider the
> > licensing ramifications as the contribution scenario
> > appears very similar to the sandbox.
> >
> > If you'd like to follow the discussion that is on the
> > general incubator list here is the nabble link
> >
> > http://www.nabble.com/Making-a-non-ASF-project%2C-ASF-friendly-tf2930136.html
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> > Chris
> >
>
>

[cjhowe]

--- Anil Patel <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Chris,
> How is the work done at the developer's conference
> is different then work
> done at my Home. As long as I create a Jira Issue
> and submit a patch there.
> The advantage will be I'll have commiter accros the
> table who can get it
> from Jira and review and apply the patch.
>
> Anil Patel

If you're the only worker on the the contribution,
there is no difference, however as soon as you get two
hands (or minds) on that contribution there is
collaboration and there's a potential issue.  Only one
of you can submit the patch to JIRA or to SVN.
Therefore only one of you has formally granted license
to Apache.  There is no physical proof that the person
who collaborated and has copyright of the material
he's contributing or has granted sufficient license to
Apache (or relinquished enough rights to another
entity so that they may legally grant license to
Apache) for inclusion of that code enhancement in the
project and in all the liberal ways that Apache can
use a contribution.  Without additional consideration,
the person pressing the Apache grant radio button in
JIRA is lying as they are not the "Licensor" and
cannot enter the agreement.

Because the Developers Conference is not an official
Apache gathering, I would suspect any collaborated
contribution would be a similar scenario to the
sandbox scenario that is being discussed on the
general-incubator ML, regardless of the level of
involvement of a committer in the conference.  (If
that were the case, I would just need to ask one of
the committers to have involvement in the sandbox.  I
don't think that is sufficient to cross the legal
hurdle of who the licensor is.)

IANAL, and I'm not sure what the potential
repercussions are. I'm simply asking you guys to
consider what the potential repercussions are because
it would be an obvious shame for all that hard work to
have the potential to be subject to the scrutiny of IP
law when we're all here just trying to contribute in
the spirit of open source.

Regards,
Chris

[David E Jones-2]

Thanks Yoav, that sounds like a good way to go. I'm thinking of a  
small variation on that which incorporates the Confluence server to  
keep a history and stuff.

-David


On Jan 7, 2007, at 10:27 AM, Yoav Shapira wrote:

> Hi,
> FYI, regarding a decent process for Board reports: I've found it
> useful when I was/am the PMC chair to write a first draft and send it
> to the dev list for discussion and comments.  I usually do another
> iteratio or two, incorporating the comments, and then send it to the
> Board, CC'ing the dev list with the final version.  In other words,
> it's definitely a collaborative effort writing the report, not just
> one person's job.
>
> Yoav
>
> On 1/7/07, Anil Patel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> Chris,
>> How is the work done at the developer's conference is different  
>> then work
>> done at my Home. As long as I create a Jira Issue and submit a  
>> patch there.
>> The advantage will be I'll have commiter accros the table who can  
>> get it
>> from Jira and review and apply the patch.
>>
>> Anil Patel
>>
>>
>> On 1/7/07, Chris Howe <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > --- David E Jones <[hidden email]>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > > BTW, the Developers Conference is not really an
>> > > official ASF
>> > > conference or event, but rather just an event that
>> > > Hotwax is
>> > > sponsoring in order to further collaboration and
>> > > help move the
>> > > community forward and so on. In the past the Users
>> > > Conferences have
>> > > been similar: someone in the community proposes the
>> > > conference and
>> > > coordinates it with others in the community and
>> > > simply invites any
>> > > who would like to attend. Going forward we plan to
>> > > continue
>> > > similarly, and of course in addition to any such
>> > > events also
>> > > participate in ApacheCon and where possible other
>> > > things such as
>> > > OSCON, etc.
>> > >
>> > > -David
>> > >
>> >
>> > For your consideration:
>> > Being that the Developer's Conference isn't an
>> > official Apache event you may want to consider the
>> > licensing ramifications as the contribution scenario
>> > appears very similar to the sandbox.
>> >
>> > If you'd like to follow the discussion that is on the
>> > general incubator list here is the nabble link
>> >
>> > http://www.nabble.com/Making-a-non-ASF-project%2C-ASF-friendly- 
>> tf2930136.html
>> >
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Chris
>> >
>>
>>

[David E Jones-2]

On Jan 7, 2007, at 11:18 AM, Chris Howe wrote:

>
> --- Anil Patel <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> Chris,
>> How is the work done at the developer's conference
>> is different then work
>> done at my Home. As long as I create a Jira Issue
>> and submit a patch there.
>> The advantage will be I'll have commiter accros the
>> table who can get it
>> from Jira and review and apply the patch.
>>
>> Anil Patel
>
> If you're the only worker on the the contribution,
> there is no difference, however as soon as you get two
> hands (or minds) on that contribution there is
> collaboration and there's a potential issue.  Only one
> of you can submit the patch to JIRA or to SVN.
> Therefore only one of you has formally granted license
> to Apache.  There is no physical proof that the person
> who collaborated and has copyright of the material
> he's contributing or has granted sufficient license to
> Apache (or relinquished enough rights to another
> entity so that they may legally grant license to
> Apache) for inclusion of that code enhancement in the
> project and in all the liberal ways that Apache can
> use a contribution.  Without additional consideration,
> the person pressing the Apache grant radio button in
> JIRA is lying as they are not the "Licensor" and
> cannot enter the agreement.

Technically that little checkbox in Jira doesn't mean a thing, not  
one little thing. The only point of it is to be another safe guard  
that person contributing the artifact understands and makes it clear  
what they are doing.

In a way I wish it simply weren't there as it is often confusing  
because people see it a lot, but they often don't bother to read the  
document(s) that have real legal teeth.

All that matters is that someone who represents the copyright holder
(s) gets the issue to a committer, the committer checks out the  
licensing, and then gets it into the repo. The Jira system just helps  
to make this more trace-able.

I HIGHLY recommend reading the Apache License 2.0, and the Individual  
Contributor License Agreement files. These clear up pretty much all  
of these questions.

> Because the Developers Conference is not an official
> Apache gathering, I would suspect any collaborated
> contribution would be a similar scenario to the
> sandbox scenario that is being discussed on the
> general-incubator ML, regardless of the level of
> involvement of a committer in the conference.  (If
> that were the case, I would just need to ask one of
> the committers to have involvement in the sandbox.  I
> don't think that is sufficient to cross the legal
> hurdle of who the licensor is.)

No, having a committer there doesn't solve the problem, but it sure  
helps and makes these contributions MORE legally reliable because the  
committer is sitting there watching it be created and has direct  
contact with all of the developers. When submitted through Jira  
alone, the committer has to trust the person who uploaded it or if it  
is a bigger or more suspicious patch then the committer has to do  
some research to make sure it is kosher.

> IANAL, and I'm not sure what the potential
> repercussions are. I'm simply asking you guys to
> consider what the potential repercussions are because
> it would be an obvious shame for all that hard work to
> have the potential to be subject to the scrutiny of IP
> law when we're all here just trying to contribute in
> the spirit of open source.

Yes, this is an important part of open source and something I've  
found necessary to study over the years. There are various good  
resources to help you understand the general concepts, and of course  
long hours of discussion of how to handle certain problems helps,  
like the discussion you're going through now about the sandbox  
implications.

Please understand that usually there is no sure fire way to make sure  
that code going into the repository is clean. The policies of the ASF  
are there to give it a good legal basis and a good chance in general.  
For small code bits that rely on other larger code bits already in  
the open source project the risk is fairly minimal. For big pieces  
developed elsewhere things get trickier because there is more risk of  
abuse, or in other words something slipping in that was not properly  
vetted for legal concerns. This is one of the reasons for the  
incubation process for larger pieces of code regardless of their  
source, and even if they are going into an existing project and not  
becoming a new project.

I hope that helps make clear the distinction, and the concern with a  
sandbox effort.

On the other hand, technically this is a problem you don't have  
yet... If something goes through months of development in the sandbox  
and is ready to go into the OFBiz trunk, THEN you'll have some legal  
hurdles to jump, but then you'll also have very specific information  
about the situation and it can be discussed with rubber to the road  
instead of in a hypothetical way. Still, what you're doing with  
regards to finding out about legal concerns is a good idea up front.  
Hopefully now you know what some of your options are and you can  
decide how to proceed.

-David

[Chandresh Turakhia]

Hi ,

I have created product requirements ppt. for M-commerce. Tried to convey
ofbiz without specifing the word "ofbiz".

Have some done some very work. Refactoring still to do.

Need help in "Fuctional Product Req view - ER diagrams of universal models "
worth putting in ppt.


Would any one want to look at my ppt. I really wish smart guys have a loot
at it and make suggestions.

Chand