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*Summary*

The Incubator PMC has been discussing allowing podlings to make releases which are not fully compliant with the ASF release policies.

Such releases would include a DISCLAIMER-WIP statement of being a "work in progress", pointing to the specific issues that make them non-compliant.

The IPMC is seeking approval from the Board to proceed based on the details of this proposal, below.

*Some Background*

The IPMC requires clarity from the board if podlings need to follow ASF's 
release policy and distribution policy while in incubation. This question 
has been asked before, and the answer was unclear or strongly suggested 
that podling releases must follow ASF policy. What is happening in practice 
is that the IPMC allows releases with minor issues to go ahead and assumes 
they will be fixed in a later release (before graduation) and stops 
releases with any serious problem from going ahead (with an IPMC member or 
two voting -1). A -1 vote is not a veto but usually stops a release, 
there's only been a handful of successful releases with -1 votes. I don'tthink 
think anyone thinkswe have consensus among IPMC members that allowing podling releases with 
minor issues to be released 
is ana incorrectcorrect approach even if it doesn't follow ASF policy. Serious 
problems, such as; including GPL licensed software, including compiled 
code, or copyright violations, in a release isare currently seen as a reason 
to vote -1 on a release. Podlings do try and do the right thing but
about 1 in 5 podling releases has a problem like this. Historically
there's been a few releases with serious issues that have got legal and
incubator VP approval to make a release on a one by one, once-off basis.
The incubator want to allow podling to make non complainantcompliant release to
ease their progress through the incubating process. We've come up with
an alternate disclaimer that clearly startstates that the release may not be
complainantcompliant with ASF release or distribution policy and listlists known issues.
The legal committee have confirmed that the the incubator as a TLP needs
to follow release policy and can only make releases with issues if it
considered to be special in some way.

*Proposal*

ThatThe the IPMC can allow non-compliant releases with serious issues in them to be released 
and distributed without IPMC VP or 
legal VP approval. This, based on a documented list of issues which are acceptable for such
non-compliant incubating releases. Such releases needwill to
useinclude thean alternative "work 
in progress" DISCLAIMER-WIP to make users aware of the issues . When this occurs, podling
willpodlings document the issueissues as one blocking graduation and carry on incubating.
 They 
will not be allowed to graduate until all serioussuch release issues have
 been fixed.

*Notes*

The IPMC and legal committee has come up with a well-defined list of those
issues. This will be distributed to mentors, IPMC members and podlings so
that everyone's expectations are clear. This proposal does not change the
need for an IPMC vote on podling releases, which will be considered
separately.