Incubator Release Proposal

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 think we have consensus among IPMC members that allowing podling releases with minor issues is a correct approach even it doesn't follow ASF policy. Serious problems, such as; including GPL licensed software, including compiled code, or copyright violations, in a release are 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 compliant release to ease their progress through the incubating process. We've come up with an alternate disclaimer that clearly states that the release may not be compliant with ASF release or distribution policy and lists 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

The IPMC can allow non-compliant releases to be distributed without IPMC VP or legal VP approval, based on a documented list of issues which are acceptable for such non-compliant incubating releases. Such releases will include an alternative "work in progress" DISCLAIMER-WIP to make users aware of the issues . When this occurs, podlings document the issues as blocking graduation and carry on incubating. They will not be allowed to graduate until all such 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.