Code

CD10

The project produces Open Source software, for distribution to the public at no charge.[1]

YES. The project source code is licensed under the Apache License, version 2.0.

CD20

The project's code is easily discoverable and publicly accessible.

YES. Linked from the website, available via GitHub.

CD30

The code can be built in a reproducible way using widely available standard tools.

YES. The build uses cmake and make and instructions are available how to build from source. Continuous integration results are available on Jenkins.

CD40

The full history of the project's code is available via a source code control system, in a way that allows any released version to be recreated.

YES. Using Git, main repository at https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet. Releases are cut from that repository. All releases are tagged.

CD50

The provenance of each line of code is established via the source code control system, in a reliable way based on strong authentication of the committer. When third-party contributions are committed, commit messages provide reliable information about the code provenance.[2]

YES. The project uses a git repository, managed by Apache Infra, ensuring provenance of each line of code to a committer. Third party contributions are accepted in accordance with the Contribution Guide only.

Licenses and Copyright

LC10

The code is released under the Apache License, version 2.0.

YES. Source distributions clearly state license.

LC20

Libraries that are mandatory dependencies of the project's code do not create more restrictions than the Apache License does.[3], [4]

YES. The list of mandatory dependencies have been reviewed to contain approved licenses only. See license.

LC30

The libraries mentioned in LC20 are available as Open Source software.

YES. All mandatory dependencies are available as open source software. See 3rdparty dependencies.

LC40

Committers are bound by an Individual Contributor Agreement (the "Apache iCLA") that defines which code they are allowed to commit and how they need to identify code that is not their own.

YES. The project uses a repository managed by Apache Infra -- write access requires an Apache account, which requires an ICLA on file.

LC50

The copyright ownership of everything that the project produces is clearly defined and documented.[5]

YES. All files in the source repository have appropriate headers (see below). Even further, Software Grant Agreements for the initial donations and Corporate CLAs have been filed.

Releases

RE10

Releases consist of source code, distributed using standard and open archive formats that are expected to stay readable in the long term.[6]

YES. Source releases are distributed via dist.apache.org and on Github.

RE20

Releases are approved by the project's PMC (see CS10), in order to make them an act of the Foundation.

YES. All incubating releases have been unanimously approved by the MXNet community and the Incubator, all with at least 3 (P)PMC votes.

RE30

Releases are signed and/or distributed along with digests that can be reliably used to validate the downloaded archives.

YES. All releases are signed, and the KEYS file is provided on dist.apache.org.

RE40

Convenience binaries can be distributed alongside source code but they are not Apache Releases -- they are just a convenience provided with no guarantee.

YES. Convenience binaries are distributed via pip (Python). R packages are published on and CRAN. Scala packages are published to Apache release repositories. They are not distributed via dist.apache.org.

TODO: Update release voting process to include publication of Scala packages to Apache release repositories.

RE50

The release process is documented and repeatable to the extent that someone new to the project is able to independently generate the complete set of artifacts required for a release.

YES. Release process is available describing the entire process. Each MXNet release has been performed by different release manager.

Quality

QU10

The project is open and honest about the quality of its code. Various levels of quality and maturity for various modules are natural and acceptable as long as they are clearly communicated.

YES. The project records all bugs and feature requests on Github. Github is used to manage projects. In addition Apache Jira is used to manage bug fixes, tasks and projects

QU20

The project puts a very high priority on producing secure software.[7]

YES. Security issues are treated with the highest priority, according to the CVE/Security Advisory procedure.

QU30

The project provides a well-documented channel to report security issues, along with a documented way of responding to them.

YES. Website provides a security page.

QU40

The project puts a high priority on backwards compatibility and aims to document any incompatible changes and provide tools and documentation to help users transition to new features.

YES. Each release contains a “What’s new” on the website containing the release notes (extracted from github, cwiki and Jira). The project has a release versioning policy defined (draft).

TODO: complete discussion and vote to agree on versioning policy.

Note: we had instances where users have failed to load previously created models in newer versions of the project. This need to be covered in versioning policy going forward and migration tools should be provided.

QU50

The project strives to respond to documented bug reports in a timely manner.

???. The project has resolved 4120 issues during incubation. Out of these about 3000 got closed in bulk as outdated.

Community

CO10

The project has a well-known homepage that points to all the information required to operate according to this maturity model.

YES. The project website has a description of the project with technical details, how to contribute, links to discussion forum and all project related information.

CO20

The community welcomes contributions from anyone who acts in good faith and in a respectful manner and adds value to the project.

YES. It’s part of the contribution guide and the current committers are really keen to welcome contributions.

CO30

Contributions include not only source code, but also documentation, constructive bug reports, constructive discussions, marketing and generally anything that adds value to the project.

NO. The contribution guide refers only to source code contribution (e.g. no information how to contribute to documentation.

TODO: update contribution guide

CO40

The community is meritocratic and over time aims to give more rights and responsibilities to contributors who add value to the project.

YES. The community has elected 7 new committers during incubation, based on meritocracy.

CO50

The way in which contributors can be granted more rights such as commit access or decision power is clearly documented and is the same for all contributors.

CO60

The community operates based on consensus of its members (see CS10) who have decision power. Dictators, benevolent or not, are not welcome in Apache projects.

YES. The project works to build consensus. All votes have been unanimous so far.

CO70

The project strives to answer user questions in a timely manner.

YES. The project typically provides detailed answers to user questions in a timely manner via dev@ mailing list, user@ mailing list, https://discuss.mxnet.io/, https://discuss.gluon.ai/ and on StackOverflow.

Consensus Building

CS10

The project maintains a public list of its contributors who have decision power -- the project's PMC (Project Management Committee) consists of those contributors.

YES. The incubator website contains the list of committers and PPMC members.

CS20

Decisions are made by consensus among PMC members [9] and are documented on the project's main communications channel. Community opinions are taken into account but the PMC has the final word if needed.

???. The project has been making important decisions on the project mailing lists. As of lately, vast majority of decisions have had a consensus without any PPMC action needed. However, in the past there has been at least one case where a technical decision was not discussed on projects main communication channel.

CS30

Documented voting rules are used to build consensus when discussion is not sufficient. [10]

YES. The project uses the standard ASF voting rules. Voting rules are clearly stated before the voting starts for each individual vote.

CS40

In Apache projects, vetoes are only valid for code commits and are justified by a technical explanation, as per the Apache voting rules defined in CS30.

YES. The project hasn’t used a veto at any point and relies on robust code reviews.

TODO: need input from committers

CS50

All "important" discussions happen asynchronously in written form on the project's main communications channel. Offline, face-to-face or private discussions [11] that affect the project are also documented on that channel.

NO. The project has been making important decisions on the project mailing lists. Minor decisions may occasionally happen during code reviews, which are also asynchronous and in written form.

TODO: need input from committers, not all decisions happened on mailing list in the past.

Independence

IN10

The project is independent from any corporate or organizational influence. [12]

???. The project team gathers people from different companies (Amanzon, Intel, Nvidia, IBM Canada, Tencent, Cognitect, Cern, Harman, Uber, Airbnb, Mathworks, Cloudera, Samsung, Wolfram Research, Philips, Horizon Robotics, Apple, BIGO Live, NTT, WhiteHat Security, Ant Financial, Alibaba, Microsoft, Facebook, Qualcomm, Dato, Google, Volkwagen, TuSimple, HP, Baidu, Salesforce, JuliaLabs, Lyft, TSMC, Yahoo, Hortonworks, Optum Labs, SigOpt, Curalate, Workday) and universities (Washington, Berlin, ShanDong, Hongkong, Tsinghua, San Francisco, Moscow, Xina Jiaotong, USTC, Yale, Peking, Stanford, Indiana, Fudan, New York, Edinburgh, Renmin, Alicante, Carnegie Mellon, Texas at Arlingon, Alberta, Princeton, Purdue, Nanjing, Zhejiang, Australian National, Los Angelas, Singapore, Johns Hopkins, Cambridge, San Diego, Sichuan, Granada, Rice, Nankai, Chicago, Chiao Tung, Houston, Harvard, Davis, Hannover, Tongji, Toronto, Georgia Tech). No company or organization has significantly more influence than any other. We can note a growth of the contributions coming from different committers.

As of today the PPMC has 45 members (incl. mentors), 17 are affiliated with Amazon AWS. 38% of PPMC are affiliated with Amazon AWS, 62% are affiliated with different companies and organizations. However, a large number of existing PPMC members are currently not active.
Year to date, the project has 168 active contributors, 98 (58.3%) are not affiliated with Amazon AWS.

TODO: review with mentors current status

IN20

Contributors act as themselves as opposed to representatives of a corporation or organization.

YES. The committers and contributors act on their own initiative without representing a corporation or organization.