Podling maturity evaluation of Apache Fineract based on the Apache project maturity model
Code
id | description (quoted from maturity model) | evaluation | committers who agree with evaluation |
---|---|---|---|
| The project produces Open Source software, for distribution to the public at no charge. | The project already fulfilled this at the time of entering incubation | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| The project's code is easily discoverable and publicly accessible. | Google finds the project easily. https://www.google.de/search?q=fineract+apache+source, https://github.com/apache/incubator-fineract | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| The code can be built in a reproducible way using widely available standard tools. | https://github.com/apache/incubator-fineract/blob/develop/README.md | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| 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. | As part of new release process defined in How to Release Apache Fineract - Cutting a release branch (Draft) tagging is mandatory step. | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| 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. | https://github.com/apache/incubator-fineract | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
Licenses and Copyright
id | description | evaluation | committers who agree with evaluation |
---|---|---|---|
| The code is released under the Apache License, version 2.0. | https://github.com/apache/incubator-fineract/blob/develop/LICENSE | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| Libraries that are mandatory dependencies of the project's code do not create more restrictions than the Apache License does. | http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-general/201612.mbox/browser | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| The libraries mentioned in LC20 are available as Open Source software. | http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-general/201612.mbox/browser | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| 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. | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 | |
| The copyright ownership of everything that the project produces is clearly defined and documented. | https://github.com/apache/incubator-fineract | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu |
Releases
id | description | evaluation | committers who agree with evaluation |
---|---|---|---|
| Releases consist of source code, distributed using standard and open archive formats that are expected to stay readable in the long term. | http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-general/201612.mbox/browser | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| Releases are approved by the project's PMC (see CS10), in order to make them an act of the Foundation. | http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-fineract-dev/201612.mbox/browser | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| Releases are signed and/or distributed along with digests that can be reliably used to validate the downloaded archives. | http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-general/201612.mbox/browser | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| Convenience binaries can be distributed alongside source code but they are not Apache Releases -- they are just a convenience provided with no guarantee. | https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/release/incubator/fineract/0.5.0-incubating/ | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| 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. |
| myrle, sander |
Quality
id | description | evaluation | committers who agree with evaluation |
---|---|---|---|
| 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. | We should add to http://fineract.incubator.apache.org/ IN PROGRESS: Nazeer is implementing FindBugs | sander, vishwasbabu, myrle |
| The project puts a very high priority on producing secure software. | This will always be an ongoing process. | myrle, sander |
| The project provides a well-documented channel to report security issues, along with a documented way of responding to them. | I think we need to communicate this more clearly on http://fineract.incubator.apache.org/ IN PROGRESS: communicating our standards and readiness for responding to issues/threats. | sander, vishwasbabu, myrle |
| 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. | While we have structures in place that would support versioning of API's etc this has not been done at all, and as such backwards compatibility is not great, this is also not helped by not clearly stating which breaking changes are part of a given release. IN PROGRESS: ongoing discussion on the developer mailing list. | sander, vishwasbabu, myrle |
| The project strives to respond to documented bug reports in a timely manner. | We have mailing lists to discuss the issues fineract and JIRA to report any issues. All the committers/contributors responds in timely manner | nazeer1100126, myrle, sander |
Community
id | description | evaluation | committers who agree with evaluation |
---|---|---|---|
| The project has a well-known homepage that points to all the information required to operate according to this maturity model. | myrle, sander | |
| The community welcomes contributions from anyone who acts in good faith and in a respectful manner and adds value to the project. | No examples of unkind or rejecting behavior could be found in a search through the e-mail list. | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| Contributions include not only source code, but also documentation, constructive bug reports, constructive discussions, marketing and generally anything that adds value to the project. | Only one committer has been added since the project began. IN PROGRESS: Several additional committers are being discussed. | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| The community is meritocratic and over time aims to give more rights and responsibilities to contributors who add value to the project. | Only one committer has been added since the project began. | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| 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. | Becoming a Committer | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| 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. | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 | |
| The project strives to answer user questions in a timely manner. | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
Consensus Building
id | description | evaluation | committers who agree with evaluation |
---|---|---|---|
| The project maintains a public list of its contributors who have decision power -- the project's PMC (Project Management Committee) consists of those contributors. | List of contributors are maintained in http://incubator.apache.org/projects/fineract | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| Decisions are made by consensus among PMC members 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. | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 | |
| Documented voting rules are used to build consensus when discussion is not sufficient. | How we change processes is documented here: There is no mention of voting however. At the request of our mentors, all mentions of voting were removed. | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| 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. | We follow general Apache voting process. | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu, nazeer1100126 |
| All "important" discussions happen asynchronously in written form on the project's main communications channel. Offline, face-to-face or private discussions that affect the project are also documented on that channel. | See IN10 below for an important caveat. | myrle, sander, vishwasbabu |
Independence
id | description | evaluation | committers who agree with evaluation |
---|---|---|---|
| The project is independent from any corporate or organizational influence. | The committers come mostly from three organizations:
In each of these organizations committers are paid for their work on the project. All of these are smaller organizations. The Mifos Initiative is a non-profit. The project is not completely independent of outside influence, but most Apache projects are not completely independent. This criteria is more about finding a threshold and a project's relation to that threshold. The main risk to the independence of the project is that the UI (aka the community app) was not contributed to Apache, and still belongs to the Mifos Initiative. The discussions for that part of the project still occur on Mifos Initiative infrastructure. Other UIs can be and are programmed against the backend. Unfortunately though, the splitting of the original Mifos community causes confusion about where to communicate about which issues. Progress has been made on clarifying which kinds of communication occur where. The current state is imperfect, but in the view of the author good enough. | myrle, sander |
| Contributors act as themselves as opposed to representatives of a corporation or organization. | The author of the evaluation for IN10 is a Mifos Initiative employee demonstrating her independence. | myrle, sander |