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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't think anyone thinks that allowing releases with minor issues to be released is an incorrect approach even if it doesn't follow policy. Serious problems, such as; including GPL licensed software, including compiled code, or copyright violations, in a release is 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. Recently it has been suggested by several people (including ex-board members) that serious issues should be allowed in an IPMC release, and those issues only need to be fixed before graduation.

Proposal

That the IPMC can allow releases with serious issues in them to be released and distributed without IPMC or legal VP approval. When this occurs podling will documents the issue as one blocking graduation and carry on incubating. They will not be allowed to graduate until all serious release issues have been fixed. The IPMC will add additional information to the incubator DISCLAIMER to cover that podling release may not abide by all terms of the ALv2 and may contain code under an incompatible license. All releases and podling web sites will be updated to include this where required.

Notes

The IPMC will come up with a well-defined list of those serious issues and distribute 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.

Can the board also confirm that the ASF's legal shield would cover people making releases under this proposal?


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