Hey all,
we should be preparing for a 0.8 release.
On the development side, there's still group reduce missing (and maybe
more polish or at the very least some docs on reduce in general).
Also, I'd like to get the RESTful attachment API enhancements in, and
there's also the runtimeconfig branch waiting to be completed and
merged back.
Anyway, this mail is about the less exciting things that I think we
need to get done before we can push for a release through Apache:
1. Licensing problem: Javascript Shell
CouchDB includes a JS shell that is derived from <http://www.squarefree.com/shell/
>. Initially it was pretty much a verbatim copy, but it has been
changed to integrate nicely into our Futon web interface. The JS Shell
is, according to the above web page, "GPL/LGPL/MPL tri-licensed".
However, there's no actual license or copyright statement to be found
anywhere.
None of those three licenses are without problems for an Apache
project. See <http://people.apache.org/~rubys/3party.html>. GPL and
LGPL "must not apply to any software within an Apache product", and
the MPL requires "requires that the distribution of modifications or
derivative works be made available under the same license as the
original work".
In addition for the MPL, "Code that is more substantial, more
volatile, or not directly consumed at runtime in source form may only
be distributed in binary form." As the JS shell is just an HTML and a
Javascript file, there's no way we could distribute it in binary form,
so AFAICT it will need to be nuked completely.
Maybe someone with more knowledge of these legal issues can chime in
here.
2. Lucene full-text search implementation
We have some code in src/fulltext that's mostly proof-of-concept for
the full-text searching interface, and hasn't been touched since it
was initially added by Jan some time ago. This code would IMHO need
some serious cleanup before it should be shipped as part of a release.
I'd like to suggest creating a "fulltext" (or "lucene") branch and
moving that code there. And remove the src/fulltext directory from
trunk for the time being. It can be brought back when someone steps up
to actually improve and maintain that code.
3. Anything else?
Cheers,
--
Christopher Lenz
cmlenz at gmx.de
http://www.cmlenz.net/
|