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Subject: Ability to communicate on unreleased code
From: Richard Eckart de Castilho <rec@apache.org>
In-Reply-To: <7F251A60-970C-4B33-9EC6-AB301326456A@apache.org>
Date: Sat, 24 May 2014 11:14:03 +0200
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Message-Id: <73769BFE-9B0D-4A47-A121-9DE4AC5B8C53@apache.org>
References: 
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To: legal-discuss@apache.org

On 22.05.2014, at 21:05, Richard Eckart de Castilho <rec@apache.org> =
wrote:

> On 22.05.2014, at 20:55, Mark Struberg <struberg@yahoo.de> wrote:
>=20
>> During the process of developing software and preparing a release, =
various
>> packages are made available to the developer community for testing
>> purposes. **Projects MUST NOT take any action that might
>> encourage non-developers to download or use nightly builds, =
snapshots,
>> release candidates, or any other similar package.** The only people =
who are
>> supposed to know about such packages are the people following the dev =
list
>> (or searching its archives) and thus aware of the conditions placed =
on the
>> package.
>=20
> IMHO this fundamentally contradicts the spirit of open source =
development.
> In the next step, only people with an Apache account are permitted to
> access these lists, and I don't even want to fathom what might follow
> up to that...
>=20
> To me, this section kind of implies that the non-developer might
> expect some kind of quality even from the released and published =
artifacts.
> This is not the case. Every sane every open source license contains
> a liability disclaimer (See sections 7 and 8 of the ASL).

I would like to come back to this thing here. I understand that we =
should
encourage non-developers to use unreleased stuff, but I feel this is not
a black/white thing. In particular I find the wording "The only people
who are supposed to know..." too hard.

But I would like to bring up a concrete case and would like your advice =
on it.

There is a unreleased module of the UIMA project called =
"uimafit-spring".
It is a proof-of-concept implementation for combining UIMA and Spring
which is meant to serve as a basis for discussion for possible future
development. It is only available from the SVN (possibly from the
Jenkins builds).

However, this module *is* mentioned on the UIMA website (I put it there)
in order to find people who would be willing to discuss about it / work
on it. The website says [1]:

"""
uimafit-spring is an experimental module serving as a proof-of-concept =
for the integration of UIMA with the Spring Framework. It is currently =
not considered finished and uses invasive reflection in order to patch =
the UIMA framework such that it passes all components created by UIMA =
through Spring to provide for the wiring of Spring context dependencies. =
This module is made available for the adventurous but currently not =
considered stable, finished, or even a proper part of the package. E.g. =
it is not included in the binary distribution package.
"""

I found that at least one person blogged about the module and one =
mentioned
it on Stack Overflow [2]. I have refrained from mentioning it myself in =
my
answered posted there because of the recent discussion about the policy
mentioned above.

So my questions:

1) is it valid to mention experimental/unreleased code/features on the =
project website in order to attract new people?

2) is it valid to mention experimental/unreleased code/features =
elsewhere (e.g. on Stack Overflow) while at the same time disclosing =
affiliation with the releated Apache project (as required on Stack =
Overflow)?

3) is it valid to maintain dedicated developers sections on the project =
website with information about the release process, experimental =
features, etc. including links or information on how to find to the =
related resources?

If I take the policy "The only people who are supposed to know about =
such packages are the people following the dev list (or searching its =
archives) and thus aware of the conditions placed on the package.", I =
would answer "No" to all of the questions above. However, I cannot =
imagine this should be the intended message of the statement.

Cheers,

-- Richard

[1] http://uima.apache.org/uimafit.html#Modules
[2] =
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23828168/want-to-use-value-reading-the-=
properties-from-property-file-in-uima-framework/23842733#23842733=

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