Yes! Actual Feedback! Whoohooh!
On Sep 25, 2006, at 9:24 AM, David E Jones wrote:
> The OFBiz podling (PPMC and community) has reached a consensus
> internally approving the 4.0.0 TS3 test snapshot release. We are
> now requesting a vote for review and approval from the general
> Incubator group and the Incubator PMC.
There's one important gotcha:
-> the NOTICE file has information on the licenses of various third
party jars, which in some cases are not a subset of ALv2, even if
compatible. I believe that info should go into the LICENSE file; but
can't find an authortive reference on our website right now. Cliff,
Robert? This is important because the notice file cannot modify the
terms of the LICENSE that are supposed to apply to the work as a
whole, whereas obviously a LICENSE file can modify LICENSE terms.
If that were fixed I'd +1 the thing.
And then some nitpicking/misc comments:
-> I downloaded the tgz. I always get annoyed when a software release
doesn't extract into an obvious name. Eg `tar zxf apache-of* && cd
apache-of*` should work. Probably a religious subject.
-> I read OPTIONAL_LIBRARIES and looked at the underlying mechanisms
to link in LGPL stuff. I think they're fully compliant with the 3rd
party licensing policy draft, which is quite a feat. However, I
believe that because there is some "bridge-to-LGPL code" shipped
within the ofbiz distro, that this requires explicit approval from
PMC chair (Noel) and legal VP (Cliff) per that policy. Of course,
since the policy is not in effect yet, you need not worry yet.
-> the statistical sample (random clicking) of files I opened all
have "copyright 2001-2006 The ASF". I suspect that's wrong, since
IIRC ofbiz wasn't @ apache in 2001. The year 2001 should probably be
replaced by the year when development of ofbiz started @ apache.
-> You're shipping various libraries and stuff which I know include
NOTICE files of their own, but those notices are not found or
referenced anywhere outside their jars (for example ant.jar has a
META-INF/NOTICE.txt). I would say the NOTICE file should point to
those other notice files that exist somewhere deep within such a big
distribution, but I think that's maybe not a legal requirement.
-> All ofbiz source files have author tags. The ASF has had many,
many, loooong discussions about them. In the end, I believe current
policy still is that they are strongly discouraged, but allowed. If
you haven't already, you should motivate for yourselves you really
really want to keep them. Re:
http://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/2004/
board_minutes_2004_09_22.txt
-> even if you don't branch, you should really do an `svn tag` for
any release (even RCs). Tagging is basically free, and it provides
that much more clarity on 'what is what'
-> my gpg install is broken on this machine so I didn't bother
verifying the gpg sigs. I'm sure they're ok, or otherwise you'll get
hunted down and shot by someone else :)
-> its real easy to automate the steps on your "release manager" wiki
page. In particular using <tar/> and <zip/> from ant avoids some
nasty problems ("a lone zero block at FOO" when using sun tar on gnu
tar-created files, for example). Just an idea.
And then finally...
-> following the PDF install instructions (HTML would be nice),
things did all compile and run nicely (mac os x 10.4 for powerpc,
java 5). Honestly, I typed "./ant" before reading the getting started
page, which seemed to have different results from the run-install
target. O well. And after scrolling down the "production guide" big
fat install manual I found out I had to visit /catalog/control/main
to see if it worked, which showed up properly too. An /index.html
that provides some more feedback -- "it worked!" is my favorite --
would be nice.
-> this thing is truly *huge*! It reminds me of cocoon....with that
in mind, its no small effort to get everything as cleaned up and
structured as it is, and runnable out of the box. Kudos to y'all!
cheers,
Leo
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