Board Report 2018 9

DESCRIPTION

Apache Royale is a new implementation of the principles of Apache Flex but designed for JavaScript runtimes instead of Adobe Flash/AIR runtimes. Apache Royale is designed to improve developer productivity in creating applications for wherever Javascript runs, including browsers as well as Apache Cordova applications, Node, etc.

ISSUES

There are no issues requiring board attention at this time.

RELEASES

• Apache Royale 0.9.2 was released on March 16 2018.
• Apache Royale 0.9.4 in progress.

ACTIVITY

• No releases this quarter. Releases have been stalled by a combination of factors. One is that someone volunteered to be the RM and had not released Royale before and ran into configuration issues. Another is that so many new files were added that the Maven SCM plugin would not work correctly. Another is that there is a disagreement about the organization of files in the release. There has been a lot of work done to resolve this disagreement and it looks like we are close to resolving it. It looks like the Maven plugin has been fixed so hopefully we will release soon.
• Lots of progress on a new default look (component set) for Royale apps.
• Lots of progress on migrating a large Flex app to Royale. A new "Flex Emulation" component set is being worked on to ease migrations.
• New names are showing up on the mailing list asking about Royale.
• The owner of an ActionScript code base that doesn't use Flex is attempting to use the Royale Compiler to cross compile his code to JavaScript.
• There have been a number of blog posts on using Royale. They seem to be well received.
• We are using Disqus for blog comments. It seems to help engagement. We were not able to figure out how to get comments sent to the @dev list.
• We had huge activity on Social Networks, trying to inform about what is happening in Apache Royale as we progress in the project. We think is important to do this so people outside the project, not following in a daily basis could get a notion of how we are doing. The numbers here are the following:
  • Twitter got 375 followers since we open the account, and we are getting around 30 likes when we post something, and between 10 to 20 retweets, showing interest in what we're doing.
  • Facebook gets 97 likes to the page and we are getting around 10-15 interactions (likes) and some comments, showing interest in Apache Royale. We took advantage of a promo in Facebook that allowed us to promote Apache Royale during 1 month (5 Jun - 5 July). We spend 1€ per day during 30 days, during that time we reached 34.879 People and had 6.943 Interactions.
  • Google Plus, we post here as well but seem this social networks gets few interactions and seems not widely used by our target users.
  • We started a LinkedIn Group where 113 people joined in no time since opened. Groups in LinkedIn used to be watched by many people but remains silent most of the time, although it seems the way most of LinkedIn groups work.

COMMUNITY

• Alina Kazi was added as committer on April 26 2018.
• No new PMC Members yet
• Two new contributors being watched to be committers.

Mailing list activity:

User lists subscribers continue to grow. Fewer emails to read, but still a lot of emails.

• users@royale.apache.org:

  • 69 subscribers (up 9 in the last 3 months):
  • 181 emails sent to list (610 in previous quarter)

• dev@royale.apache.org:

  • 76 subscribers (up 1 in the last 3 months):
  • 1391 emails sent to list (1614 in previous quarter)