Automate the Release Process

## Summary
The current release process relies on `maven-release-plugin` and manual Nexus UI interactions, which is fragile, hard to recover from on failure, and difficult to reproduce consistently across release managers. Some Apache projects like Polaris have moved away from this approach toward scripted, CI-integrated release workflows.

This issue proposes adding a semi-automated release pipeline that which uses ASF provided secrets, SVN users and Nexus Users and is triggered by committers or PMC members while going through manual vote steps.

## Prior Art
- [Apache Polaris semi-automated release guide](https://polaris.apache.org/community/release-guides/semi-automated-release-guide/)
- [Apache Iceberg release scripts](https://github.com/apache/iceberg/tree/main/dev)

### Component(s)

Build

Start by reviewing the current maven-release-plugin workflow and the manual Nexus UI steps described in the issue. Compare the Apache Polaris release guide and Apache Iceberg release scripts to identify the required ASF secrets, SVN and Nexus users, commit-triggered steps, and manual vote points. Done means a reproducible semi-automated release pipeline is defined and integrated for committers or PMC members.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.