Project Hosting [Was Re: Minutes of the GNOME ...]

[Dan Mueth <d-mueth uchicago edu>]

On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Ali Abdin wrote:

>* Martin Baulig (martin home-of-linux org) wrote at 18:12 on 30/11/00:
>> It'd be good if the board can make a more formal policy for this.
> I would also like to see a more formal policy for projects to request
> "sponsorship" from the GNOME project (basically, CVS space (and/or optionally
> HTTP/FTP space)).

Yes.  We need to decide what the developers of gfoo are supposed to
do.  Right now we have some in the main GNOME CVS, some on SourceForge,
and some elsewhere.  There doesn't seem to be any clear distinction on
what belongs where.

There are some advantages to keeping things in GNOME CVS:
1) It is better/faster than SourceForge
2) Other GNOME developers can enhance it and fix bugs
3) Translators have access to translate it
4) Doc authors have access to document it
5) It brings the GNOME app developers and other GNOME people closer
together which grows and strengthens the GNOME community.

The downsides may be:
1) Possible drain on reliability or availability of server resources
2) Increased workload on administrators
3) Increased potential for people to make changes they should not

If we do not think that the extra workload on the servers or
administrators will be too much, then I think we should invite GNOME
applications to move into GNOME CVS. If enough people are really concerned
about #3, then I would suggest we have two GNOME CVS servers: one for core
parts of GNOME and one for the non-core GNOME applications.  Then a
translator would just need two accounts instead of one per package.  This
would also reduce the load on the server and we could potentially divide
administrative work between two different people (or teams) if necessary. 

We would presumably still ask that these projects use SourceForge for
mailing lists, bug tracking, etc.  While it would be nice to host such
services, I'm not sure we gain enough to make it worth the effort at this
time.

I've seen a couple people mention that the board should make a policy on
this and on CVS accounts.  I would like to see most of these policies come
out of the public mailing lists and then "adopted" by the GF Board.  I
think it is the Board's duty to help identify obstacles like this and make
sure they are are overcome, and the GF Membership's duty to propose and
debate the possible solutions and hopefully reach a concensus that the
Board can adopt.

Dan