tigris.org and the ASF (was: email notification done...sorta)

[Greg Stein <gs...@lyra.org>]

On Wed, Jan 08, 2003 at 11:15:35PM -0500, Noel J. Bergman wrote:
> > Yup. Python people *and* Subversion people. :)
> 
> Well *that* much I knew.  :-)  The association between Collab.Net and the
> ASF isn't obscured.

Actually, I'm the only person(*) that crosses those four axises (sp?!): ASF,
CollabNet, Subversion, and Python. Regarding CollabNet and the ASF, CN
provides hardware, bandwidth, and operations support for the ASF, and CN
employs about six ASF members (lesse... myself, Brian, DLR, Jon, John, and
Manoj (and ??)).

People like Fitz and Justin are three outta four :-)

(*) actually, I think the Python-brainwashing on DLR is going pretty well;
he uses it quite a bit, but I still can't quite call him a "Python guy"
since he seems to still prefer Java, but I'm getting there ;-)

> I keep wondering if some of the tigris.org projects will migrate to the ASF.
> There appears to be a lot in common, including people.  ASF uses (or will
> use) Subversion, SubWiki, Eyebrowse, and could use Scarab.  I haven't yet
> figured out if we can make use any of anzu with James.  Tigris uses Lucene,
> Velocity, Apache, Turbine, ...

There is certainly a lot of commonality. I think some of the projects at
tigris.org exist simply because the ASF doesn't have them "in scope". For
example, I started my SubWiki project there because the ASF doesn't really
have a proper fit for the thing. tigris.org also supports one-man projects
(which SubWiki certainly was when I started the project on tigris.org, and
kind of still is). If SubWiki grows and a community begins to form? Sure, I
have zero problem donating it to the ASF; that would be my preference.

However, some projects at tigris.org are also (C) CollabNet. While the ASF
and its license is very friendly to businesses, there is a small difference.
While Brian might be fine with donating things like Subversion and Scarab to
the ASF, I'm not sure that the CollabNet executive staff would be cozy with
that.

Finally, some of the projects exist at tigris.org simply because of the
SourceCast (SC) infrastructure. I am *much* happier to have SubWiki there
because SC gives me an issue tracker (the ASF has always had problems
getting a solid tracker set up and "made official"), integrated mailing
lists, user and role management, etc. <insert ObSourceCastEvangelism>
Frankly, tigris.org is much more approachable/easy for project hosting than
the ASF.

> Of course, I see that there are key differences between Tigris and the ASF
> (including community structure, legal issues, etc.), but I would think that
> some of the more mature Tigris projects would make for good ASF projects.

Definitely. Note that there are even spinoffs, extensions, and replacements
for many of the ASF projects there.

> This is so obvious a question, it must have come up before, but there don't
> appear to be archives for community@ in eyebrowse.

Hasn't come up yet. tigris.org hasn't had a large impact yet, but with
projects like Subversion and Scarab nearing "deployable" status, people are
starting to notice the site.

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/