Greetings All, Given the proposed roadmap for the build service end user frontend[0][1], and the current state of the software portal project[2] I believe it is now necessary to discuss the future plans and strategy for end user software access in openSUSE. In order to avoid duplication of effort and NIH[3] syndrome it would be wise to discuss and agree upon a strategy now before we get too far down any track. A very brief summary of the current state * http://software.opensuse.org/search is currently live, and allows end users to locate packages/patterns packages packaged within the build service and install them easily. On the roadmap is adding more features such as statistics, tags, screenshots. * Software Portal is a project started in the middle of this year, to improve the end user experience of locating & installing software, and to bring together metadata from various sources with user generated metadata.[4] The interest in this project waned over the summer months while everyone was very busy with the upcoming 10.3. However, there is now renewed development, see footnote for screenshots/status.[5][6] The question is where do we go from here. We don't feel it's worth continuing to develop the software portal project if all the same features are going to be implemented in the build service frontend. Is developing the build service frontend the best strategy? We would be interested in hearing your thoughts,strategy,advice so we can move forward in cooperation not competition with the strategy that will most benefit openSUSE. Some of my personal thoughts on the matter follow: We need an end user service to enable users to: - Locate & Install Software - Contribute feedback - Ratings, Tags, Bug reports... - Contribute metadata - Screenshots, Icons, Descriptions... - Connect software to related resources - Documents, Bug reports, Forum Discussions A lot of the data required to expose such a service to end users is available within the build service already. It already knows about all the software built with the build service. Therefore it might seem to make sense to implement a service for end users to locate software on top of the build service - like software.opensuse.org, and incrementally add features to the build service to store and reconcile user oriented data with the packager oriented data. However, I see some fairly significant drawbacks to this approach. 1: Limited To software built with the openSUSE instance of the build service. You're pretty much guaranteeing users still have to look in multiple places to find software, which is less than ideal. OBS will never have all software for legal reasons, and people will always be building their own software, other distributions have their own build services etc. 2: Different concepts. Build service being originally aimed at packagers might make it difficult to provide the best interface for end users. Packagers are interested in the details of packages, what is in each package, where it is, etc. End users mostly want to find & obtain software. 3: Anti-SOA Does it make sense to make the build service into a monolith which does everything, or keep it within a well defined scope. A service for building software, and create other services for other tasks. e.g we have users.opensuse.org for user identity rather than bolting it onto the build service. Do one thing well isn't just the unix way. Of course the build service already has a lot of the data end users need, and packagers using the build service can make use of much end user generated data. However, a monolithic system is not required for data sharing. We could develop an end user service & frontend that is distinct from the build service, but can share data with it.[7] [0] http://en.opensuse.org/Build_Service/Roadmap [1] http://en.opensuse.org/Build_Service/End_User_Frontend [2] http://en.opensuse.org/Software_Portal [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here [4] http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/opensuse/slurp.png [5] http://en.opensuse.org/Software_Portal#Status [6] http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/swp/app_view.png http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/swp/app_search.png http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/swp/ [7] http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/opensuse/obs_monolith.png vs http://bw.uwcs.co.uk/opensuse/split_services.png -- Benjamin Weber --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-buildservice+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-buildservice+help@opensuse.org