On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, Michael K. Dolan Jr. wrote:
Couple comments:
1)This note:
Novell shall run an openSUSE web forum as a beta-test now. This Novell-forum relies on commercial software, which was inadequate in previous releases.
I totally agree with you -- but we will at least have to take a look at "new Novell webforums". We will not wait forever and need to set a deadline for the "new Novell webforums" to show up, because we haven't had the chance to get a view on the latests version yet. Realistically this deadline would be somewhen in mid January.
I do truly hope Novell/openSUSE team plan to choose an open source stack to host this forum. The code is free - all you need is a designer to add a template and a server to run it on. phpBB/LAMP or any of the Java forums on Websphere CE would do...
+ you need to add some code to connect to iChains, to enable existing Novell accounts to access the forum. In addition to that an alternative interface to the forum (like mail or news) would be desirable. Overall I guess it would take two to three man weeks to get a forum up and running.
2) Why not rely on the community more to implement items if openSUSE team doesn't have the bandwidth: You have active, willing workers here that you're not leveraging.
We are totally committed to collaborate with the community. This might not easy in the beginning. If you have any thoughts on how to succeed in this area, please let us know! What would be the item to start with?
3) As for internal/external communications: Open up, the true success/value only happens if your developers are interacting in the open and can interface with the community. It also makes ISVs and partners better off b/c they have access to open communications with Novell.
True.
4) "Distforge" - this is open "source" - where will the source be hosted? You won't attract developers if there's no code... Host the code on sourceforge if it makes more sense - use your URL on sourceforge and leverage the existing infrastructure...
Well, one of our objectives (we defined very early, when the openSUSE project wasn't even public) is not to duplicate any existing efforts (like SF.net in this very case), if it's not inevitable. The real value of the $build_service (or however it will be named in the end) is much more something in the sense of beeing a place to build and host binary packages (for various distributions) and the project laying stuff that has been described in the recently published build service whitepaper. Regards Christoph