| Date: | 17 Oct 2004 12:20:46 -0000 | |
| Subject: | Re: Is sourceforge safe for the openpoplog project? | |
| From: | Jeff Best | |
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Aaron, I see two main issues; the provision of proprietary tools and services in place of open source solutions, and the closure of migration routes for projects to move away from SourceForge. Ultimately, a service that changes to add more facilities can be good for users, but is also more likely to "lock them in", since if it stays ahead of the competition, it will be because they lack some or all of those facilities, or their implementations of those facilities are not so good. Any project that chooses to out-source the hosting of its development server should be aware of this. Their choice of service provider is likely to be influenced by the features it supplies that are lacking in competitors' offerings. Like any good project management, the project leader(s) ought to have a migration plan, amongst their set of contingency plans to cater for any of the various problems that may emerge with the project. For the facilities we use, the OpenPoplog could migrate to any other facility if it needed to. Whether we have a volunteer with enough free time to do this, is another matter. In the case of the supply of proprietary rather than open source tools and services, the issue is value for money, and if the offered tools and services are "best of breed" and available at low or no cost, then they pass that test, although there is always the fear of proprietary lock-in and escalation of costs. If, for example, I used the database, I would prefer to have something like DB/2 over mySQL, simply because the former has features such as triggers, while the latter, at the moment, does not. A database that can adapt to transactions that hit it is a more useful thing than a database that is just a passive data store. Of course, I might prefer to have Oracle over DB/2, but then I would expect to have to pay for the privilege of this choice, and the existing database service is effectively free. As things stand, we don't really use any facilities but the CVS, tracker and web-hosting services. The trackers mostly duplicate those you hold at Birmingham. There are not enough of us actively working on the code base to raise very many, and the maturity of the product helps limit the number raised in any case. The number so far is few and a manual extraction of the data would be feasible. There are few if any mailing list messages, and I maintain a complete history of these off-line. It remains possible to export the entire CVS repository (including history), and it would be hard to remove this facility without serious crippling SourceForge. I am concerned that requests to the SourceForge team do not get any response. I recently stumped up the money for a subscription to SourceForge, just so that I could put the request for the addition of "Pop-11" as a language "trove" category in as a priority request. Some weeks later, the request has been assigned to "moorman" with a "pending" status, which matches the status of the original non-priority request, but otherwise there has been no action. I am unlikely to be persuaded of the value of renewing this subscription. If the Poplog community as a whole is sufficiently concerned, I am happy to cooperate with a migration to the consensus alternative. I am even willing to stump up the cash for server(s) and hosting for web, cvs, compile farm and (possibly) database services, employing the preferred open source technologies on each. Of course, you then run the risk of being locked in to "SouthStar Computers Ltd." as your supplier, rather than SourceForge, and although I can find the seed money to set this up, I can't guarantee the funds for long term security of supply, and I lack the resources to guarantee any quality of service excepting that provided by whomever I out-source the requirement to. OpenPoplog's biggest threat comes from a potential divergence of sources. Ideally we need a master source repository with all versions in it, and a community of developers for various platforms working together to ensure that the code base isn't biased towards one or other architecture to the detriment of the remaining platforms. The repository needs to be a version control system. To achieve this, we need to be able to make the compromises necessary to recognise that effort may be required to assist the developers for other platforms, regardless of whether there is immediate benefit for our preferred platform. To establish and maintain this broad church of support is not easy, particularly as arguments for or against a platform gather religious intensity. We also need to ensure that contributors understand the need to derive changes from a single code base. It is good that we have volunteers willing to put effort into developing, for example, installation packs for a given platform, but unless they are, in turn derived from a process that extracts its source from the common source repository, their value is diminished and contributes less to the overall OpenPoplog commons. The biggest threat to all open source software is the "tragedy of the commons". Every user of the open source commons needs to be an active conservator to protect against over-exploitation and enclosure. Over exploitation takes advantage of that which is nurtured through the commons, yet gives insufficient in return, and the commons are starved of resources and die. Enclosure fences that which is produced by the commons within proprietary boundaries, takes ownership of that which used to belong to all, and denies access to those who have contributed to the original commons. Ironically, in the face of over-exploitation, enclosure can sometimes be the only strategy that will preserve whatever value was available from the commons. Given our physical history, is cyber-history going to be any different? Regards, Jeff In message <200410140051.i9E0pVot004392@wallace.cs.bham.ac.uk>, Aaron Sloman <A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk> writes I wonder if continuing to rely on sourceforge for the open poplog project
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