It has become the time for me to admit to what has probably been pretty
obvious for anyone else already for some time - I do not have the time
to give CPAN the attention it deserves. Time to pass the baton, etc.
First and foremost: CPAN is PAUSE. So it's actually Andreas that has
been doing most of the work all these years. All the kudos to him.
The FUNET site is still mirroring some other sources into CPAN, but
they are completely dead and nobody would notice if they stopped.
Secondly: the CPAN mirror database maintenance is very messy,
error-prone, and time-consuming: time to create a ticketing system
for it, where each mirror is a queue, and each mirror maintainer gets
an account?
Thirdly, here's what I've been thinking about who could take over:
brian d foy & Ricardo Signes - project management ("policies")
Ask Bjørn Hansen & Robert Spier - tech leads (i.e. running systems)
Henk Penning & David Landgren - the mirror database
Note that I have named always two people - myself being a baaad
example of a single point of failure. Though: maybe the PAUSE
maintenance could be shared with more people? Andreas does need
some evenings off. Likewise, the DNS of .cpan.org is currently
behind Jos. Not a bad place to be, but again, a single point
of failure sucks.
There are some other smaller parts in CPAN - like maintaining
the FAQ, and maintaining the binaries page. I don't have any
good ideas on how/whom they should go.
As recipients I chose people who over the years have shown promise
and/or interest in various aspects of CPAN, in reasonably random
order. Feel free to nominate/denominate yourself/other people.
The concrete first step could be that Ask's develooper starts mirroring
PAUSE directly instead of from FUNET, and then I switch FUNET to mirror
from develooper. Second step: maybe get kernel.org as the North America
Tier 1 mirror (they have shown interest in the past, and they have the
capacity). Third step: more Tier 1 mirrors in NA and other continents?
Fourth step: you fill it in.
However Perl 6 will affect CPAN, I leave for younger minds to ponder.
To close off, some random musings, if I may: avoid tight couplings,
like the plague they are. Avoid single points of failure.
Programming/middleware fads come and go, don't be too eager
to follow them.
