So I need help here. I freely admit that, with all my other mozilla.org commitments and a day job, I don't have time to do the work necessary here. So if I'm the only person who thinks CVS is a bad choice, then fine - there'll be no alternative proposal, and we'll go with that.It's not that CVS isn't "bad," it just that it's the best we've got given all the variables, including risk, lack of resources, and the value of iterative improvement, even at higher long-term cost (i.e. worse is better).
But if you agree with me, and want to build d.m.o. on something better, and can answer Brendan's call with a concrete suggestion of technology which is used elsewhere for similar things, go for it in this thread.Like Gerv I also don't have the time. I think anyone who does needs to demonstrate a better solution with a working site, not just an evaluation and marketing materials (i.e. code trumps proposals). If you're that person, see the following list of CMFs, CMSes, and links to related sites as a start:
http://www.oscom.org/matrix/
Assuming the best solution is the one that reuses as much of our existing infrastructure and knowledge (CVS, Perl, Template Toolkit, MySQL, and to a lesser extent Subversion, Python, and PostGreSQL) as possible, see the following options:
Mason is a CMF with its own template language and CVS integration. Mason's own web site is maintained in CVS and includes a versioned Wiki and a MySQL authentication/authorization database.
The Template Toolkit is a Perl templating module designed for making web sites. It supports both static content (similar to how the current mozilla.org web site works) and dynamic content (f.e. Bugzilla and Doctor front-ends are both dynamically generated from TT templates). It could be used as a CMF like Mason, with the advantages that its template language is well-known to mozilla.org webtools hackers and probably better designed to boot.
Bricolage is a CMS which can use the Template Toolkit as its template language (although it uses Mason by default). It stores content in a PostGreSQL database (not sure if it can take advantage of Mason's CVS support to access CVS content as well), although a MySQL port is reportedly underway and may be annoying but easy. It does support versioning, although the documentation is scant (and perhaps the implementation is too).
Personally, I'd first start with what we currently use for the mozilla.org web site; then migrate from our homegrown template language to TT; then convert from Despot to an LDAP directory; then move from CVS to Subversion; then think about layering a CMS that supports (or can be made to support) those technologies on top. But like I said, code trumps ideas; if you've got some, show us what you've got.
-myk
