On 6 January 2012 11:52, Ross Gardler <[email protected]> wrote: > On 6 January 2012 09:32, Andrea Pescetti <[email protected]> wrote: >> On 04/01/2012 Roberto Galoppini wrote: >>> >>> 2012/1/4 Jürgen Schmidt: > > ... > >> Sounds good. The stabilization phase can be done anywhere, but as Rob wrote >> if we cannot keep the current repository as part of the project anyway, it >> makes sense to do it as part of a larger effort. > > Can we please put a stop to this meme. Nobody has said that it *can't* > be kept as part of the project. I have no idea why this keeps getting > repeated. There are issues to be addressed, but nobody has said we > can't address them. That's what this thread is about, creating a > proposal for the board to consider and give us an indication as to > whether it would be acceptable or not.
Furthermore, please remember that to allow a single third party to host a required service for an Apache project is also against ASF policy. In fact it is quite possibly against the law (I'm no lawyer so this is speculation). The ASF is a charity, as such we cannot do anything that benefits one organisation more than another. Allowing SF to host the *only* extensions site would mean that only SF could make a profit from doing so and thus the ASF would be benefiting SF more than anyone else. We can't slam one organisation (TOO, for example) whilst actively supporting another. So far this thread has made it clear (at least to me) that there are two phases to this: - short-medium term stabilise the extensions code and hosting - long term move to a federated approach Stabilisation needs to happen before the 3.3 release Federation can't happen before the 3.4 release and may not happen until later Rob has suggested we consider accepting the SF offer and asking infra to help with the longer term goal of federation (which was originally suggested by Gav). In this proposal I would like to require that SF open source their work on stabilising the platform (which is their intention, as I understand it). The federation code would be managed here in the foundation. This means that the ASF remains in control of the "level playing field" since we control the point of entry to the federated platform. Others can start up catalogue sites if they want by using the existing Drupal code or by building something else that plugs into the federation site, which could simply be an FTP site and an meta-data file. The downside of this plan is that we lose control over the existing extensions platform, although we can take it back for internal hosting at any point since it is open source. On the other hand if the ASF maintains the Drupal extensions platform we cannot distribute it since it is GPL. We could put it on apache-extras, but that is no different to it being in SF without the SF offered resources. However, infra is not proposing, as I understand it, to distribute the platform. The infra proposal is for the ASF to host a federation platform and for individuals to provide a download location for their extensions (which could be their own website, SF, Google Code or whatever they want). There is very little difference, in my opinion, between these two proposals. The only significant different that I can see is who does the work in the short term. Am I missing something? The middle ground is to have SF do the stabilisation and for the ASF to accelerate the move to a federated site. In my opinion (and it is only my opinion), this model risks slowing down graduation since the federation site would need to be active in order to ensure a level playing field for all. >From my point of view the decision hinges on how high up the priority list does the AOO community have a federated extensions site? If it's high and there will be plenty of work on the federation code then the "middle ground" option is a good one. If it is not high then we need to get feedback from the board as to whether my concerns about level playing fields are valid or not. We also need feedback from the IPMC (since legal@ has delegated to them) on whether we can resolve the IP issues relating to distributing non-apache licensed code via an ASF hosted extensions site (my personal opinion is that this will not be a significant problem as long as branding is managed correctly). Is this a fair (high level) summary of the position so far? If so which is the preferred route for AOO? Ross
