[Incubator] General Blast to the OSGEO world from CollabNet

[Cameron Shorter]

Hi Andrew and Auke,
While I agree that getting all the OSGeo projects is a good idea in 
theory there are still a few practical issues which we have at the 
Mapbuilder project.  I've outlined them at: 
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Community_Mapbuilder_Incubation_Progress

and copied below:

     Currently I'm reluctant to move our services to Collabnet. Here are 
the reasons:

    1. While Collabnet is currently very supportive of OSGeo which is 
excellent to see, the reallity of the commercial world is that in five 
years there might be a change of management at Collabnet and the OSGeo 
support might be cut off. So before we enter in with Collabnet, we need 
to think about an exit strategy if we loose Collabnet support. As I 
understand it, the current exit strategy would involve migrating from 
proprietary tools to "free for open source" tools which would be 
expensive in effort.
    2. Migrating to Colabnet would involve a medium amount of effort and 
we would loose some information like bugs from the bug tracker.

     I would prefer to keep all project tools on one server rather than 
many. Currently codehaus.org is providing most of our tools. They 
provide tools for free, and the tools used are available for free to 
open source projects so we have a low cost exit stratagy if Codehaus folds.

Andrew Kelly wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
>  
> 
> I apologize for the wide dissemination, but I thought this was the best 
> medium to get the word out to everyone.  As most of you are aware, we’ve 
> had a change of personnel at CollabNet with respect to OSGEO consulting 
> support.  Daniel Brookshier is no longer with CollabNet, Auke Jilderda 
> (auke at collab.net <mailto:auke at collab.net>) will take up the reigns, with 
> support from myself.  
> 
>  
> 
> I wanted to also say we’re doubling down our efforts to support this 
> community.  We acknowledge that we need to do a better job of reaching 
> out to and interfacing with the community, meaning the Foundation 
> members as well as key FOSS project owners.  We also aim to improve our 
> responsiveness to community concerns with respect to the decision of 
> using the current site to host projects.  Though the CollabNet platform 
> is a tried and true solution to building successful open source 
> projects, these are strategic decisions you are faced with, not to be 
> taken lightly.  I personally think the true strength of the CollabNet 
> platform and services lies in the strength of community, meaning 
> multiple projects collocated together, gaining market presence, 
> leveraging best practices, sharing tools, resources and ideas, creating 
> solutions rather than disparate applications.  It’s a 1+1 = 3 
> philosophy.  It is my hope that we can exhibit that value going forward, 
> which is in effect the marching orders that Auke has been given.
> 
>  
> 
> Auke has begun the process of reaching out to folks to start that 
> relationship building, and I expect that will continue for another 
> couple of weeks.  We both agreed that the best approach is to open the 
> lines of communication with the key Foundation members to get a solid 
> and fresh understanding of the climate we’re working in, then press 
> forward with proposing and driving activities.  In the meantime, we’re 
> both on the various lists that Daniel was on, soaking up knowledge and 
> doing our best to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.  
> 
>  
> 
> If anyone has any issues/concerns/requests/etc, feel free to email 
> either of us; with Auke in the Netherlands and me in Boston, we cover a 
> lot of the clock J.
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks for the opportunity,
> 
>  
> 
> Andrew
> 
> *Andrew Kelly | Practice Manager Developer Networks | CollabNet, Inc.
> 8000 Marina Blvd. Suite 600 | Brisbane, CA 94005 | USA
> O 781.639.1394 | C 908.489.4358 | **akelly at collab.net 
> <mailto:cakelly at collab.net>**
> **
> ** <http://www.collab.net/>***
> 
> * *
> 
>  
> 


-- 
Cameron Shorter
http://cameron.shorter.net