[XML-SIG] PyXML home page on SF

Martin v. Loewis martin@loewis.home.cs.tu-berlin.de
Tue, 17 Oct 2000 23:51:09 +0200


> Yes. But I understand a commercial company (BeOpen) has taken over python
> development. I think it is the kind of free services they could give
> back to the python community.

I don't feel in a position to demand anything like that... In fact, in
free software, nobody normally has the right to demand anything. It
happens that BeOpen/Pythonlabs makes Python available on roughly the
same terms as it was always available - so I don't even see why they
need to give anything else to anybody...

> Now are we to host every single open source project on SourceForge ?
> If we do so, the day SourceForge closes or changes its policy, or
> whatever, every single open source project will be halted or maybe
> discontinued.

Not at all. In the worst case, people would have to change the host
name in their CVS sandboxes; and you might lose your bug data base -
but that would already be a horror scenario. More likely, I'd think
that there would be advance warning about policy changes, to give
people enough time to migrate somewhere else should they feel the
need.

> Why wouldn't a community as big an active as python's put up ressources in
> common to offer such a useful service, but dedicated to python
> development ? There use to be a python.starship.net, maintained by
> volunteers, that is now hosted by BeOpen. Why not take the next step ?

Lack of volunteers, perhaps?

> That's why I think we shouldn't look for someone able to host a
> server for a few projects but for some company(ies) able to put up
> the ressources for "python projects" and volunteers that help them.

If you think you can demand such things from people, just go ahead and
do so. I don't feel the need for that. There are plenty of
alternatives already: Cygnus/RedHat operates sources.redhat.com (aka
sourceware.cygnus.com). They are also willing to host projects.

> That would also make it easier for people to look for python
> ressources: code in development would be at something.python.org and
> 3rd party software at www.vex.net/parnassus.

That something that is needed - something like CPAN. But we are the
wrong SIG for that :-)

Regards,
Martin