One of the projects I’ve been interested in working on for quite a while now has been gathering and sisplaying information from all the committers involved with the ASF. The number is over 1200 now and keeps growing, so it’s a large group. While the ASF advertises who it’s members are it doesn’t really do the same for the committers – yet these are the people that are the lifeblood of the organisation!
When I last tried to create the mechanisms for doing this there was no consensus reached and petty bickering about details undermined my faith in people I thought would be able to look at the “big picture”. As with many ideas though, it’s time has come again.
This time I’m using foaf as the data storage, which presents it’s own problems but does at least move us to a defined standard. I have real privacy concerns with foaf, so the solution I’ve arrived at is to have foaf files stored either in an svn repository that only committers have access to or, for people who already have them, on any external site. It’s a voluntary scheme and by clearly defining what information form the files will be made public and what will only be available internally I’m hopeful we can address the privacy concerns. For any ASF committer wanting to add their details they can look at the committers repository for details on how to add their details.
To date I’ve created a small test site that demonstrates some of what I’d like to have available on a public site. The private site will take a little longer 
What’s needed is a discussion around whether the approach being taken is the right one or not and ideas for how we can improve it. I really think that a site like this is a long time overdue and I’m hopeful we can gain enough momentum with this little project to migrate it into a full blown ASF site I can dream!
(I was trying to post this on the community mailing list but had problems… found you as a poster so perhaps you can give me your 2 cents’ worth as a developer… please respond to the email I provided, thanks!)
This is Eydie Cubarrubia at Red Herring magazine.
I wanted to get comments from as many developers as possible about something analysts have been telling me.
They say that second-/third-generation open source companies that are not quite as “free” as they should be (for example SugarCRM’s attribution clause). These companies are different from first-gen open source projects because they are the one entity that ultimately controls the code, unlike the meritocracy that ruled such successful projects as Linux.
They further say that because these companies (Zimbra, Mulesource, SugarCRM etc) aren’t fully in the spirit of open source–with the result that they serve to line one entities pocket while not giving developers the freedom they crave–then developers are less willing to work on their projects. This could hurt those companies in the long-term because fewer developers means lesser quality of resultant software.
So I’m trying to find developers who do indeed feel this way, and maybe out-and-out refuse to work with certain companies. If you’re one such developer, kindly send me a note with your thoughts–and your name/affiliation if possible, for attribution in my story.
I’m on deadline so please respond soon!
-Eydie