One thing that Apache does very poorly is news and announcements. I’ve written before about the problems and issues around the topic and since then nothing has changed.

Chatting with Ben the other day around this subject he suggested we simply expand the information that projects can provide to projects.apache.org to icnlude their own feeds of news. This seemed like an excellent idea – exactly in keeping with the ideals of projects.apache.org so I suggested it to the site development list.

Before the email had had a chance to cool there were posts about how we could then create an aggregated feed! The reactions were negative and swift. Paul Querna sums it up in his reply to the list (reproduced below with his permission).

* “david reid wrote:
*

*I’d like to add an element for projects to provide a feed URL for their news. Any thoughts or ideas?
*

Using HTTPD as an example:
http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/httpd-announce/?format=atom*

Every public mailing list has an Atom feed available.

I believe currently that every group uses a mailing list for their release and other announcements.

I believe that it makes sense to use our existing feeds generated from email, rather than building another news/announcement system.

-Paul

“

If you accept that the current situation works then he’s right.