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What’s with this ServoyForge stuff now?

Published by admin on Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - 03:07:00 - Filed under General, News, Announcements, Development

You certainly heard about it, you’ve seen it announced on the forum, on ServoyCamp, it soon will be in the Servoy newsletter as well…
You went there, seen it, got the tee-shirt…
Right, but what the hell is this new site about?

Fear not, Servoy Stuff is here to explain all about it!
Let’s look at the blurb, what does it says?

The mission of ServoyForge is to organize Servoy Open Source projects into a centralized community-owned platform.
Yes, we have a mission: we want to organize all Servoy Open Source projects, - and yes we could have called it SOS but in the end decided against it, it sounded a little bit too desperate ;-)
What about community-owned platform? To me that’s the interesting part: We owe nothing to no one, aren’t guided by any merchant agenda, - in fact the only agenda we profess to have is that we want the Servoy platform to be the one we dream about!

Are you in?
I gather that if you are still reading this, you probably are…
So how do we propose to do that? Well, still according to the announcement, the site “will enable talented Servoy/Java developers to contribute more easily and will offer innovative Open Source components to the Servoy community at large.

So is that what it is? Is that it?
Yes, sir: A mean to communicate with other Servoy/Java developers in the world and make things happening!
To that end, we evaluated a few of the best Open Source project management/development platforms available to find the one that would suit best our needs. In the end we chose to build the platform on top of the Redmine system (another community-owned system, BTW).

So what’s in it for you? When you open a project on SourceForge, you benefit from:
- svn repository, complete with members and anonymous access, and a web-based repository browser where external developers can easily browse your code (and you can point them to it with a simple URL too!),
- team management, with role based control on the whole interface for your contributors, reporters, project leaders and other simple users,
- module management, you can activate certain functionalities at will, - or choose not to,
- sophisticated issue-tracker, with status management, role-based attributes, control over categories, time management, workflow, versions roadmap, notifications, all of this accessible from your Eclipse/Servoy installation using Mylyn,
- all activity is logged and accessible (browsable and searchable),
- news management is here for your announcements,
- wiki for your documentation (with versioning enabled), and easy to use syntax
- forums management for your own projects, with email notifications,
- files management for the release you make, and any relevant files,
- document management for your documentation,
- an easy way to be found and be part of a large base of talented contributors and reporters all working together on different projects..
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How not to destroy your Open Source Community before it even exists.

Published by admin on Monday, June 7, 2010 - 00:08:42 - Filed under General, News, Announcements, Development

While being enthusiastic about Servoy’s announce that Servoy 5.2 will be Open Sourced (see my post on that subject), I really hope that they are going to do it right. What do I mean?

Most major Open Source software are backed up by companies who have interests in it (think of Eclipse and look at how IBM/Adobe and others are major contributors to the project), so it is not unusual for a commercial company to Open Source a product, or even pay part of its staff to maintain one. I will not list again the many benefits that this move can offer (just see what Jan Aleman said in the official press release), the problem is that there can also be very bad consequences if the company is not “open” enough.

About openness, you might remember the famous post about the failephant of the Ushahidi project. This is something to keep in mind.

Yes, in matters of Open Source, there is a flip side of the coin: benefits on one side, big dangers on the other. What will make a big difference when you draw is the company’s attitude towards openness in general.
Now since I like the platform very much, I would like Servoy to get all the benefits and none of the drawbacks.

Josh Berkus, CEO of PostgreSQL Experts Inc (quoted “one of the foremost PostgreSQL consulting firms in the world” on Servoy blog), lately summarized how easy it was to destroy an Open Source community.

Interestingly enough, the Josh Berkus who did this presentation is the very same guy who will be doing next thursday’s webinar about Open Source Servoy and PostgreSQL

Please read his very informative (yet funny) slides called “10 Ways to Destroy Your Community” - there is also an abridged version for the impatient (funny and informative as well), called “Destroy your Community in 5 easy steps“.

For those of you who also want some background comments about these slides, you can read the post Josh made about Sun and the Ten Ways.

If Sun and dozen others did it so badly, there is still hope that Servoy will do it right…
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