In April, Andrea Pescetti provided a great blog post on prospects for cooperative work among users with shared interest in the OpenOffice code base, "Collaboration is in our DNA": <https://blogs.apache.org/OOo/entry/collaboration_is_in_our_dna>.
That topic and related matters have been discussed from time-to-time in private discussions of the Apache OpenOffice PMC. There is agreement that it is best, and timely, to have this discussion in the entire Apache OpenOffice community. That means discussing collaboration and cooperation prospects here on dev@ openoffice.apache.org. I propose to kick that off now. - Dennis BACKGROUND AND SKETCH I am a member of the AOO PMC and also an ASF Committer. This note and the others I will offer are my personal opinions and analysis. I am *not* speaking for the PMC in any manner. I am simply expressing my suggestions on how to articulate a foundation for collaboration. This is to bootstrap a discussion that matters to the PMC, I trust, and that will be valuable to the AOO community and other on-lookers. I want to address what the aspirations of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) are in terms of its principles and policies, and how they arise in the character of Apache projects. When I appeal to principles that are bedrock for the Apache Software Foundation, I will provide references and locations where those are presented and discussed already. The idea is to identify fundamental principles behind the framework which AOO and all ASF Projects operate within and which cooperative activities are expected to be consistent with. The idea is to use that as a basis for exploring and bootstrapping some actual cooperative activities. Here's what I see in a progression of discussions about principles and areas for action. 1. The ASF Principles on how code of others is accepted into ASF Projects and how it is respected. 2. The ASF Principles on source code and what kind of licenses are required on source code that is part of a release. 3. The possibilities for cooperation on source code that cannot be used directly in an ASF Project release and how that can be handled in distribution of binaries. The preferences for optional dependency as opposed to essential dependencies and where they apply. Dependencies that are disallowed on principle (and for which only very specific, narrow exceptions are considered, if ever). 4. Other forms of cooperation that are mutually beneficial and provide important reduction of duplicate efforts, magnified impact of contributor efforts, etc. These include security, incident reporting (bug reports) and analysis, and QA for starters. There is also one that is important to me personally and that is cooperation on interoperability assessment and documentation that expands the quality of support for ODF (and, potentially, OOXML). End-user-facing support is also a gigantic opportunity for improved support of users here and elsewhere. Developer-facing support such as hackathons, plugfests, and interop demos and cross-pollination at organized events is also opportune. 5. The prospect for some sort of federation around the openoffice.org code base and perhaps interoperable/reference ODF implementation. That's my thinking. I offer this overall sketch as context for the initial introduction of topics to follow. - Dennis --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org
