Forwarding Stephen's comments to the mailing list.
Thanks
Sharan
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: Re: graphviz as a potential apache project
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2018 17:56:09 -0400
From: Stephen North <scno...@gmail.com>
To: sha...@apache.org
Thank you. I’ll check on the subscription.
Some brief comments:
1) Yes, we might have felt a little too much like a special snowflake.
2) Formally, AT&T owns most of the code, which was developed before they decided
they didn’t want me to work there any more around the end of 2013. I still have
a few
colleagues there that can help a little with intellectual property issues but
the corporate
apathy can seem overwhelming at times. I don’t know if they would be open to
changing
the license. Also, we did not make use of a contributor license, though the
external
contributions were not that significant except for Tim Dwyer’s layout algorithm
work
and I’m still in touch with Tim quite often.
3) I have to admit it is not a very vibrant developer community any more. Emden
Gansner, John Ellson and I were the main gatekeepers/committers to the source
repository. I’m still in touch with John and Emden but they are either retired
or
very close to it and due to personal reasons they are sympathetic toward work on
the code but are not in a position to do a lot on their own these days.
Stephen North
On Jun 4, 2018, at 8:44 AM, sha...@apache.org wrote:
Hi Stephen
I'm not sure if you have been copied on all the responses and comments to your
email so am including a link to the complete mailing list thread so far:
https://s.apache.org/KDoq
Also please feel free to respond or add your comments to anything mentioned.
Thanks
Sharan
On 2.6.2018 20:52, sha...@apache.org wrote:
Hi Stephen
Thanks for your email. I will follow up and find you who can respond to this
query for you.
Thanks
Sharan
On 31.5.2018 23:51, Stephen North wrote:
Hi, Sharan. I hope you’re the right person for this. (Your org. just sent an
invitation
to an Apache roadshow event under your name.)
I’m one of the founders of Graphviz, 20+ years ago, and it’s useful
infrastructure
software with new and old applications in bioinformatics, machine learning,
software
engineering and other fields, including plugins for R, python, Haskell,
transpiled
into javascript, who knows what else. I think for example clang, llvm, maybe Go
use it for debug output. See www.graphviz.org
We started this in AT&T Labs but AT&T discontinued all support for the work,
eliminated some of our jobs or encouraged us to leave, has disclaimed the
project,
so we’re on our own. We maintain the software and the website, that we moved
to gitlab.
We are looking for a more stable institutional home for Graphviz. Apache seems
like
a great match. Is this possible? How is a decision like that made? I’m not
sure a mature
project like this fits the incubator model. Are there other ways?
Sorry if this has gone long (I could say a lot more, too, for example how we
could put
focus effort on new features, or providing better resources to people that need
network visualization as a service). I’m hoping you’re the right person to
start the conversation.
Thank you for your time, and for your consideration.
Stephen North
