I would like to raise an issue with the current hosting request protocol. To illustrate, I recently wanted to register a new project at savannah.nongnu.org, but the hosting request process assumes that I have already produced code for my project and that I have a tarball of it. I added a comment stating that my project was only in the planning stages and has no code yet, which is because I wanted to begin development only when I had a hosted VCS somewhere (in this case at Savannah), which I believe to be good practice. My hosting request was refused, because I was required to provide a tarball containing a COPYING with my license and at least one source file with an appropriate license header. I was told that this was to prevent licensing conflicts later on.
I will agree that having a COPYING established at the beginning of a project is a good idea, and I also agree with establishing the license clearly at request time. However, I disagree with having to have code before being able to issue a new project. In my opinion this promotes bad practice (development outside of a VCS), will result in an initial amount of code that may not be publicly visible and/or version controlled, and does not suitably address the issue of preventing licensing conflicts in the future; just because I have one short code file at the beginning of development with a suitable license header that does not imply that this practice will continue. At present the current application procedure seems to alienate new projects such as my own. I move for a change in the application procedure allowing for the registration of projects with no existing code. Thank you for your patience. Thoughts?
