[Debian-sf-devel] Re: submission of ourproject.org free projects tool devel - savannah.nongnu.org

[Mathieu Roy]

Vicente Ruiz <address@hidden> said:

> On Mon, 2003-02-17 at 17:40, Mathieu Roy wrote:
> 
> > Naturally, because Savannah have something to do with computing and
> > because of the origin of Savannah, the software seems mainly to be
> > usefull for software projects.
> > 
> > But we have nothing against an evolution in a more general
> > way. Savannah could be used for different kind of projects and we
> > would be glad of it.
> > 
> > So if you can work on improving Savannah in this way, we would have
> > nothing against.
> > 
> Yes, is logic, but let me explain a little bit what happens with
> ourproject.org.
> 
> Why we use debian-sf? Few months ago, I started to install savannah
> in ourproject.org site. But when I read in the INSTALL file of savannah:
> 
> "We get a lot of requests from people who want to use the Savannah code
> but we will not have time to spend in helping developing it. For those
> users we  recommend Debian-SF because Savannah has not been packaged in
> a way that users can install, configure and start using it easily."
> 
> and I read the opinion of people about debian-sf and Savannah I decided
> to install and adapt debian-sf. But I use savannah.gnu.org as a very
> good reference of a mature and working tool.
> 
> I was thinking all the day about how Savannah or debian-sf can be
> modified to manage "free projects" (not only software) [1], and it's not
> easy. I'll try to show you:
> 
> Now the modifications that I made in debian-sf are not very important:
> 
> - Languages modifications to talk about Free Projects and not Software,
> collaborators and not software developers, and things like that.
> - Code modifications with the same goal.
> - Not to use CVS by default, and things like that.
> - New categories of projects, languages, licenses, etc.
> - New themes.
> 
> All these changes make the tool a little bit more usable and oriented to
> manage Free Projects by any kind of people, but it's necessary more
> modifications.
> 
> These changes are easy to integrate with Savannah or debian-sf, more or
> less. But the first problem that I see is that I don't know if the rest
> of the developers are interested in use the modifications and if they
> want that Savannah or debian-sf software begins to be "Free Projects
> Management Tool" instead of "Software Management Tool".

I think that gettext support, so i18n, would permit to do this in a
even more easier way.
Once you have po files, you can translate from english to french
etc... but you can also translate from computing-specific to
teaching-specific...


> 
> But this is a minor problem, there is a biggest problem.
> 
> Why I began with ourproject.org? I was searching the possibility to use
> a platform to develop "Free Projects" with any kind of people, not
> necessary software developers, people with other skills (architects,
> doctors, ecologists, teachers, sociologist, etcetera), and create
> together free projects about architecture, ecology, economy, pedagogy,
> ..., and to share these "Free Knowledge". All with the philosophy of
> Free Software but in other situations.
> 
> I tried to find a site with these philosophy but I didn't find it. Then
> I decide to work to install a platform to permit this.
> 
> But the big problem is that normal people, don't know very well what is
> Free Software, GNU/Linux, and the philosophy of GNU, and you have to
> explain very good these concepts to permit to them to understand how the
> Free Software Community works and to understand that they can do the
> same and create "Free Projects" using their skills and working together
> with other people with the same problems/interests.
> 
> In our Manifesto: http://ourproject.org/en/manif.html we try that any
> kind of people understand us, but it's difficult already.
> 
> When somebody understand the philosophy and want to use our tool in
> ourproject.org (a modification of debian-sf) it's very difficult for
> them to understand how the tool works, to create projects, mailing
> lists, forums, etcetera.
> 
> For this reason, we need a tool very, very usable for any kind o people,
> and maybe the modifications to make Savannah or debian-sf more usable
> have not any interest for the rest of software developers, maybe.
> 
> I would like to work with other developers in Savannah or debian-sf but
> I don't know if they have or they can have the same goals. 

I believe that your goals are compatible with Savannah goal (for
debian-sf, I do not know). 

But note that it's completely
up-to-you. I'm not trying to force you to help us because of my
position. 
I just wanted to tell you that I think it may be a good option if you
work with us (and i18n becomes more and more and issue - and you re
dealing with issue that are in fact related to translations) but if
you do not think so, you're free to resubmit your project and we will
accept it (as soon as you add the license/copyright notes).

Regards,


-- 
Mathieu Roy
 
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