On Aug 26, 2009, at 1:31 PM, Roderic Page wrote:
I vote we move it to a site that actually works, and is easy to use (i.e., not SourceForge).
To be fair, the site that doesn't work is lsids.sourceforge.net, not SourceForge. I don't know when you last checked but SourceForge meanwhile supports hosted applications for projects, including a MediaWiki, Trac, and several other nice things, that can all be nicely customized. SourceForge, unlike Google Code, also supports Git natively, along with Hg etc.
That isn't trying to say that Google Code isn't a clean and well- working code hosting site. But frankly I don't think the problem here has much to do with Google versus SourceForge, but rather with a combination of the following three:
1 - For the current site, someone chose to be fancy and use a Sf- custom WordPress application. Meanwhile Sf changed its support for that (it is now one of the hosted apps and has to be setup differently), and the person has moved on and doesn't have time to make this fix.
2 - TDWG finds the US export restrictions to which Sf.net is bound (as much as Google is) no longer acceptable, and hence has decided to move the project to its own infrastructure (which, as far as I'm aware, does not exist yet).
3 - Despite explicit offers of help (such as, from me more than half a year ago, and from several people in this thread), TDWG hasn't ever bothered to add those volunteers as project admin so they'd be empowered to actually deliver on their offers.
The first one is something that happens to all projects - people move on, hosting providers need to upgrade their technologies. It will happen again, and frankly the plans regarding #2 raise concerns as to how vulnerable the envisioned infrastructure will be to that.
The second is understandable in principle, but the rationale that's difficult to follow at least for me is why keeping the site unavailable w/o any kind of ETA and an on-going embarrassment to everyone regardless of country is somehow better than making the site available to everyone and the code a legal download for 99% of the Earth's countries.
The third one in my personal opinion is a reflection of the necessity for some culture change at TDWG that would allow the organization to actually harness its community, which I think has much more immediate potential and power than elusive hoping for more funding.
My personal thoughts, anyway. Flame away ...
-hilmar