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<h2> Community 
  Articles: Opinions, Interviews, Analyses</h2>
<p><a href="//lspintro.html" target="_blank">-Louis Su&aacute;rez-Potts</a></p>
<p>2 July 2001</p>
<p>&nbsp; </p>
<h4>The OpenOffice.org Infrastructure Upgrade</h4>

<p>The OpenOffice.org infrastructure is going to be upgraded. In less than two 
  weeks' time, on the afternoon of July 13, 2001, OpenOffice.org will move from 
  its current infrastructure (<a href="http://www.tigris.org" target="_blank">Tigris</a> 
  Classic), to a more modern and sophisticated version, <a href="http://www.sourcecast.org/products/sourcecast/" target="_blank">SourceCast</a>. 
  During this period of transition, the site, including the <a href="http://www.cvshome.org/" target="_blank">CVS</a> 
  repository, will be down for what may end up being several hours. And when it's 
  back up, it will be decidedly improved.</p>
  
<p>What does the upgrade bring? To begin with, SourceCast gives the community 
  the tools by which they can more directly participate in building OpenOffice.org 
  and its member projects. Second, it simplifies the task of managing mailing 
  lists and projects. </p>
  
<p>But first: The site will look pretty much the same. Changes will mostly be  subtle. But many will find additions that will prove very welcome indeed; these need to be highlighted. For instance, SourceCast 
  comes replete with logically laid-out documentation on how to use IssueZilla, 
  CVS, and just about everything else pertaining to the site infrastructure. (As 
  opposed to the site <i>content,</i> or the OpenOffice.org code.) This means that 
  users (at least those who read the Help) will at last be able to find context-sensitive 
  answers to many questions. </p>
  
<p>I would like in this article to go over some of the differences 
  in SourceCast and to suggest ways in which community members will be able to grasp 
  this opportunity to--perhaps!--accelerate the development of the project. For, 
  as has become clear in the last several weeks, the community has reached point 
  where members are forming projects to satisfy longstanding needs. This discussion 
  will be the first of at least two; it will focus on joining and proposing projects. 
  Subsequent announcements will deal with other aspects of the upgrade.</p>

<br>
<h4>Joining projects</h4>
<p>Join a project? With our present model, that phrase almost makes no sense. 
  One can certainly <i>subscribe</i> to a project's mailing list, and, to 
  be sure, a select few can even become committers to a project's CVS tree. 
  But join? </p>
  
<p>Yes, join. SourceCast formalizes a process that in our current model of Tigris 
  is by no means self-evident. Thus, the group that is working on, say, the Documentation 
  Project in the Whiteboard, may work together, and well, but there is no 
  clear and efficient mechanism for them to distribute work among themselves; 
  or if there is, it is home-grown and not necessarily extensible to other projects. 
  This situation holds true for other, larger projects, such as Porting, where 
  the problem is magnified by the extent and complexity of the work. </p>
  
<p>So instead of a system that relies upon the unformalized understanding of a 
  project's contributors and mailing-list subscribers, SourceCast allows 
  for a clarification of responsibility. Members can be more coherently thought 
  of as "members," with clearly understood responsibilities (determined 
  by the leader and group). Again, this system has more or less worked fine so 
  far. But, as I've noted before, we are growing, and fast. </p>
  
<p>SourceCast <i>does not</i>, by any means, require that community members (loosely 
  defined) join a project, in order to work on that project. The status quo can 
  continue, and we need not change our way of operating. But let's say that a 
  project lead, supported by that project's contributors, does take advantage 
  of the SourceCast functionality, and chooses to use the joining feature. Members 
  will not only possess a better understanding of their responsibilities and of 
  the tasks they have agreed to undertake, but they will also be able, if the 
  project lead is willing, to have a more pronounced role in determining a project. 
  I'll go over these points in greater depth later, but, in a nutshell, the point 
  of explicit membership is not just to provide a mechanism for the allocation 
  of work but to grant to members the incentive of clearly established responsibility.</p>
<br>
<h4>Proposing projects</h4>

<p>Currently, any regular visitor of the OpenOffice.org site can propose a new 
  project. Most regular visitors to OpenOffice.org probably don't know this, but, 
  it's so. It's also one of the better features not only of OpenOffice.org but 
  of any Open Source project: If you want something done, you can join or create 
  a project to get that thing done. SourceCast takes this characteristic of an 
  Open Source project and foregrounds it, making it a simple exercise for members 
  to propose new projects. The (hoped-for) result: More things are accomplished 
  by more community members working together. </p>
  
<p>Implicitly, the emphasis for now is on &quot;proposing projects.&quot; And 
  why just propose and not actually create? Because it would be foolish to allow 
  for the empty proliferation of unneeded and unheeded projects that might end 
  up proving more distracting than useful. So, every new proposal will have to 
  be approved before it is accepted. As it happens, this is the way we've been 
  working so far. That said, I fully expect that the simplicity of the new model 
  will eventually lead to some modifications in the process by which proposed 
  projects are approved. </p>
<br>
<h4>Conclusion</h4>

<p>To say that SourceCast has many other features that the community will benefit 
  from is to understate the case. For instance, as I will describe in subsequent 
  articles, with SourceCast we can organize and group projects and members in 
  ways that counteract the fragmentation any large Open Source project is subject 
  to.</p>
<p>Next week, I will further focus on what is entailed by joining a project.</p>
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