I am not on the Common board of directors and I do not speak for Common,
only Jeff Carey, current president, can do that.
Here is what I believe has been communicated to me and, btw, I am NOT
saying that Common has to have ownership of this thing but I will say
the one advantage of having an organization like Common in the middle is
because people come and go, and companies come and go, and communities
ebb and flow but Common has been around for 60 years while I cannot say
that for all the companies that have been in and out of the midrange
space. Midrange.com is a bit of an odd duck in this regard in that the
community has very nicely sustained this with David's oversight. But
when David moves on, what then? Probably someone will graciously host
and maintain the site but there is always risk. Common is not an
eternal organization and it could morph into something that sidelines
IBM i and OSS, but right now, Common has embraced OSS, IBM has embraced
OSS we have a community building around it and Common wants to support
the effort with no strings attached. No paywall for community content.
No requirement of membership. Just an offer to host a central place for
community content, whatever form it takes. Will there be paywalled
content in the future? My guess is there will be events that focus on
OSS that will be fee based. But community contributed stuff will always
be free.
That said:
1) I put up some pages at www.common.org/open-source to get us
started. Common has a broader web strategy that they are in the middle
of implementing and the broader strategy will include a forum and a
wiki. Just like the risk Bill Gravelle is taking starting the LinkedIn
Group and the Ryver forum, another site at common.org in addition all
the others out there may not "stick". Maybe there will never be a
central place where all things IBM i OSS can be found. But hope that
there can be. So I chose to go with common.org. It may be a mistake to
locate content there because some folks have some "baggage" when it
comes to Common and therefore may not even visit the site, but the
organization isn't going away any time soon and so the location has
*some* permanence.
2) Common and idevcloud.com partnered in keeping the YiPS site going
which has been a repository for OSS/PASE projects. That is beginning to
fragment a bit with some projects landing elsewhere (not sure why but
that is how things evolve). I hope to re-skin the site while retaining
all the current links (the underlying framework is pretty old). At some
point, I don't know when, my guess is a more permanent home will be
found. I'd like that home to be common.org or maybe even an IBM i OSS
foundation that can maintain a site. Who knows? For now the plan is to
continue to support the YiPS site.
3) Common as agreed to fund an open source project if necessary to
get some initial traction. Not sure what it will be or how much they
are willing to fund but they are will to put some skin the game. I like
that idea.
4) We hope to get a core group of folks who can commit to a regular
conference call. We need to keep it a manageable size and maybe that
will morph into a webcast with a conversational core and a chat option
for folks to ask questions or make suggestions. Common is willing to
sponsor this as well.
I REALLY like the OSS dashboard idea. I am not sure how to do it and it
would be a great opportunity to use many different technologies, all on
IBM i, to do it but we'll see how this evolves. So, in short, I see
Common as being a good place to "center" stuff instead of starting yet
another web presence. In reality, if there was a sustained community
funded and more or less permanent organization framework that would
continue this effort, a la an Apache-like organization, I would be happy
to have stuff live there. But Common s about the best place I can think
of for now. The community will vote with its fingertips: If they
frequent the site and find it useful, great. If we each end up with our
own fiefdoms and everyone is OK with that, so be it.
Pete Helgren
www.petesworkshop.com
GIAC Secure Software Programmer-Java
LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/petehelgren
Twitter - Sys_i_Geek IBM_i_Geek
On 6/24/2016 10:23 AM, Aaron Bartell wrote:
Hi Pete,
I wonder if you could convey what you'd like to see, exactly - especially
if you can comment on COMMON's current stance. I know we've had
conversations in private months ago, but I'm curious to know where things
stand today. I am asking because I'd like to support where ever I can. My
fear is that our community will try to control things instead of letting
things have organic success (which is why, btw, midrange.com is so
successful, imo).
Aaron Bartell
litmis.com - Services for open source on IBM i
midrange.com
