Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Re: Savannah and GNU Herds integration

[Davi Leal]

Sylvain Beucler wrote:
> Davi is programming the http://www.gnuherds.org/ website.

The project has been put together by lot of people [1]. It is true I am the 
one who has committed or contributed more, but we have got feedback and help 
from more people.

  [1] http://gnuherds.org/development#Team


> Davi, please give a brief overview of GNU Herds.

The project has been slowly evolving [2] along the last 8 years. We are yet 
modifying and improving it.

  [2] http://web.archive.org/web/20050829230230/http://www.gnuherds.org/

The FSF has donated the domU where gnuherds.org is hosted. It is at FSF 
offices, at Boston, to be more sure users personal data is managed with care.




Use cases:

  GNU Herds could be used as interface to final Free Software users,
  etc., who would like request some kind of 'solution'.

  One UK cooperative [2] has already posted some job offers.  Other
  users included me have posted some donation-pledges ...

    [2] http://www.ttllp.co.uk/


  We propose integration into Savannah to:

      * get more users for the GNU Herds features. Allow integration
        of users (both sides) but without sending any job-offer alert
        up to they explicitly request it.  We should not Spam anybody.

      * so that Savannah users can get advantage of the GNU Herds
        proposed features.

        We propose some of the features, as donation pledges, can
        be directly used in Savannah getting echo automatically in
        the GNU Herds frontend.

        Our experience says almost nobody will pledge donations, and
        only some entities will use us to post job offers. So we think
        it will not be an immediate change in the community paradigm.

        We think people who like contribute will follow contributing
        for free as it has happened after the new SourceForge features
        were added.

      * improve and expand Savannah so that it can compete better with
        services as SourceForge, Launchpad, GoogleCode, but too with
        other emerging ones as ohloh, etc.

  So the GNU Herds frontend could fill the niche which demands a
  specialized and simplified interface for job offers and donation-pledge
  groups, doing echo too of look-for-volunteers entries at Savannah.

  So, this users niche will do not have to care about moving among all
  the other Savannah's features.

  Of course the same feature could be directly available at Savannah.
  GNU Herds could be just a specialized and simplified niche frontend.

  I hope I will be allowed to send proposals about the Savannah rewrite.



Management:

  GNU Herds proposes that its frontend be managed by its own users [3]
  as an exercise of democratic managing.

  Well, actually not by all its users but only by the ones which have
  already contributed to Free Software:

    [3] http://gnuherds.org/charter#Membership
        http://gnuherds.org/charter#Committee
        http://gnuherds.org/charter#Decisions
        http://gnuherds.org/charter#Voting
        http://gnuherds.org/faq#company_votes

  All that formality is just to know how to solve problems if they arise,
  but it has not been never needed.



Users' protection:

  GNU Herds is licensed under "Affero GPL v3 or later" to avoid users
  being locked by an Application Service Provider (ASP).

  The source code can be downloaded.  About the data, any user own her
  data, she can delete it and fill out it at other site.  Users' freedom.



And as usual, it is just a proposal open to discussion.


> His idea is to integrate with Savannah, in the short-term with common
> user/password and integration in the skills list. In the longer term
> this could mean closer integration.
>
> What do you think of it?