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A comparison of Free Software Web Portals

A comparison of Free Software Web Portals. Vanessa P. Braganholo Marta Mattoso {vanessa,marta}@cos.ufrj.br. Outline. Motivation Methodology Web Portals Comparison and Conclusion. Outline. Motivation Methodology Web Portals Comparison and Conclusion. Motivation. Free Software

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A comparison of Free Software Web Portals

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  1. A comparison of Free Software Web Portals Vanessa P. Braganholo Marta Mattoso {vanessa,marta}@cos.ufrj.br

  2. Outline • Motivation • Methodology • Web Portals • Comparison and Conclusion

  3. Outline • Motivation • Methodology • Web Portals • Comparison and Conclusion

  4. Motivation • Free Software • Freedoms in the Free Software definition need to be accomplished • Freedom of “studying and adapting the code according to the user needs” • Source code needs to be publiclyavailable

  5. Motivation • Most users use Web Portals to make their code widely available • Web portals • Provide access to the source code • Offer tools to support the development of Free Software • Version Control Systems • Forums • Bug Tracking • Mailing Lists • …

  6. Motivation • Several Web Portals available • Each of them offer different advantages (tools) to the users • How to choose among so many options?

  7. Main Goal • Help users to make this decision • We have studied 7 of the most used Web Portals • We present them and compare them, hoping this will help users in choosing one of them

  8. Studied Portals 1) Source Forge 2) Apache 3) Tigris 4) ObjectWeb 5) Savannah 6) Código Livre (a Brazilian portal) 7) Java.net

  9. Outline • Motivation • Methodology • Web Portals • Comparison and Conclusion

  10. Methodology • Analyzed portals have public and private areas • Most of the times, details on how the portals work are in the private areas • Because of this… • We have created a new user for each of the portals • We have followed all the steps to the creation of a new project in each of the studied portals

  11. Methodology • The creation of the project was not confirmed • We have used “fake data” • Portals require projects to be approved before being hosted (to avoid “fake projects”) • We could not access the private area of the projects

  12. Methodology • To overcome this limitation… • We have looked at the public areas of the projects hosted in each portal • This helped us to identify the available options, and what could be hidden from external users • In some cases, this (plus analysis of documentation) was not enough to answer some of the questions we have raised in our evaluation

  13. Open Source x Free Software • Most of the portals we have studied are OpenSource portals • The goals of the Free Software and Open Source community are quite similar • Open Source portals can host Free Software as well

  14. Evaluation 1) Project registration: what are the requirements for the registration of a new project on the portal? 2) Version control: does the portal offer version control systems? 3) Forum: does it offer forums? 4) Mailing lists: are mailing lists available? 5) Project Web Page: does the portal supply a web page for the project?

  15. Evaluation 6) Bugs: does it offer bug tracking? 7) Documentation: does it have tools to support the documentation of the project? 8) Intellectual Property: does the portal preserve the intellectual property to the projects owner? 9) Support: does it require the developers to provide support even after the project is finished?

  16. Evaluation 10) Task Management: does it have tools to support task management? 11) Backup: does it provide automatic backups of the repositories in the version control system? 12) Customization of public area: does it allow the developer to customize the public area (remove unwanted items from the public view)?

  17. Outline • Motivation • Methodology • Web Portals • Comparison and Conclusion

  18. Common Features • All of the portals require that the project be approved before being hosted • Distribution license must be chosen at project registration time • Standard license such as GPL, LGPL, BSG, etc. • Customized (new) license – this may make the project approval time to take longer • Exception: ObjectWeb recommends LGPL – other licenses are allowed on very special cincunstances

  19. Common Features • It is not necessary to have source code available at project registration time • The goal of the portals is to help the project development (tools) • Only registered users can submit project hosting requests

  20. Common Features • Version Control Systems • Can be used by developers • Read-only anonymous access to outside users • Anonymous check-outs • Some of the portals provide ways of blocking such external access

  21. Source Forgewww.sourceforge.net • Hosts tens of thousands of projects • Main goal: provide a centralized place where developers can control and manage the development of their projects

  22. Source Forgewww.sourceforge.net • Project Registration • Type of project (software, documentation, web site, peer-to-peer software, game, content management system, operational system distribution, pre-compiled package of existing software, software internationalization ) • Term agreement • Project description (short) • Choose project name • Project is approved or rejected in about 2 days

  23. Source Forge – Advantages • Forums • CVS • Mailing lists (public or private) • Project web page • Documentation (DocManager) • Task management • Automatic backup of the version control repository

  24. Source Forge – Advantages • Trackers • Bugs • Support Requests • Feature Requests • Patches • All of these tools can be configured to be visible or hidden to external users • It is possible to request help from external users

  25. Example of hosted projects • http://sourceforge.net/projects/hsqldb/ • Example where CVS is not public: • http://sourceforge.net/projects/xampp/

  26. Apachewww.apache.org • Maintained by the Apache Software Foundation • Loss of intellectual property: projects hosted there must be donated to the Apache Foundation • The Foundation gets the responsibility of deciding how the project should be developed

  27. Apachewww.apache.org • Project Submission: through the “Apache Incubator Project” • Project stays incubated until it is mature enough to become an official project of the Apache Foundation

  28. Apache - Advantages • Version Control System (CVS or Subversion) • Mailing Lists (which can be exclusive for the project or in conjunction with the Incubator Project) • Web page • Documentation (Apache Forrest) • Bug tracking • Task Management.

  29. Example of incubated project • http://incubator.apache.org/projects/wsrp4j.html

  30. Tigriswww.tigris.org • It only hosts projects related to its mission: • developing tools to support collaborative development • Project Registration • Project should fit into one of the categories: • construction, deployment, design, issue track, libraries, personal, process, profession, requirements, SCM, students, techcomm and testing

  31. Tigris – Advantages • Mailing Lists • Task Management • Bug tracking • Web page for the project • News • CVS or Subversion • Forums

  32. Example of hosted project • http://argouml.tigris.org/

  33. ObjectWebwww.objectweb.org • Consortium created in 1999 to promote the development of Open Source Software • Maintained by INRIA (Research Lab in France)

  34. ObjectWebwww.objectweb.org • Projects must fit into one of the categories: • communications, database, desktop environment, education, games/entertainment, internet, multimedia, office/business, other/nonlisted topic, printing, religion, scientific/engineering, security, software development, system, terminals and text editors

  35. ObjectWebwww.objectweb.org • Result of the project • middleware component • reused by several software platforms and application domains • Project must participate in the discussions of the evolution of the ObjectWeb code base

  36. ObjectWebwww.objectweb.org • Project Registration: • Complex • Detailed information is required (much like a formal project submission) • LGLP license is recommended

  37. ObjectWeb – Advantages • CVS • Web page • Forum • Mailing list • Task management • Backup • Trackers • bugs • support requests • patches • feature requests • Help from external developers

  38. Example of hosted project • http://forge.objectweb.org/projects/activexml/

  39. Savannahhttp://savannah.gnu.org • Projects must fall into one of four categories: • software project • documentation project • free educational book • FSF/GNU Project • Non-GNU Projects are hosted at http://savannah.nongnu.org • Functionalities of both portals are the same

  40. Savannahhttp://savannah.gnu.org • Registration process: • Requires detailed description of the project • URL of the source code (if any) • List of libraries used in the source code

  41. Savannah – Advantages • CVS • Web page • Mailing list • Bug tracking • Support requests management • Task management • Help from external users

  42. Example of hosted project • http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/acml/

  43. Código Livrehttp://codigolivre.org.br • Brazilian portal • Goal is to support the development of Free Software in Brazil • Created by UNIVATES and currently supported by UNICAMP

  44. Código Livrehttp://codigolivre.org.br • Project Registration • detailed description of the project and its goals • the category in which it falls (desktop environment, databases, communication, software development, text editor, education, printing, internet, games/entertainment, multimedia, office/business, other/non-listed, religion, scientific/engineering, security, system, terminal) • The list of categories is the same as the one in ObjectWeb • They both use a software provided by SourceForge

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