Looking forward to helping out

[Steve Brownlee]

Back in the day, I thought about creating an advocacy organization
like this in my home town of Pittsburgh, but I never got it off the
ground. Knowing that others think along the same lines is encouraging
and exciting.

Has there been any more thought on specific ways to help the
community? On the home page, it states that the organization wants to
help "in any way possible", but with such a vague mission statement,
it might be hard to attract people to help because it provides no
specific items to which people can identify.

[Jason Delmore]

Hi Steve,

The initial focus is on providing assistance and a home for ColdFusion
Open Spurce projects. A lot of the CF open source projects are
managed and maintained by individuals, and as individuals, they have
issues communicating how others can support their efforts. A PayPal
button really does not get used by a fortune 500 company, and an
individual is unlikely to try and run a bug tracking system or give
others access to their repository. These are concrete problems that a
membership driven non-profit can really help solve.

The less concrete piece that we are hoping to help solve, is to create
a professional membership society that works together to solve other
community issues. If you've ever been a part of a condo or homeowners
association, you know there are problems that this association solves
on your behalf. We don't know all the issues we should work on, but
the idea is to provide a democratic organization that works together
to do so.

I think we, as a community, need to stop complaining about what other
organizations have not provided for us, but instead take control of
our destiny and work together as a community to make improvements.

That is my 2 cents, I hope to hear what others think and then we can
work together to build concrete objectives.

Thanks and best wishes, :)
Jason

Sent using a tiny touchscreen, please pardon my brevity.

On Aug 12, 2009, at 10:23 AM, Steve Brownlee <chortl...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Adam Tuttle]

Since you talk about hosting repositories and bug trackers for open source projects, I'm curious: How, if at all, do you see this organization partnering with RIAForge?

I have a dozen or so projects listed on RIAForge and it's the first place I look for open source CFML projects. I can appreciate what you're attempting to do -- if I can take the liberty of paraphrasing: giving companies a more legitimate way to contribute back to the community/project owners (financially) -- but it seems like, if you aren't trying to work with RIAForge somehow, the fact that both sites have similar offerings might hurt you, because RIAForge already has "critical mass".

For example, I couldn't consider pulling my projects from RIAForge to list them on 4CFF, because not enough people look there. But on the other hand, not enough people will look there until there are projects there. It's a catch-22.

I guess the alternative would be to cross-list the projects, but that could be a maintenance hassle. I know RIAForge can link to external repositories, bug trackers, etc -- but if I moved my repositories I would lose my change history. Will 4CFF provide the same external-linking functionality?

I don't mean to sound derogatory, and I'm sorry if it's coming off that way. I'm just curious. :)

Adam

[craig.kaminsky]

Adam, not that my opinion matters in this regard but I don't think
your note sounded derogatory at all. It's a very good point and one
that crossed my mind earlier today.

Where I think things will work well between RIAForge.com and 4CFF is
that Ray Camden is on the board of 4CFF (http://4cff.org/default/
index.cfm/about-us/). I am, of course, making some assumptions but I
would think that Ray being on the board should bode well for the co-
existence of both RIAForge and 4CFF. I can certainly see ways in which
both sites help promote one another as well as CF projects.

Best,
Craig

On Aug 12, 1:41 pm, Adam Tuttle <j.adam.tut...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Since you talk about hosting repositories and bug trackers for open source
> projects, I'm curious: How, if at all, do you see this organization
> partnering with RIAForge?
>
> I have a dozen or so projects listed on RIAForge and it's the first place I
> look for open source CFML projects. I can appreciate what you're attempting
> to do -- if I can take the liberty of paraphrasing: giving companies a more
> legitimate way to contribute back to the community/project owners

> (financially) -- but it seems like, if you aren't trying to work *with*RIAForge
> *somehow*, the fact that both sites have similar offerings might hurt you,

> > On Aug 12, 2009, at 10:23 AM, Steve Brownlee <chortleho...@gmail.com>

[Jason Delmore]

Hi Adam,

That's a good question and i hope to help clarify things.  First, I should say that Ray is on the 4CFF board, so We are planning on doing whatever integration or shared infrastructure that makes sense.  However, 4CFF is not going to be a place for any open source project to be listed.  The projects that become part of 4CFF will be owned and supported by the foundation (but under a copyleft license such as Apache).   The comparison is this: For RIAForge, think SourceForge.  For 4CFF, think the Apache Software Foundation.  4CFF projects will be listed on RIAForge, but you can't just add a project to the 4CFF site.

I hope that helps clarify that piece of the puzzle.

:)

Jason 

Sent using a tiny touchscreen, please pardon my brevity.

[Adam Tuttle]

It does, thanks.

Adam