Perkeep at Apache?

[Niklas Merz]

Hi everyone,

it has been a long time but my interest in Perkeep has come up again. (I am working on a Google Takeout importer right now). As I am recently working much on an Apache project a question came up in my head while looking at the projects activity again: Would Perkeep work and grow as an Apache project? Is this something anybody ever considered?

This idea/discussion might be out of place, but I am asking anyway because my first thought was that Perkeep works almost exactly like an Apache project. A diverse group of people contribute from time to time, the license fits, most processes and ideas are similar to Apache ones and the major platform for discussion is a mailing list.

What are the challenges to move Perkeep forward? From my point of view it's that maintainers don't have the time to work on it and from an end users perspective it may needs to be more approachable.

Going through the Apache Incubator would be a lot of work and may not be successful. But I know some people that may have good advice for this and the project might grow the community in that environment. After becoming member of an Apache project I started to understand why it works like that and why this sense of shared ownership matters.

If this idea does not make any sense please ignore it and apologize me for thinking out loud.

P.S: I love Perkeep. It still runs very stable in my setup even after ignoring it for some time. It's a great project and I wish I could contribute more to make it even better.

Kind regards

Niklas Merz

[Mathieu Lonjaret]

On Sat, 4 Jul 2020 at 17:14, Niklas Merz <nikla...@linux.com> wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,

Hello,

> it has been a long time but my interest in Perkeep has come up again. (I am working on a Google Takeout importer right now). As I am recently working much on an Apache project a question came up in my head while looking at the projects activity again: Would Perkeep work and grow as an Apache project? Is this something anybody ever considered?

Yes, somewhat. As far as I know, most of the preparatory work had been
done (at least, all that I thought I could help with) to apply to the
Software Freedom Conservancy, but we never actually got around to it.

> This idea/discussion might be out of place, but I am asking anyway because my first thought was that Perkeep works almost exactly like an Apache project. A diverse group of people contribute from time to time, the license fits, most processes and ideas are similar to Apache ones and the major platform for discussion is a mailing list.
>
> What are the challenges to move Perkeep forward? From my point of view it's that maintainers don't have the time to work on it and from an end users perspective it may needs to be more approachable.

Yes, as far as I am concerned, at the moment I simply just can't
dedicate as much time to it. You're probably right that it could be
more user-friendly, but I fail to see how moving the project to Apache
would help with that.

> Going through the Apache Incubator would be a lot of work and may not be successful. But I know some people that may have good advice for this and the project might grow the community in that environment. After becoming member of an Apache project I started to understand why it works like that and why this sense of shared ownership matters.

The thing is, at this stage of community (very few active
contributors) to increase the number of contributors, you need people
knowledgeable enough with the project to guide them and properly
review their PRs, which we sorely lack. I don't see how a foundation
would help get past this bootstrapping problem. Do you?

> If this idea does not make any sense please ignore it and apologize me for thinking out loud.
>
> P.S: I love Perkeep. It still runs very stable in my setup even after ignoring it for some time. It's a great project and I wish I could contribute more to make it even better.

Ditto.

> Kind regards
> Niklas Merz
>
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[Nick S]

Hey, off topic but just a quick heads up that if you're working on a Google Takeout importer, I've put a good amount of work into parsing Google Hangouts and Google Voice. It's all here, if you're interested: https://github.com/NickSto/life-browser/tree/master/drivers

[nikla...@linux.com]

Thank you Mathieu for your insights. I fully understand that.

Yes I agree with you on the bootstrapping problem. I see Perkeep as project that is really mature and bullet-proof around the core and kind of rough at the user-level. Also because of complexity the way it's designed and what it's built to do it's hard to get people understand it and get into to contribute. I've used it quite a bit and feel I still don't fully "get it".

Going to a foundation won't solve this problem indeed. I remember your thorough reviews on my changes years ago. The project first needs people that know enough of Perkeeps core to be able to help others working on it.

I just hope my recent interest with Perkeep keeps going strong for some time so I can contribute a bit.

Being optimistic Perkeeps time to shine will come some day :-)

Kind regards and thank you for your work

Niklas

[nikla...@linux.com]

Nick S schrieb am Samstag, 4. Juli 2020 um 18:18:00 UTC+2:

Hey, off topic but just a quick heads up that if you're working on a Google Takeout importer, I've put a good amount of work into parsing Google Hangouts and Google Voice. It's all here, if you're interested: https://github.com/NickSto/life-browser/tree/master/drivers

Thank you. Could be interesting at a later point or for others. I am not using Hangouts or voice but I would like to build the importer in a ways to easy add all Google services.