Collaboration system

[Dave Durant]

Hi everyone,

Still can't post from my email client so here's trying via the web,
again...

Below is the last email I sent on the subject Hi everyone,

Below is the last email I sent on the subject of approaching one of
the
existing commercial collaboration system providers with a view to
getting them to provide a free system for Rewired State.

If anyone has any comments just in now - if not I'll let this thread
die.

David Durant

++

Well, I would potentially argue that the vast majority of people under
25 (hackers or not) don't know what IRC is but that's another matter.

The project list is a good start but similar lists also exist at
MySociety, DirectGov and other places.

What I would love to see is a single well recognised site where such
community orientated work is based - built up around a significant
piece of collaboration infrastructure.

I've seen impressive examples of both IBM Jazz and CollabNet TeamForge
and would not be surprised if either company would not be willing to
donate copies of the software for a cause like this (for suitable PR
rights obviously).

I'm interested in other people's opinions of whether a list of
projects on multiple sites with separate source controls and no easy
mechanism for seeing the plans or status updates is fair enough for
where we are at currently or whether it would be worth trying to push
for some kind of more significant online development environment.

Nb - even if people on this list think it's a good idea I would
suggest it's a no-go unless it could also be sold to the MySociety
folks.

David Durant

[Chris Adams]

If you want free collaboration software, look speak to the guys at huddle - they give it free to charities below a certain size, but it may be more cumbersome than it's worth.

Truth be told, for collaboration, I can't see anything beating github, dropbox, and maybe a  mailing list for small projects like this.

These all expose their status and activity streams as rss feeds for redisplay on a public facing site if need be.

C

[James Darling]

Well, I would potentially argue that the vast majority of people under
25 (hackers or not) don't know what IRC is but that's another matter.

The IRC room would beg to differ. Besides, there's a web view on the website.

The project list is a good start but similar lists also exist at
MySociety, DirectGov and other places.

This is true.

What I would love to see is a single well recognised site where such
community orientated work is based - built up around a significant
piece of collaboration infrastructure.

I'm not too sure what this website would sell itself as. What's the focus, especially if you're considering on convincing MySociety to join.

I've seen impressive examples of both IBM Jazz and CollabNet TeamForge
and would not be surprised if either company would not be willing to
donate copies of the software for a cause like this (for suitable PR
rights obviously).

Maybe. I've actually never heard of these, and I've been into the offices of a lot of the Rewired State hackers. I can't really tell what IBM Jazz is ("Rational Team Concert"?) but both look focused on businesses, for projects that have multiple stakeholders and project managers etc.
We're developing with Open Source, in our spare time. The overhead, cost and closed-sourceness of these make them unsuitable from the outset.

I'm interested in other people's opinions of whether a list of
projects on multiple sites with separate source controls and no easy
mechanism for seeing the plans or status updates is fair enough for
where we are at currently or whether it would be worth trying to push
for some kind of more significant online development environment.

I don't just think that it's suitable for where we are at the moment, I think it's suitable for all open source development. If we were to create a site like this, I don't see what we could say it is. A collection of some project to do with Government, but not all? Not very catchy.

Rewired State has our projects page, which can link off to a github account, or a svn repository, plus a working site. This is pretty much as definitive as I think I'm comfertable getting.

Nb - even if people on this list think it's a good idea I would
suggest it's a no-go unless it could also be sold to the MySociety
folks.

I think you'll struggle, as they will have the same concerns that I have.

Thanks for the thoughts, but it just doesn't seem like the right fit.

--
James Darling

@coupde | 07811407085 | http://coupde.com

Rude? I loosely follow http://five.sentenc.es