[Dspace-tech] Re: [Dspace-general] DSpace Position Paper - HP Labs (fwd)

[Jim Downing]

Hello all,

Not wishing to anticipate Rob's reply, I'm grateful to both Rob and
MacKenzie for being so clear and candid about how the ecosystem around
DSpace will have to work. Hopefully I can contribute to the process by
giving my opinion. 

With respect to 1.x
===================

-  We have an active repository on 1.1 (going to 1.2 as soon as it's
tagged). I'll support 1.2 in terms of small feature developments and bug
fixes for as long as Cambridge runs it (or my contract runs out :-)

-  If enough other committers show support I'd be keen to work on a 1.3
branch containing more significant changes in order to make DSpace more
maintainable in the medium term (and maybe fold in some of the
functionality that's written, but didn't make it into the 1.2 release).

-  Since I'm employed to look particularly at digital preservation (and
because I'm interested :-), I'll be trying to develop digital
preservation tools that could be integrated into either 1.x or 2.0.

With respect to DSpace2
=======================

-  Because of my digital preservation focus, I'll involve myself in the
design of future DSpace software in an attempt to ensure that DSpace
becomes a robust, extensible platform adequate to support future digital
preservation developments. Because we have an active repository I'll
also be trying to make sure that migration is a key factor in design
discussions.

On a personal note: I'm just one developer. Without a good deal of
community support for DSpace I doubt it will be feasible for me to work
on all the strands I've listed. Like all the other developers I'll have
to drop work which isn't directly aligned with local priorities if
compromises have to be made. I sincerely hope that more and more
organizations take on board MacKenzie's point (below) that the whole
community needs to get involved to make the OSS approach really work.

All the best,

jim

On Thu, 2004-07-29 at 15:59, MacKenzie Smith wrote:
<snip/>
> -- A thriving, successful open source software community can *only* exist 
> if *many* people are involved, and not just the originators (in fact, 
> there's a belief in some OSS quarters that a good project doesn't really 
> take off until the originator leave completely so that the community feels 
> free to do whatever they need to... we don't think we need to go that far, 
> but it's an illustrative point of view). As long as the user community 
> thinks of the originating organizations as a sort of unpaid vendor, the 
> thing will never work.
<snip/>