[ubl-ttsc] SourceForge information and recommendation

["Eve L. Maler" <eve.maler@sun.com>]

As a co-owner of the TTSC "code management" issue, I wanted to report on 
what I found out from Norm about SourceForge.

It's used for the "source code" (schemas, DTDs, stylesheets and XML source 
for documents) for DocBook, Catalog, and for some of RELAX NG (all are 
OASIS TCs).  Norm uses the revision control, bug tracking, and release 
control features, which he finds provide for enough metadata storage to get 
the job done.  You have to be made a member of a project 
(password-protected) in order to change files.

Underneath is CVS, which of course isn't XML-enabled but does a pretty good 
job of diff-tracking otherwise.  CVS doesn't lock files, though it does 
attempt to do intelligent merging if two people have checked something 
out.  Also note that CVS doesn't handle storing and diffing of binary files 
such as .doc very well (a reason for us to be producing our specs in XML or 
at least XHTML!).

(Norm mentioned that he's still working on making his "diffmk" XML-enabled 
differencing program a web service...)

A note about the issue of storing specifications on SourceForge.  Norm 
doesn't "publish" final-HTML-form specifications (which he generates from 
XML) out of SourceForge because it seems inappropriate to usurp OASIS's 
role in this.  I would tend to agree.  This would mean a split in where we 
store stuff, though, and it adds a bit of a management burden.  I've copied 
Karl Best for his reaction: Karl, how would you feel about our providing 
links from our "Documents" section to a SourceForge page that actually 
offers the document for download?

Finally, one more point and another question for Karl: SourceForge itself 
was the first project of SourceForge, and that means it's available to be 
installed and used elsewhere!  Is there any chance that OASIS might 
consider hosting a SourceForge site from oasis-open.org?

My recommendation would be that we go ahead and use SourceForge for at 
least schemas, stylesheets, tools, and other code-y stuff, and also use its 
issue-tracking feature (which was a B-priority item).  It's well used and 
well proven, and I don't see any other obvious choice that meets our 
criteria for being Internet-based and offering access control.  However, if 
Dave (the other co-owner of the code management issue) has other thoughts, 
I defer...

	Eve
--
Eve Maler                                    +1 781 442 3190
Sun Microsystems XML Technology Center   eve.maler @ sun.com