Andrew, the pear.php.net repository site really
seems to be essentially what I was envisioning
(especially with the proposals section).

Erik, there are several good reasons to build our
own rather than use space available in other
domains.  The first and foremost is that the
library community is big enough and specific
enough to warrant its own centralized location for these things.

Another issue is that there are a large range of
skills that are useful to library application
development that simply aren't touched on in
other areas.  There are plenty of people who
understand AACR2, FRBR, LCSH etc that wouldn't go
near a place like sourceforge thinking there is no room for them there.

Simple branding is another very important
reason.  Google the phrase 'library open source'
and tell me if the results give you any sense
that the library community is actively developing
open source tools/libraries/applications/etc. to meet its needs.

I've known a fair amount of library-staff who
work on little code projects in isolation, who if
they knew there was a larger project they could
work on and get involved with they would (this is
also true for the relatively large number of
ex-software developers I've met in libraries).
Snippets of code and various packages/libraries
need to be organized and collected, but the
larger aim would be to create a community of
people interested in creating open source software applications for libraries.

--Will



At 05:12 PM 8/13/2007, you wrote:
>At Mon, 13 Aug 2007 12:25:58 -0400,
>Gabriel Farrell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > In #code4lib today we discussed for a bit the possibility of setting up
> > something on code4lib.org for code hosting.  The project that spurred
> > the discussion is Ed Summer's pymarc.  The following is what I would
> > like to see:
> >
> > * projects live at code.code4lib.org, so pymarc, for example, would be
> >   at code.code4lib.org/pymarc
> > * svn for version control
> > * trac interface for each
> > * hosted at OSU with the rest of code4lib.org, for now
>
>What will this offer that sf.net, codehaus.org, nongnu.org,
>savannah.gnu.org, code.google.com, gna.org, belios.de, etc. don’t? Why
>not simply link to
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_hosting_facilities>
>and let people decide which they prefer?
>
>Other people mentioned the sharing of code snippets; a wiki works best
>for sharing code snippets, examples, & single file source. See
><http://emacswiki.org/> for a lively example.
>
>best,
>Erik Hetzner
>