Ken --

Thanks for this info and for forwarding my initial message to the LIS-OSS mailing list.  There does seem to be some overlap, and I need to study the great content on the wiki.

On a similar note, if folks are aware of other efforts in other disciplines or areas of the world, I'd appreciate hearing about them.


Peter

On Jul 27, 2011, at 10:03 AM, Ken Chad wrote:
> The issue of building a community was also looked at in a JISC supported
> SCONUL project earlier this year that culminated in the 'Open Edge, Open
> source in libraries' event. It looks to me that what you are doing could be
> a great way to help move the agenda forward.
> 
> The theme of the initiative was 'building capacity to help enable open
> source solutions to flourish in the HE library community'. After the event a
> (JISCMail) discussion list was set up [log in to unmask] 
> 
> The outputs of the initiative and conference now form part of the SCONUL
> Higher Education Library Technology (HELibTech) wiki. This has a general
> page on open source
> http://helibtech.com/Open+Source and specific pages on 'community'
> http://helibtech.com/open+source+community and a very preliminary start at
> mapping various forms of 'capacity' (e.g. development expertise, expertise
> of licensing etc). http://helibtech.com/Open+Source+Capacity
> 
> Ken
> CEO, Ken Chad Consulting Ltd
> Tel +44 (0)7788 727 845. Email: [log in to unmask] 
> www.kenchadconsulting.com
> Skype: kenchadconsulting   Twitter: @KenChad
> Open Library Systems Specifications:  http://libtechrfp.wikispaces.com
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Peter Murray
> Sent: 18 July 2011 16:02
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Seeking feedback on database design for an open
> source software registry
> 
> Nate --
> 
> Thanks for the pointer to NITRC.  There are some good interface elements
> there that might be useful to emulate.
> 
> I want to be clear that our grant mandate extends only to the FreshMeat
> registry functionality.  Source code hosting is definitely out of scope for
> what we are doing.
> 
> Building community will be hard, particularly because the intent of the
> registry isn't for just developers themselves but also for any library that
> is interested in applying open source solutions to their library needs.  It
> doesn't mean that the library will be developing or running the software
> themselves (that is where the "Provider" entity comes in, and it is a point
> that distinguishes this registry from FreshMeat and NITRC).
> 
> 
> Peter
> 
> On Jul 17, 2011, at 11:22 PM, Nate Vack wrote:
>> 
>> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 2:09 PM, Peter Murray <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>>> On Jul 15, 2011, at 2:59 PM, Mike Taylor wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Isn't this pretty much what FreshMeat is for?
>>>>       http://freshmeat.net/
>>> 
>>> It is similar in concept to Freshmeat, but the scope is limited to
> library-oriented software (which might be too use-specific for Freshmeat and
> certainly harder to find among the vast expanse of non-library-oriented
> stuff).
>> 
>> You might look at NITRC[1], which has tried very hard to do the same
>> thing for neuroscience software in addition to providing project
>> hosting like Sourceforge. They get funded by some federal grant
>> thing[2].
>> 
>> Unfortunately, they've also found that the world wasn't really looking
>> for a site to review and host a small subset of open-source projects,
>> so their usage isn't high. They've convinced some projects to come
>> live in their domain, so they seem to attract enough funding to stay
>> online, but they've never succeeded in becoming much of a community.
>> And the "people who do neuroscience" crowd is probably two orders of
>> magnitude larger than the "people who do open-source in libraries"
>> crowd -- so building a vibrant community will be even harder in this
>> case.
>> 
>> The real problem for me is that their site doesn't seem to warrant
>> enough attention to really be made usable or stay up reliably. So if
>> you want to get software that's hosted only by them, it can be really
>> frustrating. It's like a crappy FreshMeat combined with a crappy,
>> unreliable Sourceforge.
>> 
>> My ultimate take: you can probably do something more interesting with
>> your grant money than building a FreshMeat-alike.
>> 
>> Either way, you might talk to the NITRC folks about their experiences



-- 
Peter Murray         [log in to unmask]        tel:+1-678-235-2955                 
Ass't Director, Technology Services Development   http://dltj.org/about/
LYRASIS   --    Great Libraries. Strong Communities. Innovative Answers.
The Disruptive Library Technology Jester                http://dltj.org/ 
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