Hello fellows !
Long time this mailing list has not been used hm? ;) As you may
already be aware, Google launched a project code hosting service
recently. I am personally beginning to get interested in this
opportunity, because of the reasons I will list below. Anyone is
welcome to comment and suggest freely on these, or to prove me wrong
(I would be delighted !). These are just my "annoyances" that I would
like to discuss about.
Currently, sourceforge has a few problems. They are caused by the fact
that the OSTG aims at providing service for very large and complex
projects (such as gaim?), and that they serve millions users,
resulting in quite a bulky swiss-knife interface, on top of some
stability and speed issues. So here goes (and sorry if I may sound a
little rough):
- sometimes, the website and/or the project pages are REALLY really slow.
- I somewhat question the stability of the services. I think that, to
some extent, google might handle load better with their huge beowulf
cluster of atomic supermen.
- the advertising everywhere is %&%& pissing me off (whatsmore,
advertising for "Get The Facts" on top of that!?)
- the user interface is.. let's say, hardcore/advanced/bloated/scary?
I personally do not feel so much features are needed, but I expect
google will add lots of them someday.
- the sourceforge bug trackers and forums should be KILLED WITH FIRE!
- no matter what I do, I have to read a few pages of documentation to
do something on SF. I'm lazy.
- their shell and cvs service is slow. And I mean, slow like sinking
deep slow with nautilus begging me to never upload new content on the
website with it again!
Now, of course, that would mean we would directly migrate to a google
subversion repository instead of our current sourceforge CVS. That can
be considered as a great plus, or it could annoy others, so I would
like to hear any opinions on that.
There are some things that really please me with google such as:
- fast, clean, responsive interface
- their issue tracker makes sense
Now, here are some disadvantages I am listing, hopefully you can give
me your feedback on them:
- missing some good features such as website space. I guess we could
keep the sourceforge-based website, though it is slow? Some other
features will be added later too (such as a release area for tarballs)
- everybody would need to use a google (gmail) account. Would this
cause ethical problems to anyone? If not, I can also provide gmail
accounts for anyone who wants one. I have over a hundred invitations
waiting to be given ;)
- what if google becomes evil?
- should we migrate data from our launchpad.net account?
I am awaiting for your comments. Flame ahead! ;-)
Kiddo / Jeff
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