Due to the expanding needs of our community, we're proposing a trial where one of our workgroups will move their specification development work to a W3C Community Group.
The proposal was posted by community members Kartik Kanakasabesan, Steve Speicher, Rainer Ersch, and Michael Fiedler in a letter to our Community mailing list, reprinted here in full:
Community Members,
As a community grows and evolves, its requirements for tools and infrastructure likewise evolve. Because of the growing membership and expanding interest in OSLC, it seems we are reaching the limits of our wiki and mailing lists hosted at http://open-services.net.
Accordingly, we have been evaluating alternatives that will make it easier for our members to meet, collaborate, communicate, and develop specifications. We believe we have found a good match for our needs with the tools available at W3C Community Groups (http://www.w3.org/community/about/#cg). Every W3C Community Group receives the following tools, each with professional support:
- A dedicated wiki
- Multiple mailing lists for the group
- Issue tracking
- A blog (with RSS)
- IRC tools to log meeting minutes
- and more. (For more details, see http://www.w3.org/community/about/tool/)
We propose a trial, where one OSLC workgroup will move their specification development work to a W3C Community Group.
We believe that using W3C’s infrastructure, which is tailored to collaborative specification development, will provide the following benefits:
- Every workgroup will have track able action items and issues
- The W3C’s infrastructure is better designed to scale for many workgroups
- Work with a vendor neutral specification development infrastructure
- Workgroups can continue to operate as they were
If the trial goes well, other OSLC workgroups could also migrate to W3C’s infrastructure; if not, the trial workgroup can return to http://open-services.net and we can explore other options.
This is simply an experiment with a set of tools we believe to be better for our workgroups. Using W3C Community Groups does not mean that OSLC is endorsed by W3C. Likewise, W3C will not interfere with the day-to-day operations of the OSLC workgroups. To participate in a W3C community group, you do not have to be a member of W3C. To learn more about participation at various venues at W3C, see http://www.w3.org/Consortium/activities.html#about
Before we proceed with the trial, we would like to get your thoughts, ideas, questions, or concerns on this experiment. We also welcome your suggestions for which OSLC workgroup to trial. Please post them at the following forum on the OSLC website: https://open-services.net//forums/viewthread/29/ Thank you. We look forward to hearing your thoughts between now till Jan 27th 5:00 pm EST.
Regards,
Kartik Kanakasabesan (OSLC Community Development)
Steve Speicher (Core and CM Workgroup lead)
Rainer Ersch (PLM Workgroup lead)
Michael Fiedler (Automation Workgroup Lead)
As the web developer for this site, I can attest that the expanding needs of our community are putting some stress on our existing infrastructure. I've received many requests for tooling that we can't easily provide and continually maintain here such as issue tracking, tracking for meeting minutes, and independent blogs. It appears that W3C Community Groups provide a strong set of tools for our workgroups to develop specifications; meanwhile, this site can continue to be the central showcase for everything OSLC.
There's a forum thread open to ask any questions, offer suggestions, or propose which workgroup should try out the tools on W3C.
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Forum