As announced previously, I’ll be at LSM/RMLL this week, in Mont-de-Marsan, trying to discuss libre software, forges and other Debian-related issues with all the nice geeks around.
You’ll have chances to see me in rooms identified on my shared calendar.
30/06/2008
/me at RMLL/LSM
11/06/2008
Codex liberated: here comes Codendi
Codex was the name of the forge developped by Xerox on the code base of SourceForge. Although Xerox once contributed parts as free software which ended-up in libre versions of the sourceforge codebase (in Savane or GForge, if I remember well ?), it seems there were still parts that were proprietary (I’m not a user myself, just talked to people who know better).
Although it was used by numerous projects at clients of Xerox (and internally), I’m not sure the strategy was clear for Xerox, mainly considering the cost of maintenance of these complex platforms. Xerox made a business of service around Codex, but wasn’t so sure about the licensing strategy, I think, and wether being an editor for Codex was something really interesting. There were some trolls around when the subject was mentioned, together with the interesting features in Codex that lacked in GForge, for instance, when would they contribute to the free world, etc.
They have apparently make up their minds and liberated the parts of the code that weren’t free, and also renamed the software which is now called Codendi (it had passed under my radar, but I got the news at the workshop of french forgerons).
This opens new opportunities for collaboration for Xerox and the users of Codex/Codendi, and may help achieve some convergence between GForge and Codendi, on parts which keep quite similar in both software which initially started out of the last free versions of SourceForge (through plugin infrastructure unification ?).
After the liberation of Scilab, yet another new libre software !
Let’s hope that this is a very good news for the future of the forges in general.
Congratulations Xerox !
French forge community workshop summary : very interesting
A quick report of the workshop held last week at La Cantine (Paris) about forges I had announced some time ago.
It was a great meeting, although loosely organized, which grouped around 25 actors of our french-speaking community of forgerons.
It seems some fruitful collaborations will probably emerge from better knowing each-other and understanding that most people and organizations there were sharing similar concerns or views on forges.
See the short report Benoît Sibaud wrote at : http://wiki.planetforge.org/index.php/Compte_Rendu_Rencontre_forges_2008_06_resume.
