[Compcomm] The Next Step

[Jeffrey Laramie]

I've started putting some of our discussions on the previous threads together 
into an outline. Despite some of our less productive posts, we've actually 
had many good ideas and suggestions. I had hoped to include everything at 
once, but there is just too much to organize in one evening (I didn't get to 
work on RYX's idea for teams yet). I'm in-lining the material here, but If 
you go to http://rock3d.org/index.php?section=8 you can see it formatted a 
little nicer:

Community Description 

I've taken the description of the Compiz-Extra division and added a little 
detail. I'm reluctant to add too many specifics unless we have individuals 
who step up and say "I'm going to be responsible for that" and those 
individuals can back up their promises with actual code.

    * The Composite Community division (to be re-named) will include plugins 
and other programs that provide functionality which is not essential to the 
operation of Compiz-Core.
    * Composite Community will have a broad focus on plugins, decorators, 
libraries, and other programs and will include stable, developmental, and 
experimental code.
    * We will create various packages for our code. The primary packages will 
be based on the maturity and quality of the code, with only the highest 
quality code being included in official releases. We will create additional 
meta-packages that combine the various programs into packages that target a 
specific user segment (e.g. distro-specific, DE-specific, 
program-type-specific).
    * We will include functionality and code that can be used universally, 
used with a specific DE, or can be run on compiz without a DE.
    * Composite Community will focus on the developers creating and 
maintaining the Composite Community programs and on end users. We will use 
the full range of applications available to us in order to provide support to 
our developers and users. These tools may include a web site, wiki, forum, 
content management system, weblog, bug trackers, and any other software that 
supports our goals.
    * The goal of the Composite Community division is to develop Compiz 
related software and support the use of Compiz on all desktops. We will focus 
our efforts on integrating our code into existing Desktop Environments and 
Linux distributions, as well as on creating code that can be used independent 
of existing environments and distributions.

Migration Path

Currently we have two independent communities hosted primarily on two 
different servers. The repositories of the Compiz/Compiz-Extra community are 
scattered amongst a number of private sites. We need to merge the two sites 
in a way that takes advantage of all the resources available to us.

   1. The Compiz site and wiki remain hosted on the Dreamhost server. This 
site primarily provides information to users about Compiz and supports the 
Compiz-Core developers. The current link to the Compiz forum can be replaced 
with a link to the new combined forum.
   2. The Compiz and Beryl forums are merged into a new vBulletin forum hosted 
on the Sophia Antipolis server. The forum link from both the Compiz and Beryl 
sites will point to the combined forum. The main website (cms/wiki?) and the 
forum are the two most demanding web services we offer and they should be on 
separate servers. The repos may use lots of bandwidth, but they put 
relatively little demand on a server and downloads can easily be spread out 
over multiple mirrors.
   3. The new community website will be hosted on the Dreamhost server. This 
server has a tremendous amount of bandwidth and storage available currently, 
and JP has indicated that Novell is interested in providing more resources if 
we need them. It is currently a shared server, but if we can make a case for 
a dedicated server than that may be an option as well.
   4. Once we have the combined forum functional, we can have a discussion and 
vote (if needed) about a name for our community. Once we have a combined 
community, the naming discussion should be relatively painless. We just need 
to make sure we don't end up with an endless discussion and voting process.
   5. Weblogs / bug trackers / other services - We can use the JustinRK server 
or any of the other servers available to us. I don't think there is a 
difference unless someone else knows of a reason to select one over an other.