[ZF] Please comment! Re: Zope Development Process

[Jim Fulton]

Steve Alexander wrote:
...
> What is a Zope Foundation Project?
> 
> * Some things are common to all ZF projects:
> 
>  - Committers are ZF contributor members who have been granted
>    commit access and have signed a joint copyright form.
> 
>  - The code is licensed under the ZPL, and at least jointly
>    owned by the ZF.
> 
> * Some things are specific to a particular project, but follow a set
> pattern:
> 
>  - There is an owner, who has the power to delegate responsibility
>    for things like release management, security contact, pope-ness,
>    to other people or groups of people.
> 
>  - There may be a release manager.
> 
>  - There is a security contact.
> 
>  - There may be a pope of some kind, a chief maintainer.
> 
>  - The project has a name, a home page with basic information about it.
> 
>  - The project has a place in a version control system.

Note that ZF projects, as described in the *current* by laws, membership agreement and IP policy:

- Have a project management committee

- Have representation on a 3 councils

- Have charters that define, among other things how new project members are added

IOW, projects as defined by the current documents are pretty heavyweight.


> == A lightweight project ==

I think we need lightweight projects. They seem to be different from ZF
projects. Perhaps Martijn's idea of development projects, which I'd be happy
to call products, is what you are talking about.

> == Launchpad ==
> 

...

> Launchpad uses slightly different terminology: an organisation like the
> Zope Foundation is a "project" in Launchpad.  What we've been calling
> "projects" are "products" in Launchpad.

Or maybe what the ZF docs call projects are projects in Launchpad and
what Martijn calls development projects are products in launchpad.

> You can register a Zope Foundation project in Launchpad, and then
> register a bunch of products associated with that.  Each product gets
> its own description of what it is about, and you can say who are the
> maintainers, security contacts, and so on.

See above. What do projects get?

> There was some discussion of fishbowl processes, proposals, etc.  I ask
> that you consider using the "feature tracker" in Launchpad for tracking
> proposals.  You can see a demonstration version with Zope proposals
> loaded into it here:
> 
>   https://features.demo.launchpad.net/products/zope
> 
> This is not the "live" Launchpad, but a separate server set up to
> demonstrate things and allow people to experiment with the site.
> 
> The feature tracker has proved very useful for planning what goes into
> particular releases of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, and having a
> workflow for getting the general direction of a proposal approved by the
> right "popes", and recording the development status of the proposals.

FWIW, I have a non-demo product in Launchpad, zc.buildout:

   https://launchpad.net/products/zc.buildout

This illustrates some basic use of the bug tracker and feature manager.

I've been abusing pypi to provide a homepage:

   http://www.python.org/pypi/zc.buildout

One thing I'm missing is a good way to communicate with buildout users,
like a mailing list or blog or some such.  Are there any plans for
Launchpad to help there?

Also, does Launchpad have any mechanism for importing or exporting data such
as bugs and features?

Jim

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