OSAF Status Update Number 3

The third status update can be found on the wiki at:  
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Main/UpdateNumber3.

I've also attached it below, although the formatting isn't as nice.

Mitchell


Status Update #3 -- April 3, 2003

It's been a while since the last report, as I was traveling for a bit.  
There's a lot going on at OSAF these days.

1.  0.1 Release

We've continued to work on the upcoming 0.1 release, which is described 
in the 
[[http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Main/ZeroPointOneRelease][0.1 
docs]] I posted a while back, and also in Mitch's recent blog postings  
[http://blogs.osafoundation.org/mitch/]. We think we've got most of the 
basic parcel functionality pulled together, but there is still a chunk 
of work to do to get it ready to release. 

We've arranged for Mitch and Andy to give a presentation 
[http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2003/view/e_sess/4340] at the 
O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference at the end of April, and for 
OSAF staff to do a Birds of a Feather session 
[http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2003/view/e_sess/4349].   We're 
also planning to hold a series of online chat sessions after the 0.1 
release to answer questions and be generally available.  Ducky Sherwood 
will host these to provide continuity, and we'll have the relevant 
developers available.  We know most people can't go to the Emerging 
Technologies conference, so we're hoping this is a good alternative. 

2.  Design, Architecture and Product Planning

Ducky has taken the set of email requirements 
[http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Main/EmailRequirements] she put 
together and posted a while back  and is working on prioritizing them. 

Our thinking about database architecture has begun to coalesce.  Rys has 
posted a set of documents reflecting the current state of his thinking.  
These are interim documents, we're not ready to say they reflect 
"current OSAF thinking" until other OSAF staff have had a chance to 
digest them and think through all the issues.  So right now you'll find 
them in the Jungle.  To find them, you can scroll down the Jungle page 
to the list of contributors until you find and click on Rys's name, and 
then see the list of what he's posted.  (This makes me think that the 
top level Jungle page could be reordered for clarity, something I'll put 
on my list of things to look into.) Once the documents reflect a shared 
consensus of OSAF staff, we'll move them into the Chandler Discussion 
Topics with the "current OSAF thinking" label.  As you can tell, we're 
being rather conservative in this.  But we feel it's better to be 
careful than to describe something as our current plan of record until 
we're a little surer that it really is a plan shared by most of staff.

Brian Skinner has volunteered to help us document the data model.  
Document is a bit of a misnomer since Brian is really serving as a 
forcing function by organizing these issues and pointing out all the 
things we need to think about.   We're thrilled to have Brian's help, 
and he's causing our thinking on the data model to progress much faster 
than it otherwise would.   There's not enough to post yet, but this is 
an important area where Brian is helping us get good traction.  Katie is 
working with Brian on this, as well as thinking about an API for the 
Python repository.

Morgen is working on migrating to Python2.3 and wxPython2.4.0.7

3.  Investigation of Higher Education Opportunities

In addition, many of us have spent time thinking about the world of 
"Higher Education" and what Chandler would need to make sense for use in 
a university setting.  OSAF has just received a  grant 
[http://www.osafoundation.org/MellonAnnouncement_Mar-31-2003.htm] from 
the Andrew Mellon Foundation to do more detailed planning  as to  how 
Chandler might meet university requirements.  OSAF will continue on its 
initial development course, while simultaneously investigating what else 
would be required for Chandler to be useful in a university setting.  
Katie, Ducky, Lou, Alexs and Jurgen have all spend some time on the 
technical evaluation.  Chao is orchestrating the effort and I am 
coordinating our interaction with the Mellon Foundation and a number of 
universities.  Chao and Pieter are working on pulling this investigation 
into a cohesive plan.  After that we'll evaluate the feasibility of a 
version of Chandler aimed at the Higher Education market.

4.  General

Michael Toy is learning his way around our plans, build system, python, 
and the set of development issues we hope he'll manage for us.  
Sometimes he feels as if his head is going to burst, but we're confident 
he'll stuff the necessary info into his head and keep on going.

Chao is trying to coordinate the 0.1 Release, development of the product 
roadmap and our investigation of the needs of Higher Education.  Chao's 
not as voluble as Michael in describing how close his head is to 
exploding, but he's got a million things on his plate.


I've been looking into the licensing plans for Chandler.  The plan of 
record has been to adopt a model similar to that used by mySQL, 
Sleepycat and Roadrunner.  In this model, recipients must either (a) 
make their entire application available under the GPL or other approved 
open source license, or (b) get a commercial license from OSAF.  This 
model would allow the open source world to use Chandler as open source 
software, and would retain the possibility of commercial licensing fees 
to OSAF.  I haven't found any "show-stopper" issues with this model so 
far.   I'll be starting a discussion of this on the OSAF mailing lists 
shortly, so if you've got thoughts please let me know.

 Mitchell

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