[redhat-ccm-list] Community update

[Bob Jacoby]

Richard,

While I like open-source applications and use them when practical I like to make sure there is a readily available mechanism to support them (through community or paid support) before I use them for critical purposes. For the larger projects like linux, apache, etc it exists. To my knowledge such a strong level of community support doesn't exist for CCM so I question the viability of CCM as a true open source, community driven product. This was one reason why my company purchased the support and maintenance contracts through Red Hat. I would like more information on Red Hat's short and long term vision for their involvment in CCM.

Could you please answer the following questions:
1. What does this mean to those of us who have maintenance and support contracts with Red Hat for CCM? 

2. Will Red Hat still provide maintenance and support contracts for CCM after it's moved to Object Web?

3. Will Red Hat employees work on CCM development as part of their Red Hat duties or solely on their own time? You mentioned that the CCM engineering team will no longer be dedicated to CCM development. What percentage of their time will be spent on CCM development? How many resources are you removing from CCM development and support that would need to be replaced by ObjectWeb and the community to maintain the current level of CCM development?

4. What does the short-term development for CCM look like? For example, is the latest 6.1 release the last that will come out of Red Hat or will there be an interim release while ObjectWeb takes the reins?

5. What long-term support does Red Hat intend to provide for CCM development?  

6. And, on a more minor note, but something that caused problems for us while we were developing our first release... What will happen to this mailing list and archives? Will they be ported to ObjectWeb? If so, will this list stay up until a new one is available on ObjectWeb?

Thanks,
Bob

>>> Richard Li <richardl at redhat.com> 08/16/04 01:06PM >>>
Dear Community,

Over the past few months, we have been listening to a lot of public and private feedback about our development process, our software, and the community. Some of these improvements to date include:

+ Simplification of the installation / configuration process with the current builds
+ General release of all documentation to the community
+ PostgreSQL support in 5.2.1

Many in the community have commented on the closed nature of the development process. After much discussion, we have decided that we need to do a fundamental shift in the CCM product direction, and hopefully for the better.

Significantly:

+ The ObjectWeb consortium (www.objectweb.org) has agreed to host the CCM code and community
+ We are relicensing all the code under the LGPL
+ CCM 6.1, the latest version of CCM, will be made available for general public release
+ The mailing lists will migrate to the ObjectWeb servers
+ Red Hat will no longer be the cathedral of CCM development; instead, Red Hat individuals work work with other CCM developers to push the software going forward. The CCM engineering team will no longer be dedicated to CCM development.
+ Red Hat will not be marketing CCM as a separate product line

We hope that this approach will encourage a broader developer and community base. Initially, we will be administering the site, but we hope to add external community contributors as quickly as possible.

There is a lot of work to do here, and it won't happen all at once. We're in the process of figuring out a new name for CCM (there is an existing OpenCCM project on ObjectWeb); we have to set up a project web site; and so forth. I expect that the above steps (ObjectWeb, LGPL, 6.1, etc) will take the better part of a month, but we will be moving as rapidly as possible.

Thanks,
Richard


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