[kforge-user] Call for Participation in KForge Club

John Bywater john.bywater at appropriatesoftware.net
Mon Aug 3 11:15:31 UTC 2009


CALL FOR PARTICIPATION IN KFORGE CLUB

We are pleased to be able to invite you to participate in KForge Club.

JOIN THE CLUB
Please participate by joining the club at the service desk:
<http://appropriatesoftware.net/foundation/KForgeClub.html>

BACKGROUND
For the last 4 years the costs of developing KForge have been borne by 
the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Appropriate Software Foundation.

In order to support the development of KForge into the future we are now 
creating a software club as a mechanism for sharing the costs of 
development and guiding that process.  We should emphasize that KForge 
will, of course, remain open-source software.

What is KForge?

KForge is an open-source (GPL) Python-based system for software and 
knowledge project hosting.  It re-uses many existing best-of-breed tools 
such as a versioned storage (subversion, hg), a tracker (trac), a wiki 
(trac or moinmoin) and others (mailman, joomla, etc.) by adapting them 
as services within the system's own facilities (projects, members, 
roles, etc).  KForge also provides a complete web interface for 
administration of project members and services, as well a 
fully-developed plugin system so that new kinds of services can be 
easily added.

Why KForge Club?

It is clear that there are common hosting needs across many software and 
knowledge projects.  KForge Club is a way to share the cost of 
developing project hosting capabilities, so that every project can 
benefit from an open, high-quality, well-supported offering.

At this time, the key objectives are: to complete KForge v1.0 software; 
to sustain the KnowledgeForge.net service; and to host the club.

SCHEDULE
Monday, Aug 3  2009 - Call for Participation
Monday, Aug 17 2009 - Call for New Proposals
Monday, Sep 14 2009 - Call for Interest
Monday, Oct 12 2009 - Call for Agreement

PARTICIPATION
Joining the club is free of charge.  Members will be involved in a safe 
and transparent process of sharing common costs.  Members will be 
invited to submit new proposals, and to comment on proposals submitted 
by others.

The club will publish a prospectus of costed proposals.  Members will be 
asked to evaluate the benefit of each proposal.  Possible shares of the 
cost of each proposal will be discussed, and conditional agreements 
drafted.

The club will call for final agreement of any conditional agreements. 
Proposals that reach consensus are actioned, with progress reported at 
fixed intervals.

The cycle will then be repeated.

Information on how clubs work is published on the club tutorial page.
http://appropriatesoftware.net/foundation/ClubTutorial.html

ABOUT US
KForge Club is hosted by John Bywater (Appropriate Software Foundation) 
and Rufus Pollock (Open Knowledge Foundation).

The Appropriate Software Foundation is a service-oriented software and 
organisation development consultancy, dedicated to creating and 
providing open-source software services that enable small organisations 
to accomplish their objects.

The Open Knowledge Foundation is a not-for-profit organization founded 
in 2004 and dedicated to promoting open knowledge in all its forms.  It 
is a leader in this field nationally and internationally.  The 
Foundation's activities are organized around individual working groups 
and projects, each focused on a different aspect of open knowledge, but 
united by a common set of concerns, and a common set of traditions in 
both etiquette and process.




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