OpenNTF Friday Review 2

A busy week at OpenNTF, heres a summary of some of our activities:

New Projects
Elenchus - XPage based Q&A application. Uses Voting and Karma points to build up answer reputation.
Fugue Icon collection - The Fugue icon collection in an NTF for your eases of use

Updated Projects
DXL Magic - Tools and sample code to export, import, document and maipulate DXL
Domain Patrol - Gives you control of all databases, templates, agents, scriptl ibraries and acl entries.
NotesToWeb - Notes to Web Javascript Framework

Remember if you want to write a feature on your project to publish here or request help from other developers then email newsdesk@openntf.org.

Catalogs
We now have two catalogs at OpenNTF, one is for Apache and the other is for GPL etc. There is then the project management system, where all the development/activity takes place, which will host both (but clearly marked and a filter will be possible for those who have a preference). Once a milestone is reached on your project and relevant procedures are actioned (more on those soon), then they will be added to the relevant catalog/repository.

You cannot yet see actually see the GPL catalog from the navigation as firstly its empty, but mainly we are just finishing the UI so you can access them both from the same place with clear descriptions on what they are both for.

The arrangement may seem a little strange to some, and its never going to be perfect and I think everyone would say one big catalog is by far the best way to do this. However it is felt to be the best middle ground for community and corporate requests. I guess an explanation here (because as software developers we know we can do filters), is that if we wanted to put the catalog on cd, or allow replication directly into your organisation, some places have a strict rule on GPL (others do not). So we just have to be mindful that going forwards we do not exclude anybody from enjoying the results of the site.

IdeaJam
Niklas posted about how we are now making it possible for IdeaJam to be used not just for the OpenNTF site but for your projects as well. Initially it will be a bit manual, using an email to request a new space, no integration with the project management, but in time will will improve this. Read Niklas's post here.

Technical Committee
Between many tea breaks, the Technical Committee is being kept busy. This week it has been cleaning up parts of this site, starting to sort out the catalogs, planning for the project management upgrade, ~~going on~~ fixing Safari issues, building internal task tracking systems, setting up wikis, building forum directories, opening up IdeaJam and a whole lot more.

Rob Novak - SNAPPS
The Steering Committee regrets not being able furthermore to directly profit from Rob Novak's invaluable advice and vision as a Steering Committee member. But we fully respect his personal reasons to adjust the priorities of his workload. OpenNTF is happy to continue drawing support from SNAPPS's membership as one of the founding members of the rejuvenated OpenNTF Alliance. Everyone would like to place on record gratitude to Rob for his help and guidance so far on OpenNTF. We look forward to continuing our relationship with SNAPPS, as continued members, going forwards in achieving our goals.

I guess this moment should not pass without offering the same thanks to Bruce Elgort and Elguji whose similar work, until recently, was also hugely appreciated by everyone and helped us take this road to getting things in place.

New members
We are receiving applications for new members (you can do so here) and we shall shortly be doing a promotion of OpenNTF membership, together with new Steering Committee membership. First we need to tidy up our process and the member application pages, as currently they are not great. A job for the next week so more very soon.

And Finally...
The people engaged in the current transformation of OpenNTF in OpenNTF's committees and working groups are grateful for the attention and feedback the Lotus community pays to this evolutionary transition process.

We try and listen to everyone and will indeed learn many lessons along the way. We take our responsibility very seriously to keep true to the community whilst paving a way into an exciting new future of building high quality Lotus Notes and Domino software for all environments. We look forward to continued collaboration with the highly valued community, customers and partners.