OpenNTF Friday Review 4

Bit of a breather since the last Friday review, a lot of people on vacation in August.

New Projects
Installation Application - This application can be used to install views, web services and plugins. With a slight modification, other design elements can be installed as well.
Widget Library - This project contains various widgets that can be run in the IBM Lotus Notes client.
NotePress - NotePress was born to be the easiest and fastest way to start blogging with Notes.
Lotus Analyzer - This utility is intended for verification of code LS in the chosen base by means of DXML of exporter and similarly serves as the certain measuring device of quality of the written code
Bookmark Viewer for IBM Lotus Connections - The Bookmark Viewer allows replications from bookmarks from IBM Lotus Connections into the Notes client.
SWT Inspector - SWT Inspector is an Eclipse plugin developer tool used to inspect all the child controls under a SWT Shell Window.
Rich client extension samples - Rich client extension samples contain examples about how to 1. add launcher items to launcher, 2. how to add a sidebar panel, 3. how to add context menus and 4. how to add a web search engine to the Notes search list.

Updated Projects
You can see all the projects that have been updated here.

Alliance Documentation Finalised
After extensive consultation with Alliance members and the community, the final version of the Alliance documentation (membership agreement, individual contribution license agreement etc) has been approved and is now available from this site (see about tab).

The significance of these for the average community member being that "employers permission/you have the right to the work you submit" becomes self certified, unless your employer is an Alliance member already. This removes a significant "potential" barrier to participation on OpenNTF.

About and Get Involved tabs update on OpenNTF site
The about and get involved tabs have been updated now this final documentation is available. Hopefully you will find both easy to follow and provide instant information on how to become a member and/or participate on this site.

GPL Committer appointed and GPL manager required
With the project management system allowing you to select either GPL or Apache licenses, and the availability of a GPL catalog, it was a pressing need to appoint a GPL "committer" (responsible for checking projects at milestones for onward publishing to the appropriate catalog). Declan Lynch has kindly offered to help in this role.

We still need another committer to help with GPL, together with an "IP manager". We do have a resource to train, mentor for these roles so previous experience is not required.

Membership Drive
Now the documentation is completed and this site has clearer guidance pages (about and get involved) we will shortly be kicking off a recruitment drive for new members (including for the Steering committee) and new contributors/committers.

This does not just involve creating a new blog post on this, but needs a community effort and some thought on how to attract people not just inside the usual community.

I would really welcome your thoughts, comments, help on this either in the comments on this post or via email - steve dot castledine at uk dot ibm dot com.

Site/Infrastructure
A full review of the OpenNTF infrastructure is underway, and we now have additional server capacity, amongst many other things, in place. Shortly we will be able to improve on our services to our users. More soon.

8.5.1 Initiatives
With Lotus Notes Domino 8.5.1 just around the corner, we plan some initiatives and announcements to coincide with that release. More coming soon (including additions to the product that were specifically requested to help OpenNTF in the coming year).