20040819

Finding a home for your open source baby

Assuming you are intending on using Java and a license like LGPL then here are some choices.



So what are your requirements from a host?


  • CVS or similar

  • Website

  • Mailing List

  • Bug Tracking

  • Membership Management

  • Automated Build & Test

  • Download Server

  • High Visibility

  • Good Security

  • Legal Aid



This is a good place to start. No host matches all the requirements, but they are after all free services.
But it comes down to 2 really, sf.net and java.net and by all accounts there is not much to choose between them. java.net sounds more reliable (probably because its is still small), sf.net has slightly better features and visibility.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I recently OSed my project (Chameleon), and initially I wanted to go to Jakarta, so I submitted to the incubator. Well, since I wasn't an ASM member, I needed an ASM sponsor or get several other members to back me. In short, no luck. It seems the big projects, like MyFaces and BEA's stuff get in without too much hesitation. It appears pretty much a semi-closed network. I'm not really complaining about jakarta's incubator and I understand that they want to screen projects, but then I kind of thought that is what the incubator was for.

So I then went to java.net. After waiting over 2 weeks to hear anything at all about my submition I gave up on them and went to sourceforge. I was up and running within a day, case closed. I though about Codehaus but after waiting over a month between Jakarta and Java.net I got a bit impatient.

Having said all of that, I wouldn't actually mind moving my project to a community, such as Codehaus or Jakarta in the future as I feel the community support would be a huge benefit. The problem with going to Sourceforge is that it is hard to get the project exposure.

- Robert McIntosh