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MakingHostingBetter
The general direction and scope of project hosting on Google Code
Making Project Hosting on Google Code BetterIf you are interested in understanding the why Google Code's project hosting facility has and doesn't have certain features, how to get bugs fixed, or contribute ideas, then this document is for you. IntroductionTo start with the basics, why do we host open source projects in the first place? The short answer is that project hosting exists to help the open source world. We've infused a slightly longer answer into our mission statement: Mission StatementTo support the open source community by providing a scalable, reliable, and fast collaborative development environment for open source software, docs, and standards that promotes best practices in open source software engineering. We spent a lot of time on that sentence and really tried to pack it with meaning. So, if you'll indulge us, let's explain why our mission statement is formulated the way that it is: "To support the open source community"Our primary goal is to do what we think is best for the open source community as a whole. One way of helping is to provide a lightweight collaborative development environment that's designed to be used as a one-stop project hosting facility or provide a la carte features to meet the needs of an open source project that just needs one part of our system. Our goal is to provide project hosting features that are generally useful for open source software development. This means that we most likely will not be adding more arcane features that meet the needs of a very specific subset of open source projects. Our general guideline on adding features is that if a feature doesn't apply to at least 80% of the existing open source projects, we won't add it. In addition, we think that license proliferation is bad for the open source community, so we only allow a subset of licenses to be used on Google Code as a way of discouraging license proliferation. License proliferation means the creation and use of new OSS licenses that have no reason for existing. There are over 200 open source approved licenses, most of which are variants of existing licenses that do not add much value. This state of affairs makes compliance with open source licenses a nightmare because you can no longer simply rely on having a small number of licenses if you use open source libraries (in either an open source or a commercial product), but instead have to deal with mixing code from as many licenses as you use libraries. This is not just bad from a legal perspective, but it is a huge turnoff for people wanting to use and create open source. The licenses we have chosen cover the needs of 99% of our users, and our stand on license proliferation has actually helped to create a dialog about what licenses people should be using, and given us a chance to educate people about good license choice. Lastly, our feature set intentionally excludes, or greatly simplifies, many of the "enterprise" features that collaborative development environments provide because we think that these features are not needed for the majority of open source projects. We've also decided to concentrate on a small number of tools in our application and to try to do each one well. "scalable, reliable, and fast"We intend to scale seamlessly to over a million projects, accommodating any "Slashdot effects" without degrading service to either the project being slashdotted or any other projects we host. Our goal for reliability is 99.99% uptime, no 500 errors, and no lost data, ever (We keep multiple backups in several different geographic locations). As part of this, we want to provide a multi-homed service that will accommodate data center downtime without inconveniencing end-users. As for speed, our website should provide subsecond response times, and our Subversion server should be as fast or faster than a stock Subversion DAV server. We know that we're not there yet, but we're working on it. As for usability, we follow the lead set by other successful Google products that emphasize fast interaction, quick task completion, and a clean visual appearance. Specifically, our issue tracker and subversion tools should have performance that is on par with the best competing tools. We focus on high-frequency use cases, but allow our target audience the versatility to handle a long-tail of diverse usage. For example, our issue tracker makes it easy for teams to track fields that are specific to the needs of their project, and even to track unusual issues that don't fit any a priori schema. We balance the needs of different classes of users to help maintain the overall health of the community. For example, we limit the ability of project owners to customize project home pages in any ways that would make it harder for end-users to quickly navigate through multiple projects. "collaborative development environment"Project hosting on Google Code provides the tools necessary for engineers to work together to build, and maintain open source software. Collaboration is key to building better software, and to building better software development communities. "for open source software, docs, and standards"We only intend to host projects that are open source software projects, documentation projects directly related to open source software development, and projects for the development and maintenance of open standards. "that promotes best practices in open source software engineering"We've tried to make it easy for our users to follow "best practices" in software engineering, specifically with regard to open source. So...This mission is reflected in many of the features that we've added as well as, more importantly, the features that we haven't added. We Want To Hear From YouIf you have questions or comments, or support requests, please join our mailing list at [email protected]. If you'd like to report a bug or file a feature request, first search through the open issues at http://code.google.com/p/support/issues/list to see if there's an existing issue that covers your needs and indicate your interest by starring the issue (Note that you have to be logged into your Google account to star an issue); the more people that star an issue, the higher it will rank on our list of priorities. If you don't find an issue that matches your request, please file a new issue at http://code.google.com/p/support/issues/entry. The content on this page created by Google is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. User-generated content is not included in this license. | |
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not the first, certainly hope not to be the last either. I love the thoughtfulness of you guys :-) Particularly about not allowing any and all licenses, but just a subset... it is wonderful how you, instead of trying to bunch it all together in a bulky solution, choose to make slim, functional and adaptable ones. kudos!
The "one version control system" no longer applies.
I also believe you veered away from this mission statement with the roles/descriptions. Almost all Open Source projects that I've ever seen and participated within do not have highly-managed descriptions of what each person does. It is almost always a casual process, and documenting roles is for the control-hungry dictators/leads. To put another way: the introduction of granular permissions came with pointy-hat role descriptions; (imo) the permissions are fine/great, but too much was layered over them.
gstein: Thanks for reviewing this. I updated the language about "one version control system".
Regarding the duties feature, a lot of good technical people like to document roles and processes a little. It helps coordinate people, and adds a feeling of organization and stability to the project. The control-hungry version of it would be to enforce roles or limit people's contributions based on roles, and to only allow project owners to edit them. The simple ability to document each contributor's expected duties in plain text provides an outlet for that urge to define roles, so that project owners are not tempted to misuse the formal permission system to do that. That outlet seems to be working. And, anyone can edit their own duties, so the tone and level of detail is up to social forces in the team.
This blog post shows that some projects have chosen to use it. Some use it to document their team organization and reward contributors with recognition. And some use it to express their team culture in fun ways. You should be concerned if you see a blog post about people using formal permissions in a bunch of crazy ways!
Can you guys express your subjective opinion on how you compare with, say with Sourceforge or Launchpad? Do you collaborate with this folks?
Free, decent, hosted svn is a time-strapped CS undergrad's dream. Thanks for the effort, everyone
支持谷歌！
I love Google Code! Gonna host my projects here from now on.
Google code is nice, but i miss GIT support very much! :-( http://git-scm.com/
Hmm...I'm working on a small project and need version control. It isn't open source right now, so I can't host it here. Seems a little hypocritical for google (who's core engine is NOT open source) to favor open source projects so much and not the rest of the computing industry. I'm just saying ;)
Yep, I don't mind to pay Google to use their service for my private use. I am just tired of maintaining SVN and Trac.
احلى اضافة المساعد
like code in google it is free
Would pay for private spaces, but need Git.. I know Git isn't at 80% usage but SVN is pretty bad, I am continually having to rescue people from branches gone wrong and crazy merge problems, things you don't see with Git.
Cool
jjjj
Are there any plans to offer private project hosting as part of Google Apps Premier?
Using Google Code together with Google Groups and GitHub? is the perfect combination for most of my open-source projects :-)
Just dropping by to say thanks
This is amazing. Although I am new to all this does anyone know if we add our business applications on google app engine will it be secure I mean what if one does not want to show the code ?I am not against google but can we trust them so that no one sees our code.If yes then it is amazing.Hats off to google team.
Thanks google.
I was just looking around. I have open source projects sourceforge. My concern is that the biggest company in the IT world right now (ohhhh! forget M$ for a minute, they won't exist soon) controls a competitor to pure opensource hosting. I do not trust big companies. What reassurance do we get that Google won't turn its back to opensource one day (say in 20 years) and decide to take advantage of all this code for its own profit? Don't give me the License bull... they only worth the money you put to assert them.
georgosn, open source is usually put out for the benefit of everyone, whether they be individuals, small companies, or big companies. Google already makes use of a lot of open source, and so do almost all other Internet and software companies. I hope that you like what we have been able to do with it. If you feel strongly that you don't want your projects to be used commercially, then don't make it open source at all because open source implies no "field of endeavor restrictions". See http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd. Google takes licensing very seriously and we have a very proactive compliance group.
I don't think you understood the meaning of the sentence above. I didn't mean that Google, or any other giant/company for all that matters, makes USE of open source. There is a reason that I put in the same sentence the expression "takes advantage" and "turn its back on open source". I am and will continue to write open source and in fact deliberately I put LGPL in my source. I want companies, no matter how big or small to make money out of using open source code and I have a philosophy behind my actions. What darkens my thoughts is the possible infringement of licenses and using code of others without paying the respect that is due. You may take licensing serious now but what is keeping you on that (usually a law) may slowly disappear. With big money comes big power (even political power) and then laws change. Besides, a law is nothing but a tool for the powerful to control the weak. Anyway, I did not mean my post as an attack, it is only a general point that I wished to be heard especially by a powerful ear. It looks like I succeeded, thanks for taking the time to reply.
GOOD && COOL
全是英文，看不懂……
so do I
Congrats! Google goes up in my 'coolness' rating scale once more :)
ok
sharing.
just say hi :)
全是英文啊！！！ 有代码都不知道怎么托管，晕ing 能否出个中文的啊？
全是英文啊！！！ 有代码都不知道怎么托管，晕ing 能否出个中文的啊？
用google chorme翻译一下就ＯＫ了
Can Flash documents be open source in Google Project Hosting? I'm curious.
I'm trying google code and I have a question: is there any way to know the number of check outs of my project by other users?
keren boss..
c'est une bonne idée
I would like to learn decoding as well as how to make gadgets.Any teachers out there?
u should make it optional, plus its reloading a whole new page after leaving a comment which is like stone age. Cool idea would have home page slide out in ice animation & fill up most of screen but still have window left over showing ur comment and all the comments in it in scrollable window. Or just have comment confirmation when the home page reloads, with a preview of your comment there so it doesn't confuse people at first.
Great write up, very thoughtful.
perfect
Great!!! really it is cool.
I am wondering how I will host my private project(not open source) to google code??? is there any option to make my project private??????? :)
I feel good ，like it.
Great..
Great perfect
I am currently in the middle stages of bringing a new and socially relevant Site that will enable People to establish a more personal link with their peers and friends...while at the same time generating support for various causes and Projects that will benefit those who are deserving of our efforts..and this will also lead to the development of new and revolutionary Art forms..and Creative links within the Artistic Community.
thanks a lot.
help me pls
The 3rd block of the chapter "To support the open source community" of this document needs to be updated/harmonized with the document at: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/09/license-evolution-and-hosting-projects.html
كيف تعالج نفسك من المطبخ
ok marius,i connect to you now to Nigeria and my Holden in Jepun for big amma and sound fiuters of papa...
this is commentar of Unik & security of my house become the disclimer
ok,selamat jalan kawan..howdYY
GCode is where I am migrating all my stuff these days - free, fast, and 2 factor auth with a third "factor" for SVN :D
支持google code……
Média! 4,50%
need to done
cool i want to try
https://zimbra.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ zimbra --username [email protected]
Contreraz&google links to all
Thanks
how are you
how are you
how are you
how are you
how are you
Thanks u
a lot of double entries on Nov 26, 2012 and some interesting points of view before 2010, august.... so I expect no serious monitoring over here (allthough I may be mistaken)....but how I got here, that's something to investigate.... (from my point of view)
i m shankar
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Backlink mien phi http://chiengkhuong.uiwap.com
Ok
哈哈哈，有项目就放上来啦~
good marketing
good morning....
good morning....
goog
wiki syntax
Filing or finding an issue on this plattform is a pain. For filing a new issue, filters should be addes. This way others can find already filed bugs. e.g.: - App bug concerns - Version of app - version of OS - service bug concerns (bluetooth, sound, etc.) - ...
sadas