On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, Rodent of Unusual Size wrote:
Dirk-Willem van Gulik wrote:
I am not sure that this type of project is the right sort of thing for ASF wide attention and support. Research projects such as this are valuable playgrounds - but do not map to operational systems or components with a wider use.
i do not see anything in our charter that limits us to only 'operation systems or components.' and i argue that this sort of social analysis tool may have a very wide potential use indeed.
I agree; and perhaps the wording is a bit 'off' and should be seen in its context; what I mean is that the code managed should have a long term goal - and need a group of volunteer to maintain it for a long time. I.e. a research/expriment is generally more short lived, has a type of audience which is less in need of the ASF infrastructure which is mostly focused n that 'bigger and more resiliant than a few volunteer aspects'. Widely used code, especially for ops purposes, often fits that category.
I agree with both of you.
I agree with Ken when he says that such tools might have a very wide potential use.
And I agree with Dirk when he says that he's worried that I might just walk away in a few weeks and the project would die of termal death.
On the other hand, if we don't create a substrate for community growth, how are we going to find out (evolutionistically) if the 'potential' can grow into something more useful?
This is why I'm asking 'where do I put it' and why I thought about incubation.
Sam is right in pointing out that I probably don't need to let you know how I stand against the apache spirit, but Ken also points out that myself, alone, doesn't make a community.
If this wasn't software that I wrote *specifically* for the ASF, I would move it on SF.net and forget about it.... but the goal was to setup an infrastructure to allow us to *visualize* the entire state of the foundation, maybe collecting a snapshot of an annealed graph every day and make a movie out of it.... I'm sure that some cyber-anthropologists would *scream* to have access to the data we all have collected in our logs.
Moreover, in light in my semantic web involvement, I'm getting more and more unconfortable with RDF (see my semantic web fight club pictures in boston in the gallery at http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/) and I'm more and more heading myself into the concept of 'data emergence' where you don't go around bothering people to markup their data as *you* like it, but *you* make an effort to collect their data and make a sense out of it. I'm starting to call it 'pedantic web' myself :)
Google showed how much value can be gained out of harvesting of simple information (hyperlink) that locally has no apparent global meaning. As do email replies or IP logs for CVS logins.
There is potentially a huge value in fostering research on data emergence, expecially if related to reasonable-sized and well logged communities like ours.
so, I'm asking, how do we move from here?
-- Stefano Mazzocchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate [William of Ockham] --------------------------------------------------------------------
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