I appologize if this is an old idea. I admit I don't read the lists much, and I haven't checked to see if this has already been discussed.
I've observed that there is a LOT of group productivity software becoming available. Specifically, the combination of the Imp (http://horde.org/imp), ezmlm (http://pobox.com/~djb/ezmlm.html), mhonarc, and various project specific tools such as CVS could be a very powerful combination if there were a simple way to say, "create a new project and ask me for parameters". Most of these tools are pretty easy to setup, if a little tedious. My thought is that there is a need here (in the free software/open source world) for a "project management package". I'm not a registered (or unregistered) Debian developer (yet...), and I am not actually offering to put this all together right now. I'm actually just throwing my thought into the pool in the hope that it will either inspire someone to start the project, or someone will point me at an ongoing project of this sort. If neither of these happens, I may just have to become a Debian developer after all. To fill in a little of what I've outlined above, I "envision" (cough cough) the project with provisions for member tracking, either as part of the Horde packages, or as part of the whole package. This tracking would mostly just be a place to look up home pages, contact information, and task associations. With one packaging managing the concepts of projects and groups, and then spawning mailing lists, CVS hierarchies, and web pages corresponding to each of these, much of the tedium of managing an open-source project could be handled automatically. Imagine, you create a "Tux and the GNU" game project, with sub-projects of 3D engine, art, story, and 15 members divided four ways, and the project- management package creates web pages for all the members, all the groups, all the projects, supplies CVS info, creates mailing lists for the four projects and the meta project, links for the mhonarc pages, and sets up a bug tracking system. WOW! :) I'll post again if I actually get a hankering to start working on it for real. -- Robert de Forest [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Time flies like an arrow. Network Administrator (831) 460-4355 Fruit flies like a banana." Tapestry.net http://got.net/~crag/
