I asked a member of the Apache group for advice about our problem with
configuration management, and he suggested that we incorporate. Once
we did that, then we could have one representative license, and share
access to a repository as one "internal" group. Does a nonprofit
organization sound helpful for any other reasons? Would you feel
comfortable joining?
Today, I spoke with a friend of mine at Intersolv (he's a tools
developer there) who agrees -- unless we solve the business and legal
issue, we're going to have daunting technical issues to resolve.
I'm willing to contribute time toward setting up a nonprofit. Perhaps
we could get some costly legal assistance free via the Java Lobby. Does
this seem to be a good idea?
Why do I think we need to look beyond simple tools and scrips for
solving this? Because anything we do to reimplement or extend CVS will
take our focus off of our work on the JDK. Moreover, ensuring its
correctness will not be easy. Maybe Michael has a different
perspective, and has thought about this more carefully, though?
At least for now, I think that procedures we implement among ourselves
can improve the situation more than time spent on tools. How do the
rest of you see this?
Steve
P.S. I've been experimenting with PRCS (see
http://www.xcf.berkeley.edu/~jmacd/prcs.html) as a simpler alternative
to CVS. I'm not ready to make a pronouncement about its quality yet,
but in terms of applying a method, an easier tool for all of us to
agree to use individually might help!
