RSS Bandit moving on
Dare posts about RSS
Bandit leaving GotDotNet Workspaces. Workspaces is still a relatively young application
and is something that continues to grow. Does it provide everything the community
project developer needs? Not yet, but we're working on it.
Looking at a few of Dare's points in loose order:
1. Doesn't require people have Passport accounts to
download the RSS Bandit installer.
2. We get download and page load statistics.
We hear you. We've consistently heard this feedback and
these are among just a few of the changes we'll be putting in place in the new
few months.
**
3. Bug reports can have file attachments. This is great
since a lot of the time we end up wishing people would attach their error.log or feedlist.xml
file with their bug reports.
5. Separate databases for features vs. bugs.
8. Bug tracker remembers your queries and the default
query is more useful to me (all open bugs) than GDN's (all bugs assigned to me even
closed ones).
There are a number of big changes coming in the bug tracker. I'll
be making a blog post about some of them later this week. In brief, watch out for:
-
user-defined
custom fields (Milestone, Feature/Bug, ToBeFixedBy, WasFixedIn, might all be examples)
-
flexible
queries (based on boolean combination of multiple fields, customizable by each user)
-
file
attachments
-
export
to XML functionality
6. Source code can be browsed over HTTP via ViewCVS
without having to install any software
There's an HTML interface to the Source Control area that
doesn't involve any software either. Its functionality is limited to basic viewing
of files and history, but does also provide check in and check out on a per file basis.
The interface selection page can be reached by using the "Interface selection" link
in the menu on any Source Control page.
7. Larger quotas on how much you can store on their
servers.
Any Workspace owners are welcome to use the quota
request form to ask for extra space or additional members. Provided requests are
being made for an active project, they will be checked and approved.
9. Activity score more accurately reflects activity
of the project (on GDN, BlogX is scored at having 99% activity score even though the
project has been dead for all intents and purposes for several months).
Interesting, I was talking about activity
metrics just the other day. BlogX is definitely on its way down the list, but
it still receives hits. That, combined with its strong activity rating from earlier
times when it was under active development, help to keep its high rating. Despite
being a dead project, it's not the policy of GotDotNet to tweak these metrics; time
should balance this one out as people move on.
10. With SourceForge we get to use the BSD licence.
The Workspaces licensing system allows for any license
to be submitted at Workspace creation time. As a Workspace owner, you first accept
the 'Use Agreement', which covers the overall usage of the application, and then
proceed to pick a license to cover the content. As a suggestion, you can use a
Shared Source license, although any licenses are welcome. As owner, you'll want
to make sure that you have the sufficient rights to apply such a license to the content.
Sure, there are still a few areas where Workspaces is lacking
but things are changing. As has always been the case, feedback sent through the GotDotNet
site, posts to message boards, even blog entries (thank you Feedster!)
all gets read and placed together into a tracking system. As a small team, we're not
able to reply to everything individually, but we are listening.