[tei-council] another agenda item

[Sebastian Rahtz]

Christian Wittern wrote:

>Roma OTOH would quite closely follow the CVS version, right?
>  
>
would it? I really think we want more clarity on this sort of thing.
when someone comes to the web site and accesses the P5 HTML Guidelines,
and then uses the Query interface (or Roma), they should really get the
same result, I think. Either CVS *or* the current minor release *or* the
current
major release. Not a mixture.

>
>Then you might end up with frequent new snapshots, which might be of
>mixed quality (cf the eXist development model).  I assume that people
>interested that much in the day-to-day development could as easily
>follow the CVS.
>  
>
the flaw there is that we do not, so everyone tells me, have
a documented or easy to use system for people to work with
the CVS sources. If you assure me that Joe Fairly Clued-Up Encoder
can do a cvs update, and then generate schemas or read the documentation,
then its OK; but I keep being told the opposite...

>Apart from that, I think it would make sense to delegate the timings
>of the other releases to Sebastian (or whoever is involved), they do
>not seem to fall directly into the area of the work the council is
>supervising.
>  
>
Things like the TEI Knoppix CD is a separate activity, I agree. But
unless the TEI Consortium fully endorses distribution methods
other then CVS and SF File Releases, we are not in a healthy state.
As it stands, we are in a  fairly ridiculous position that only
Debian Linux users get a decent service; to make matters worse,
the releases of the various  formats are not under the control of
the editors, since neither of them has the infrastructure to
prepare and release the materials.

One solution would be create a new job of Release Manager,
who determined when and how minor releases happened; the
Council would be consulted on major releases; the editors
would be left to coordinate the actual code work in the background.

I am not confident that the system as of today works; neither of
the editors is able to keep up with the current work plan, let alone
take on more work, the public is getting confused messages
about versions from  all over the place, and the council is not
visibly taking charge.

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      
Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431

OSS Watch: JISC Open Source Advisory Service
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk