[tei-council] Criteria for TEI Repository Inclusion

[Sebastian Rahtz]

On 3 Mar 2010, at 12:21, James Cummings wrote:

> also, of course, loses the benefit of version control. How do 
> other projects manage this sort of contribution?

every different way you can conceive

I spent 15 years of my life herding these cats for the TeX community,
where you have a core product and a million addons of all levels,
and I am not seeing any real change in the attitudes, needs
and solutions. 

>   As a thought experiment, what 
> are the arguments against having a contrib/ dir and giving one 
> developer from each project in there developer access on the 
> subversion repository?
> 
> Extra time spent reverting their changes to the main TEI source? 
> Some form of legitimisation of their dodgy code as reflecting
> the TEI?


yes, precisely those. when the author goes AWOL, people expect
TEI-C to pick up the pieces and support the project. They complain
if it does not work, to us. We all know the inability of most folk to differentiate
core from addons when they find a problem in something.

I don't think there is any one-answer-fits-all solution. People and their
"software" vary hugely, both in themselves and over time. We
do know roughly the boundaries, by using our exemplars of

  * Tite  (close to our hearts)
  * Epidoc (far away, own very capable community)
  * TEIJ (in between)

for the last, I think we start by cultivating it inhouse and then branching
it off when it grows some legs (i _lurv_ mixed metaphor)
--
Sebastian Rahtz      
Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431

Sólo le pido a Dios
que el futuro no me sea indiferente