2016.09.16 16:37 "Re: [Tiff] remotesensing.org URLs (http and ftp)", by Bob Friesenhahn

For the record, the non-subscriber also contacted me, in that same message, but i am hesitant to commit the OSGeo foundation to this, without the approval from the libtiff community here. -jeff

The most important thing to me is that the final solution solves the longevity issue. Libtiff has existed for 29 years already and could easily be useful for another 29 years.

The problem we have encountered is that active maintainers obtained support from benefactors (sometimes their then employers) who provided DNS and servers. Some active maintainers faded away and benefactors forgot about the services they were providing, or went defunct. Remaining libtiff maintainers have no knowledge of who is providing the services.

Whatever is done now needs to help libtiff be maintained for another 29 years. There is no assured warranty for any individual or company so the solution needs to assure that whoever constitutes the current maintainers are able to carry on. It needs to be possible to move foward to new servers/services without the risk of suddenly being locked out.

A distributed version control system is good. Use of proven long-term bug trackers (including Bugzilla) is good provided that there can be live mirrors of the buck tracking database so nothing is lost if the keeper of the server goes away.

Depending on a commercial "portal" which offers really nice services but does not provide the ability to completely back up its source code, bug tracker, and distribution files, would introduce lock-in which is harmful to the long term future of the project.

Bob
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Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/