FOSS4MV

by Kevin Powick 2013-07-10

FOSS4MV is a community for people that use or develop Free and Open Source Software for MVDB platforms, such as D3, OpenQM, jBASE, U2, Reality, Cache, etc. As such, it has three major offerings to promote communication and collaboration. A Google+ Community, source code repositories at Bitbucket, and a Twitter account to keep you in-the-loop.

Google+ is a surprisingly useful communications platform that makes it easy to share information with individuals, groups, or the public at large. Some G+ communities have memberships that number in the tens of thousands, and I know that many MV developers already have a G+ account.

Bitbucket, from Atlassian, is a leading provider of source code repository hosting using today's two leading source code control platforms, Git and Mercurial (Hg). Not only does Bitbucket support the top two SCC platforms, but they also allow unlimited, free public and private** repositories.

FOSS4MV is set up as a bitbucket "Team" allowing people to join the team and create repositories under the FOSS4MV banner, while still retaining complete control over the management of their repositories. However, there is no requirement to join the FOSS4MV team account to get your code on the site. If you're just looking for a good home to share your code, but do not wish to manage a repository, let us know via email ([email protected]) and we'll post it for you.

Twitter Is a great way to keep-up with what's going on with individuals, companies and communities such as FOSS4MV. You don't actually have to tweet to follow a Twitter account, so if you're not already "on Twitter", sign-up and subscribe to FOSS4MV to keep an eye on what's happening. The traffic should be fairly low volume.

Final Remarks

Promoting software development and collaboration amongst MV developers is not a new idea but, until fairly recently, a standard set of tools for building communities wasn't readily available. Today, we have powerful and widely accepted tools that make collaboration not only easier, but enjoyable.

Participation grows communities, and every little bit helps. With all the knowledge that we have amongst the veterans with 20 to 30+ years of MV experience, I'm sure we can build something useful to all MV developers, both old and new. So, at the very least, if you have any tips, tricks, or code that you wish to share, join the G+ community, get on the FOSS4MV Bitbucket team, or just send us your code and we will give it a good home.

Links

• G+ Community: http://goo.gl/aLfKV
• Source Code: https://bitbucket.org/foss4mv
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/foss4mv
• Email: [email protected]