ASF News Items ============== The original proposal from Brett was to create a tool that would allow the board repoting to be made easier for the projects, but I'd like to take things in a slightly different direction! I think we should create a system that o gathers project news at a central location for all ASF projects o allows each project to maintain control of it's own information o generates a website (static HTML) with all foundation news o creates a first pass board report from the news items created The website created would be published as http://news.apache.org/ or some such URL, and would include feeds and links to the various projects and other ASF resources. Such a site should have existed years ago and is really overdue. Basic Overview -------------- In keeping with previous efforts and the general ASF philosophy of keeping data in SVN, I suggest that we store "items" of news in files in an SVN repository that every project has access to. Stefano suggested that Atom would be an ideal format to use for the creation of these files and after reviewing the format (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4287) I think using atom:entry would be a sensible approach. In order to create the files I propose we create a "generator" that committers/pmc's can use to create the files. This would likely be a command line tool, but web based tools are also possible. Outputs ------- Creating the outputs could be done via some simple XSLT stylesheets, allowing us to seperate the scripting/programming language from the processing and so making the code more accessible to committers. Sample File ----------- tag:apace.org,2007-05-22T21-00:Test_Post david reid Test Post 2007-05-22T21:14:00 Just a test post. Issues ------ o We need to arrive at a sensible format for id's that will provide us with unique identifiers that are easily created. david: Using tag: appears to be the current "best practice", so how about tag:,: Title would have spaces replaced by underscores. david: we should use the first portion of the tag as the filename in order to avoid collisions. This is why I think including the time is a requirement. o What categories should we have? david: First pass. - general - committer - pmc changes - release o Who should be permitted to add entries? Committers? PMC members? PMC chairs? ASF members? o How do we enforce publishing rights? david: I wonder if adding an "Enveloped Signature" created using a PGP key and having a list of "trusted" keys in a keyring would be a sensible, low overhead solution? Anyone could then add files, but only those with a signature created using a key in the keyring would be published. Of course, people would then need to "apply" to be added, which adds administrative overhead! o Do we allow entries to have dates in the future? o Can we allow entries to be "removed" at a given date/time? Would we ever want to do this? How would we add it to the format? o What language should we write the command line tool in? david: It should probably be a scripting language to allow for rapid development and ease of changing direction during development. Python seems to have the most traction and would be a new challenge for me :-) o What format should the content take? Should we allow HTML or XHTML?