[reportlab-users] ReportLab open source policy (was "headers and footers")

[Dirk Holtwick]

2008/9/19 Tim Roberts <timr at probo.com>


> Dirk Holtwick wrote:

> >

> > I think you should give it a try and move Reportlab to one of the big

> > project hoster like Google Code, Sourceforge, Launchpad, Berlios and

> > so on. For Google Code I would be happy to support you with that.

>

> Why do you see that as a benefit?  I'm just curious.  To me, the

> location of the hosting is completely irrelevant.  I just want a place

> to download stuff, a web site for information, and a mailing list for

> exchange.



I see the benefit in the direct participation of the community. There are
already a certain number of projects outside of Reportlab that depend on the
toolkit but their only way to communicate changes and bugs is to send it to
the mailing list and wait for Reportlab to include the changes. That is a
passive strategy and I can imagine a more active strategy to work well too.



> For ReportLab, the open source version is essentially a subset of the

> commercial products that keep them in business, so there is great

> business sense in maintaining one tree with tags/branches.  If they

> moved the open source part to a project hoster, that's a fork.  Now they

> have the burden of maintaining two separate code bases.



As far as I understood Reportlab toolkit is the basis of the Reportlab RML
package. Reportlab seems to first install Reportlab toolkit on the clients
machine and then RML. Therefore the toolkit could also be developed and
shiped independently from the commercial packages Reportlab uses. But if the
toolkit is also directly integrated into the RML package then you are right
and it is difficult for them to maintain both. But I think then this double
maintainace is a problem for them already now.

But anyways it should be possible to separate both projects clearly from
each other as long as the toolkit API does not change.

Dirk
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://two.pairlist.net/pipermail/reportlab-users/attachments/20080923/033af0fa/attachment.html>