The KForge Project

KForge v0.17 is now officially out! This release includes:

• New Git plugin
• New Joomla plugin
• New project ‘recent changes’ feed aggregation
• Support for using Mercurial services with Trac services
• Support for using Git services with Trac services
• Indication of when new project service configuration has loaded
• Improved installer and install guide
• Improved support for virtual KForge environments
• Improved special character support
• Improved compatibility with dependencies (django<=1.1, sqlobject<=0.12.0)
• Improved performance, especially of access controller
• Improved Web form validation error handling
• Improved command line error handling
• Improved configuration file
• Improved Trac service creation and update steps
• Improved cookie control

Download it from the python package index here:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/kforge/0.17

KFORGE CLUB: CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

An invitation to join KForge Club.

JOIN HERE

You can join KForge Club today!

Joining KForge Club is free of charge. KForge Club members are simply involved in a safe, transparent, and regular process of sharing common costs. Joining implies no commitment whatsoever (you can say ‘No’ later).

Members are invited to submit new proposals, and to comment on proposals submitted by others. A prospectus of such proposals is published, and shares of the costs are discussed with those showing interest. A call for agreement is made. Proposals that achieve consensus are actioned, and reported upon at regular intervals.

BACKGROUND

KForge is a stable, open-source, enterprise application for project hosting. KForge provisions project services on-demand, and controls access with a robust, role-based, single sign-on access controller. Project services include:

• Version control systems (e.g. Git, Mercurial, Subversion)
• Project framework with mechanisms to plan and track work (e.g. Trac)
• Wikis and mailing lists (e.g. MoinMoin, Mailman)
• Content management systems and blogs (e.g. Joomla, Wordpress)

KForge also provides a complete web interface for administration of project members and services, as well as a fully-developed plugin system so that new kinds of services can be added easily.

KFORGE CLUB

It is clear that there are common project hosting needs across most organisations. For the last 4 years, the goals and the resources for KForge development have been provided solely by the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Appropriate Software Foundation.

KForge Club is a way to share the cost of developing project hosting capabilities, so that every project can benefit from well-supported, high-quality, open-source, project hosting architecture.

In order to sustain the development of KForge, we are seeking to share the objectives and costs of KForge development with others. We would like to emphasize that KForge will, of course, remain open-source software.

You can find out more about KForge Club at the Service Desk.

SCHEDULE

• 02 November 2009 – Call for Participation
• 16 November 2009 – Call for Proposals
• 14 December 2009 – Publish Prospectus
• 11 January 2010 – Call for Agreement
• 29 January 2010 – End of cycle

ABOUT US

KForge Club is hosted by John Bywater (Appropriate Software Foundation) and Rufus Pollock (Open Knowledge Foundation).

The Appropriate Software Foundation is a service-oriented software and organisation development consultancy, dedicated to creating and providing open-source software services that enable small organisations to accomplish their objects.

The Open Knowledge Foundation is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2004 and dedicated to promoting open knowledge in all its forms. It is a leader in this field nationally and internationally.

The first prospectus of KForge Club has just been published.

This prospectus contains proposals to host the club for an initial 12 months, to release KForge v1.0, and to sustain the KnowledgeForge.net service.

Please take a look and show interest where possible.

The first Call for Proposals of KForge Club is now open.

You are invited to submit proposals for the shared development of open-source software and services for project hosting.

You are also invited to reply to the submissions by leaving comments.

This call closes on Friday, 11 September 2009 – in time for publication of the club’s first prospectus on Monday, 14 September 2009.

We are pleased to be able to invite you to participate in KForge Club.

JOIN THE CLUB

Please participate by joining the service desk.

BACKGROUND

For the last 4 years the costs of developing KForge have been borne by the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Appropriate Software Foundation.

In order to support the development of KForge into the future we are now creating a software club as a mechanism for sharing the costs of development and guiding that process. We should emphasize that KForge will, of course, remain open-source software.

What is KForge?

KForge is an open-source (GPL) Python-based system for software and knowledge project hosting. It re-uses many existing best-of-breed tools such as a versioned storage (subversion, hg), a tracker (trac), a wiki (trac or moinmoin) and others (mailman, joomla, etc.) by adapting them as services within the system’s own facilities (projects, members, roles, etc). KForge also provides a complete web interface for administration of project members and services, as well a fully-developed plugin system so that new kinds of services can be easily added.

Why KForge Club?

It is clear that there are common hosting needs across many software and knowledge projects. KForge Club is a way to share the cost of developing project hosting capabilities, so that every project can benefit from an open, high-quality, well-supported offering.

At this time, the key objectives are: to complete KForge v1.0 software; to sustain the KnowledgeForge.net service; and to host the club.

SCHEDULE

• Monday, Aug 17 2009 – Call for New Proposals
• Monday, Sep 14 2009 – Call for Interest
• Monday, Oct 12 2009 – Call for Agreement

PARTICIPATION

Joining the club is free of charge. Members will be involved in a safe and transparent process of sharing common costs. Members will be invited to submit new proposals, and to comment on proposals submitted by others.

The club will publish a prospectus of costed proposals. Members will be asked to evaluate the benefit of each proposal. Possible shares of the cost of each proposal will be discussed, and conditional agreements drafted.

The club will call for final agreement of any conditional agreements. Proposals that reach consensus are actioned, with progress reported at fixed intervals.

The cycle will then be repeated.

Information on how clubs work is published on the club tutorial page.

ABOUT US

KForge Club is hosted by John Bywater (Appropriate Software Foundation) and Rufus Pollock (Open Knowledge Foundation).

The Appropriate Software Foundation is a service-oriented software and organisation development consultancy, dedicated to creating and providing open-source software services that enable small organisations to accomplish their objects.

The Open Knowledge Foundation is a not-for-profit organization founded in 2004 and dedicated to promoting open knowledge in all its forms. It is a leader in this field nationally and internationally. The Foundation’s activities are organized around individual working groups and projects, each focused on a different aspect of open knowledge, but united by a common set of concerns, and a common set of traditions in both etiquette and process.

KForge v0.16 is now officially out having been stable for a couple of months on our production machines.

This release includes:

• Clean-up of authentication system
• This eliminates svn 1.5 bug (svn add did not work under svn 1.5)
• Deployment under virtualenv for sandboxed installations
• Increase compatibility across external libs (e.g. django 1.0)
• Variety of other minor but important fixes as we prepare for the release of v1.0

Download it from the python package index here:

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/kforge/0.16

KForge v0.16 is now nearly done and has been deployed as a release candidate on http://knowledgeforge.net/ and http://demo.kforgeproject.com/.

This release includes:

• Clean-up of authentication system
• This eliminates svn 1.5 bug (svn add did not work under svn 1.5)
• Deployment under virtualenv for sandboxed installations
• Increase compatibility across external libs (e.g. django 1.0)
• Variety of other minor but important fixes as we prepare for the release of v1.0

KForge 0.15 is out. Get it via the download page:

http://www.kforgeproject.com/download/

Changes

• KForge plugin discovery via setuptools entry points
• Mercurial plugin providing support of mercurial/hg repositories
• (Partial) move to nosetests for testing
• Improved documentation
• Debian package version

About KForge

KForge is an open-source (GPL) system for managing software and knowledge projects. It re-uses existing best-of-breed tools such as a versioned storage (subversion), a tracker (trac), and wiki (trac or moinmoin), integrating them with the system’s own facilities (projects, users, permissions etc). KForge also provides a complete web interface for project administration as well a fully-developed plugin system so that new services and features can be easily added.

For more information see the about page: http://www.kforgeproject.com/about/

KForge v0.15 has been pretty much ready to go in subversion for the last 6 months. However, even with heavy unit testing plus daily builds and deployments we don’t like to release until we’ve run for a few weeks on our live systems to check everything is working perfectly. Due to our busyness with other things this last and final stage of checking has only started in the last few weeks. So far everything looks good and therefore KForge is like to be out the door right after the new year.

Thanks to Martin Fuzzey’s untiring efforts there is now a Debian package for KForge. Details are below and in the attached README. Once again we’d like a big thank-you to Martin for his work on this.

Email Instructions

See http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/kforge-dev/2008-March/001279.html

README.Debian

See http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/kforge-dev/attachments/20080313/683358d4/attachment.obj