Would you be willing to sell the "darwinports.com" domain to the
OpenDarwin project at-cost?
Landon Fuller
Mat Caughron said:
> Greetings:
>
> First, let me acknowledge, as it was pointed out to me recenly on
> #opendarwin, that my efforts to build darwinports.com as a user-friendly
> interface to the portfiles should have begun with a posting to this list
> rather than an announcement that a site was done and running. Better late
> than never, though, so this email to darwinports@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx will
> hopefully serve as an introduction for those involved with the project who
> aren't as active on IRC, as well as a query to figure out the best course
> of action going forward.
>
> For those new to the topic, darwinports.com is a web site that I built
> over about a weekend in mysql and PHP that presents a nightly-updated CVS
> repository of the portfiles in a manner that makes it easy to discover new
> ports and read the details of old favorites. Darwinports.com is currently
> online and can certainly use improvement. The site's structure certainly
> isn't rocket science, and it isn't likely the best possible presentation
> of the Portfiles, but I it is something that a novice user might find at
> least mildly interesting.
>
> The motivation for building the darwinports.com site was to do something
> useful with the domain name (unlike darwinports.org for instance) and was
> a way for me to learn css. Beyond that, it would be cool if it was useful
> to the world at large, but I have no grandiose plans for it. Figuring out
> how to give each portfile and category with a page for each domain name
> was also a fun challenge for me. (databases.darwinports.com,
> mysql.darwinports.com etc.)
>
> It was brought up in IRC that the current official web site and its
> integration with CVS and mailman already provides much (if not all?) of
> the above functionalities. While that may be true, I think that there
> remain a number of major impediments to mass-adoption of the ports system
> and those are the sorts of challenges I had anticipated like for the site
> to address.
>
> The things that I'd like to see built (which obviously aren't in the
> current official site) are:
> 1. email notification (versiontracker-style) for updates to
> particular ports
> 2. threaded comments for each portfile
> 3. links that would download a portfile (and with a properly
> configured mimetype?) launch a GUI ports installer app. The goal here
> being to have compiled software as easy to install as drag and drop
> applications are currently. For all I know this item overlaps what Apple
> has in mind down the road with their package management stuff. (I've
> learned over the years that no small company who competes with Apple lives
> to tell the story.)
> 4. promotion of secure software deployment practices for the Mac
> community at large (checking hashes, signed files etc.) You'd be suprised
> (or maybe not) at the number of Mac users who have never heard of MD5 or
> SHA1/2. I think it is a good thing to make clear what the hashing
> algorithms do and making clear to them, how they are checked, etc.
> 5. freshports-style listing of recent important changes
>
> Not sure what's next:
> should I check in darwinports.com source so others can work on it
> and leave it where it is?
> scrap it all and header redirect to darwinports.opendarwin.org and
> then start submitting patches to the current official web site? (rather
> not do that as it would mean that my work has been a waste)
> just keep hacking away on it, taking feature requests from you all
> and have it be a fan site?
> what organizational structure is there to opendarwin and would
> they be interested in the domain and what I've built on it?
>
> Hopefully this email will kick off a discussion about the best plan of
> action so that any outcome will not suprise anyone and be beneficial to
> the group as a whole. In closing, I have benefitted tremendously from the
> ports system over the years (I still have a FreeBSD3.x book laying around
> in my office) and hopefully I can make a genuinely positive contribution
> to these efforts. Darwinports.com is really a "fan site" in tribute to
> the port collection on OSX. It is NOT an effort to fork or take credit,
> and if I thought that it was conducive to either, I would take it offline
> immediately.
>
> I am grateful for your goodwill and your patience as I learn the proper
> ettiquette for collaborative online development (hopefully in the future,
> not by trial and error).
>
>
> Best regards,
>
>
>
> Mat Caughron
>
>
>
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