ClarkConnect Forums by ClearFoundation: Very excited... ClarkConnect to become ClearOS

Hi Everyone,

We are very excited about our announcement regarding the Clear Foundation. If you have not followed the link, now would be a good time

Since I am more of the technical talking head for ClarkConnect, I'm going to focus on the technical aspects of the new foundation. Most of the non-technical discussion will have to wait until after the August unveiling event. So... what can you expect?

More Open

Whereas a lot of the open source world seems to be drifting toward the Zimbra-like model of open source (only the basic features are open source, the rest are proprietary), we are moving in the opposite Ubuntu-like direction. We are not sure how long it's going to take and how far we will go, but you will definitely see less Community-vs-Enterprise differences over the next year or so.

More Community Involvement

ClarkConnect is already an "open" platform. We have a great community of users, the software is already open source, we don't hide behind proprietary bugs, and so on. However, we can be doing a lot better. Just from digging around a bit, you can find:

- Howtos
- Drivers
- Tips and tricks
- Software installs

We haven't done a good job of making it easy to find. In fact, we've done a terrible job. It's not even easy to find some of the things that we sometimes provide (like
a ClarkConnect-friendly ntop RPM)! It's now a priority to fix it.

Usability

We could be doing a lot better on improving usability. I don't think we deserve a terrible grade for the most part, but there is a lot of opportunity for improvement.

Software Development

Did you know that most of our code is already available in a public SVN @ svn.pointclark.net? And a public CVS was available before that? Yet another not very well known nugget of information.

The only parts that we keep a "secret" is our build system. The only reason it's a secret is that we have a number of OEMs that have their logos and other trademarks in the system. We have to scrub that away before making everything public (won't take too long).

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Peter
ClarkConnect Project Leader

Edited by peter (07/22/09 11:59 AM)

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