[consult] Call for Community Consultation - Software Repository

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert E. Seastrom" <rs at seastrom.com>
To: consult at arin.net
Subject: Re: [consult] Call for Community Consultation -
Software Repository
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:22:16 -0500

> My thoughts as proposal author inline:
> 
> Member Services <info at arin.net> writes:
> 
> > ARIN received a suggestion (2008.1) that "ARIN shall
> > maintain a software  repository (with retrieval via
> > anonymous FTP, HTTP, or other protocols  in keeping with
> > best current practices) for user-contributed schemas, 
> software, and other tools for dealing with data published
> by ARIN." >
> > The complete suggestion can be viewed at:
> > http://www.arin.net/acsp/suggestions/2008-1.html
> >
> > As a result, ARIN would like to solicit input to the
> > following questions  from the following community:
> > 1. Should software in this repository be restricted only
> > to  contributions that are licensed to be in the public
> > domain? If so, what  license should be used
> (GNU/BSD/others)?
> 
> ARIN should be neutral as to license or indeed whether
> there is any license at all.  I'm personally partial to
> the BSD/MIT license, but to be honest I never considered
> putting any kind of license at all on the PHP-based loadup
> scripts for bulk whois which I wrote (and got me thinking
> about good places to publish them, which led to this
> proposal).  I didn't envision any kind of non-source
> licensed software, but I don't have a problem with
> shareware, nagware, trialware, or anything else so long as
> it deals with ARIN data sets or services.  An expensive
> address management system plug-in module that did
> auto-SWIP submission, or a gold plated commercial RWHOIS
> server would be acceptable as far as I'm concerned.
> 
> > 2. Should the repository allow separate developers
> > facilities to  maintain code directly (tools like
> > subversion) or be a static-read only  repository?
> 
> It was never my intent to have ARIN be a competitor to
> SourceForge; only to provide a central location to access
> such software.
> 
> > 3. Should the repository only house collections that
> reflect ARIN's mission?
> 
> I would think that the answer would be "yes"; ARIN should
> not be in the "general mirror site" business any more than
> they should be players in SourceForge's space.  Most tools
> that manipulate ARIN's datasets would fall under this
> rubric, though I can envision some applications (email
> address extractor and spam generator for bulk whois dumps,
> for instance) that would be out of scope.  Clearly, the
> ARIN PM for this needs latitude to determine whether
> software is appropriate or not, with the usual check &
> balance of the appeals process.
> 
>                                         ---Rob\

+1

Marty