Peter Marklund's Home

Yesterday I did another update of the software that is running my homepage - OpenACS. Things went surprisingly well and I experienced only minor glitches. There are a number of advantages to keeping my homepage running on the latest source code (cvs head):

• I help monitor the upgradability of OpenACS.
• I can do some testing of newly developed features
• Fixes and enhancements that I make on my site can be directly contributed to the OpenACS project to benefit the rest of the community

I think it is unfortunate that so many OpenACS sites diverge (fork) from the development of new OpenACS versions. We need to be very serious about upgradability going forward to give people enough confidence to upgrade. I am aware that with highly customized sites upgrading is a challenge. However, if upgrading is a prioritized goal from the beginning you will attempt to keep customizations very localized so that they can be merged with new OpenACS versions. You will also monitor OpenACS development and try to align it with the interests of your own site. This will not only benefit your particular site but the whole OpenACS project as its direction will better reflect real needs. Avoiding forking is key to getting more involvement and momentum in the OpenACS community.