Looking for CDR volunteers

[Pascal Costanza]

Scott,

The minimum amount of work that needs to be done should be clear from the description of the CDR process that can be found at http://cdr.eurolisp.org/manual.html

As a CDR maintainer, you have to be at the receiving end of that process. As you can see, it involves checking the submissions that you receive for the very basic requirements (widely used document format, proper publication rights). You then determine the initial period for the document (usually 6 weeks), publish the document in the repository as an initial document with a fresh CDR number, and inform the author, the announcement mailing list, and the CDR blog about the new document. Under normal circumstances, if all goes smooth, you then move the document to its final state after 6 weeks. This may be different if the author retracts the document, or resubmits changed versions. When a document is in its final stage, it cannot be changed anymore.

None of these steps is particularly heavy-weight, and I don’t have any problems with continuing this job a little longer, if necessary. I currently maintain the CDR website manually, by editing HTML pages with emacs and pushing changes to the website through darcs. I typically spend at most an hour (typically less) in total per CDR on these jobs. CDR was designed to be light-weight in this respect. Of course, a new maintainer is free to choose his/her own preferred tools for any of these steps.

There have recently been some discussions and suggestions for improving CDR, for example at this year’s ELS in Madrid. For example, it was suggested to better track which CL implementations implement which CDR; to try to define a way how to check *features* for the presence of specific CDRs; to try to promote the implementation of CDRs with both commercial and open-source CL ‘vendors’; and so on. There seems to be a feeling that the CDR idea needs some form of push to have a greater impact. This will require more work and effort on the side of a new maintainer, but it’s also up to him/her to be creative and come up with new ideas. This is exactly the part where I feel I cannot contribute a lot more, and where I think it’s better to make room for somebody else.

Does this answer your question?

Pascal

On 4 Nov 2013, at 14:35, Scott McKay <swmckay at gmail.com> wrote:

> Pascal, could you quickly describe:
>  - What is typically involved doing this work?
>  - How much time does it typically take?
> 
> It might be helpful for people considering taking over
> from you to know how much work is involved.
> 
> Thank you for all of your hard work doing this!
> 
> --Scott
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 6:28 AM, Pascal Costanza <pc at p-cos.net> wrote:
> I wish to resign from my activities as the main maintainer of the Common Lisp Document Repository (CDR - http://cdr.europlisp.org). Although Arthur Lemmens, Edi Weitz, and Marc Battyani have supported the effort throughout CDR's existence, for which I'm very grateful, the main work rested on my shoulders.
> 
> CDR had some noticeable impact in the seven years of its existence, but it may benefit from some new ideas and a fresh perspective. Since Arthur, Edi, and/or Marc do not want to take over the day-to-day activities for maintaining CDR, this effectively means that we are looking for volunteers to take over its maintenance.
> 
> I would like to ensure that CDR doesn't become unmaintained, so I will keep on running things for as long as necessary.
> 
> Feel free to ask any questions, either publicly, or privately to me directly, or via editors at cdr.eurolisp.org.
> 
> Thanks,
> Pascal
> 
> --
> Pascal Costanza
> The views expressed in this email are my own, and not those of my employer.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

--
Pascal Costanza



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