Number of core developers

The analysis focus on core development of both projects, as this is a major indicator for the health of a software project. This is because you need a lot more knowledge and background for developing the core product than for writing an extension with a clearly defined API.

Claim

"We have healthy downloads, an active user community, and a very active support community. However, we are a smaller developer community than we used to be."
Source: Blog post by Peter Thoeny (Twiki.net) – 11 Nov 2009

Fact

Developers of TWiki and Foswiki
Core contributers
PeterThoeny
SopanShewale
CrawfordCurrie		CrawfordCurrie
KoenMartens		KoenMartens
MichaelDaum		MichaelDaum
RafaelAlvarez		RafaelAlvarez
AndreUlrich		AndreUlrich
TravisBarker		TravisBarker
ArthurClemens		ArthurClemens
GilmarSantosJr		GilmarSantosJr
LynnwoodBrown		LynnwoodBrown
OliverKrueger		OliverKrueger
ColasNahaboo		ColasNahaboo
KennethLavrsen		KennethLavrsen
MarkusUeberall		MarkusUeberall
SvenDowideit		SvenDowideit
AntonioTerceiro		AntonioTerceiro
WillNorris		WillNorris
MartinCleaver		MartinCleaver
New to core development
SebastianKlus		SebastianKlus
OlivierRaginel		OlivierRaginel
EugenMayer		EugenMayer
LarsEik		LarsEik
IsaacLin		IsaacLin
GeorgeClark		GeorgeClark
AndrewJones		AndrewJones
New developers
		SeanMcCarthy
		RobManson
		BenBeijer
		RaulFRodriguez
		MarkSchumann
		MichaelTempest
		AndrewPantyukhin
		DrakeDiedrich
		PaulHarvey
2 Core Contributers		32 Core Contributers

Statement

Developer community:

Look at the list of developers contributed to the core of both projects since the commercial takeover of Twiki.net. The TWiki.org development community has dropped to almost nothing – only Peter and his employee Sopan is left. Whereby all other TWiki.org core developers moved to Foswiki.org. Together with new developers, Foswiki has almost doubled its core contributors!

Healthy Downloads:

Yes, lots of users still download the old TWiki code as they don´t know about Foswiki and its progress. Our marketing was very bad as we are better in concentrating on improvements than in talk about it. Sadly even most of our old TWiki user community don´t know about Foswiki and may wonder why there is no progress on TWiki.org.

Sources

As the analysis is based on open source, you can easily check the correctness of the data by yourself. For the first analyzation I used the following sources:

• TWiki.org SVN trunk/core
• Foswiki.org SVN trunk/core

Don't miss the rest of the series:

• Introduction
  … reply

Intro

As a Wiki consultancy we regulary got asked about different projects and how good they are. In case of TWiki.org and Foswiki.org customers are very irritated and cannot see the difference. The fact that Foswiki is based on TWiki, but got developed much further within the last year is not obvious to most users. Contrary to the fact that Foswiki is the superior product, TWiki still has the better recognition marketing wise.

In order to help our customers getting an insight into the development of both projects I will do an analysis and compile the results in an understandable way. The results will be published in a small series of articles.

The first analysis will be based on core development of both projects, as this is a major indicator for the health of a software project. This is because you need a lot more knowledge and background for developing the core product than for writing an extension with a clearly defined API.

As the analysis will be based on open source, you can easily check the correctness of the data by yourself. For the first analyzation I will use the following sources:

• TWiki.org SVN trunk/core
• Foswiki.org SVN trunk/core

Stay tuned and see how Foswiki and TWiki developed over the past year.

Continue reading at:

• Development of Foswiki and TWiki - get the facts
  … reply

KontextWork and C-Dot Consultants have worked together to create the WebDAVContrib, a brand new Web DAV implementation for Foswiki and Apache 2.

Web DAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that allows users to edit and manage files collaboratively on remote World Wide Web servers.

The new Web DAV module maps Foswiki content – webs, topics and attachments – to a directory structure, and exports it using the Web DAV protocol. It allows users to work with Foswiki content using the tools they are most familiar with, without compromising on Foswiki features. For example attachments can be opened, manipulated and saved right within desktop applications such as Microsoft Office, Open Office, Adobe Photoshop (and many more). Wiki webs can be opened in file browsers such as Windows Explorer, and wiki topics can be edited using many different text editors.

The new plugin is a completely new Perl implementation of Web DAV, written specifically for Apache 2, and has been extensively tested using the standard litmus tests. It works over HTTP and secure HTTPS, fully respects Foswiki permissions, and can be used with all standard Apache authentication methods. A version for TWiki is also available.

The WebDAVContrib is currently undergoing final pre-release testing. Contact Andre Ulrich for availability and pricing.