It has been recognised that different products or projects will have very different needs from a software conservancy organisation like the TERENA Greenhouse. The following Product Needs Assessment is a starter requirements gathering exercise for projects to better understand how we can help provide support.
- FUNDING AND FINANCES
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| How is the project currently funded? Do you receive money from individual organisations or from grants (e.g. GN3) | It's part of the Feide budget. |
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| How do you intend to fund the project in the future? Would you expect the Greenhouse to collect funds from organisations or other funding sources? Are there any barriers to this? | Our idea is to finance the project based on contributions by consortium members. |
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| Would you like the Greenhouse to pay individual developers or other staff for you? | Could be, depending on the model agreed upon |
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| Would you like the Greenhouse to pay other bills for you, e.g. hosting costs, promotional materials etc. | Yes |
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| What costs are currently associated with the project? | Approx. an FTE + (maybe) website hosting. |
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| 2. LEGAL AGREEMENTS | SimpleSAML response |
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| Do you have any contracts or consortium agreement arrangements for people to pay money in to the project? Would you require something like this in the future, are there any specific requirements around this and would you be happy using a generic framework proposed by the Greenhouse? | We don't have anything like that now, but we would like to explore that model. We need to review the generic framework and see if it fits, though it probably will. |
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| Do you need the Greenhouse to manage contracts for staff such as developers? | Or with organizations / members helping with development. |
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| Do you need the Greenhouse to act as a home / signing authority for other purposes (e.g. domain registration, home address etc). | Probably yes |
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| Would you like to run your project yourself but need support in getting advice for writing agreements and managing contracts? | No, we want to have an active role in the architecture and design of SSP, but we don't necessarily need to run the project or take the final decisions. |
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| What are the current licensing / IPR arrangements for the product? | Copyright by UNINETT, software with a LGPL 2.1 license. |
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| 3. TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS | SimpleSAML response |
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| Do you need the Greenhouse to offer any hosting for project software (wiki, bug tracker, mailing lists etc)? | No |
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| Do you need the Greenhouse to help you source good developers / software houses? | Could be helpful, though we already have people with good knowledge involved. |
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| Would you like to use a central Greenhouse helpdesk manager? | If that includes answering questions in the mailing lists and taking care of issues and pull requests, definitely! |
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| 4. PROMOTION AND COORDINATION | SimpleSAML response |
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| Would you like the Greenhouse to offer any central staffing support such as project manager, contract manager, or PR and Comms? | This is undecided yet. |
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| 5. CURRENT USAGE AND REQUIREMENTS | SimpleSAML response |
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| Please provide some information about the current and potential user base for the product | SimpleSAMLphp has a large community and user base, with lots of deployments around the world serving as service and identity providers, as well as proxies in hub&spoke federations. |
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| How many people currently work on the project and what is the expectation for the future in terms of involvement and funding? | Currently around one FTE, probably a bit more if we consider external contributions. |
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| 6. POSITIONING WITHIN THE GREENHOUSE | SimpleSAML response |
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| Would you be happy for your project to be listed with features on a Greenhouse promotional website? | Yes |
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| Are you happy that your project will sit within a framework of other projects being offered similar services? | Yes |
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| Are you happy that the project must first be accepted by the Greenhouse Steering Committee and will have an incubation period of assessment? | Yes, though we would need more information on that incubation period. SSP is a mature project, pretty well established right now. |
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| Are you willing to commit a certain percentage of project funding to the central Greenhouse function? | Yes |
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