The following NRENs have sent in statements of support for the greenhouse approach.
Nordunet
Surfnet
PSNC
We understand the Greenhouse initiative as kind of accelerator of open source software projects. We found in its background some similarities to the Apache Software Foundation but in contrast the Greenhouse is intended to be more lightweight. Being characterized as “Trusted intermediary; Known jurisdiction; Light-touch; Community appropriate; Socialised” the Greenhouse initiative targets R&D community all over the Europe. By default Greenhouse does not cover any activities in the area of quality management (code base audits, testing, validating, etc.) but can build a bridge to appropriate experts.
We believe the Greenhouse initiative should put a major attention on promotional, administrative and financial issues aiming at the open software adoption for long-term use. When it comes to the project infrastructure and repositories, including issue trackers, wiki, code base repository management, continuous integration etc., the Greenhouse should explore the existing market taking advantage of e.g. GitHub or Geant Software Development Infrastructure.
The Greenhouse supporting model can also be extended towards consultancy, training courses and speakers on several areas of sustainable software development. PSNC offers to broaden the GÉANT expertise in the following areas:
- Efficient development of high quality software;
- Deployment, administration and trainings in the scope of infrastructure supporting software development;
- Evaluation of open source project maturity level;
- Agile development methodologies, especially Scrum.