OSDev.org

Hello everyone!
I was thinking how to protect my OS code (e.g. when my HDD crashes I'll lost it). I thought about hosting, so which is the best free site to host my code and which license i should choose for open source OS ? What do you think about it ?

neonek wrote:Hello everyone!
I was thinking how to protect my OS code (e.g. when my HDD crashes I'll lost it). I thought about hosting, so which is the best free site to host my code and which license i should choose for open source OS ? What do you think about it ?

What license... whoa debate bait!

We had googlecode for a while, not bad, it uses svn. We are now using github which uses git for SCM... very nice. Both are free, but personally I don't trust google all that much. Also, git is very powerful, and good for source control. Although, it has a bit of a learning curve.

As for licenses, our group roughed out the discussion and came to the conclusion that for an exokernel with the linking to libOSes and ambiguous nature of contribution, and our interest in aiding academic interests that the BSD license wins. Depends on what you want to do, though. For open source, look at the GPL, BSD, and MPL. There is always the WTFPL.

I just recently starting a project in Google Code. I've used Mercurial (hg) in the past, but I do *not* recommend using that. I'd stick with Google code... it's really easy to use, and Google has amazing up-time, so I wouldn't worry about that. Google code uses SVN btw.

I personally like the MIT license as it's basically PD but with the author's name and date of copyright instilled in the source. Also, one big advantage over PD is that it's recognized globally (I think). Else, I'd stick with BSD license, or LGPL. I would not recommend GPL, but that's just a personal opinion and I don't feel like engaging in yet another endless license war. =)

Don't forget about SourceForge. That's where most of the important open source projects are hosted.

idk about sourceforge... Last time I tried to get SF to host one of my OS projects they rejected it because something like OSs are too big of projects for them to host. (which is true if your OS becomes something big or monolithic with many packages and such)

My only complaint with google code is how they don't allow you to use a "sane" password(like its randomly generated, and no way to set your own for SVN) and https and SVN is awful slow(on 60kb/s connection, it took me usually about 4 minutes to commit)

I have recently(well past few months) got a good fast host and such and have setup SVN for it.. if you would like a SVN only type thing for a really small project.

I can't recommend any other type of code service as I have yet to try any others.. (ever since I got my own SVN its just easier to self-host lol)

edit:
Oh and for license: BSD for the win!
honestly here is the comparison.
GPL:
forked projects must use GPL and be opensource and include the huge GPL license
If any portion of your code is used, the whole project using that source must be GPL (I think)

BSD:
if your project is forked or a portion of code is used, then the project that uses it must include a notification that BSD licensed code was used, and give a link to your project and such. The rest of the project can be closed source though(and changes can freely be made to the BSD code)

earlz wrote:idk about sourceforge... Last time I tried to get SF to host one of my OS projects they rejected it because something like OSs are too big of projects for them to host. (which is true if your OS becomes something big or monolithic with many packages and such)

ReactOS for instance is hosted on SF. I'm also trying to register my project there. It's actually a takeover - my OS' name is Simplexity and there's already an abaondoned unrelated non-OS project baring that name. I will let you know if they accepted my project or not. However, I do rember that in the past no one actually had to aprove anything, you just registered and that was pretty much it.

yea, it use to be that way.. just about anything would work. but I think now they restrict their projects a bit more to useful things that won't take up gigs of SVN space

I've got account on Google Code but no projects started yet. I think I'll try GitHub. And for license I'll choose New BSD which is good for me.
Thanks all

Regards,
Mark

When you do try github, and thus git, this was helpful: a cheat sheet for git.

Good luck,
Wilks

Why not to consider www.berlios.de ? I thinlk it is cool too.

I must get my Ubuntu box back before I'll try them, but thanks all

Regards,
Mark

I use Gitorious, which is very nice. I used Google Code previously, but I really prefer Git so much more.