[Phpgroupware-developers] New to the PHPGroupware list

[Scott Courtney]

Good day, list members.

I just wanted to say hello. I've joined the developers list for PHPGroupware
in hopes of being able to contribute to this Open Source project. So far I have
been pretty impressed with the quality of the code base, though as you are all
aware there is still work to be done (as with any project, right?).

The e-mail address that I'm using here (address@hidden) is my personal one,
because I have a faster e-mail connection at home than at work (I telecommute,
and my company's HQ is in an area that is very under-served for broadband).
My interest in PHPGroupware is primarily professional, though, because my
company is working with a customer who is interested in deploying this package
on a fairly large scale.

One of the first things I will be looking into is how to easily share a common
base installation of PHPGroupware from a read-only shared filesystem. This is
not the same thing as the multiple-domain support already included. We actually
need to have the configuration (including such things as database connection
parameters) live in a file like /usr/local/etc/phpgroupware/config.php or
similar, while the code itself is in /usr/share/phpgroupware or similar. The
latter directory needs to be entirely read-only and sharable. This is because
of specific needs related to our customer's virtual clustering environment.
It is fairly easy to make part of this happen, but I expect things aren't
trivial when you get into the header editing features and so on.

If anyone on the list has ongoing work related to this, please let me know so
that I can join your efforts rather than duplicating the wheel.

>From a personal standpoint, I am currently working on an unrelated project
in PHP, and I hope to be able to synergize this work with PHPGroupware. My
other project has been a from-scratch effort and all the code is GPL.
I want to look at the code base of PHPGroupware and of my other project, and
identify areas where GPL code from one could benefit the other. This of
course isn't going to happen overnight, and I need some time to study the
code for PHPGroupware in more detail before I offer any suggestions along
these lines.

Finally, while I've been writing software for a very long time, and have put
a moderate amount of my own code out as GPL freeware, this is my first
experience in attempting to merge into an existing team. My prior projects have
all been small enough that I have been a team of one, or have worked with just
one colleague who happens to reside nearby -- so coordination has not been an
issue. I am familiar with CVS and know how to checkin, checkout, and so on,
though I am not a CVS admin guru.

Beyond the use of CVS and the online bug tracking system, are there other
customs/rules/practices that relate to this particular project, of which I
should be aware? I don't want to barge in and step on anyone's toes. In fact,
I plan to largely be a "lurker" for a while as I familiarize myself more
deeply with the source tree, before I start submitting hacks. But I am open
to any suggestions folks who've been here a while would care to offer.

I look forward to working with you on this worthwhile project. I've only been
in the code base a few days, but I like what I see so far.

Kind regards,

Scott

-- 
-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------
Scott Courtney         | "I don't mind Microsoft making money. I mind them
address@hidden       | having a bad operating system."    -- Linus Torvalds
http://www.4th.com/    | ("The Rebel Code," NY Times, 21 February 1999)