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.
| Filesender response |
|---|---|
| How is the project currently funded? Do you receive money from individual organisations or from grants (e.g. GN3) | NREN contributions – no grants sought (or received) |
| 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? | expect to establish a consortium – not unlike the Greenhouse in method and goal – to formalise and streamline the contribution process (committing, collecting and governance) |
| Would you like the Greenhouse to pay individual developers or other staff for you? | yes |
| Would you like the Greenhouse to pay other bills for you, e.g. hosting costs, promotional materials etc. | yes |
| What costs are currently associated with the project? | development (about 1FTE), testing (about 0.5FTE). Some resources provided in-kind, e.g., release management / packaging (about 0.5FTE). Sundry costs such as travel, promotional material &c. |
| 2. LEGAL AGREEMENTS | Filesender response |
|---|---|
| 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? | contracts are being finalised. Should at some point we move away from our intended consortium operator towards Greenhouse, a similar structure would remain very desirable; we're not in-principle opposed to using a generic structure. Better to have a good fit that actually works than to have it precisely our way only to find that the promises cannot be upheld when push comes to shove. |
| Do you need the Greenhouse to manage contracts for staff such as developers? | that would be ideal |
| Do you need the Greenhouse to act as a home / signing authority for other purposes (e.g. domain registration, home address etc). | not a strict need per se (we run all of that in a round-robin fashion between participants right now) but it would make it lots easier to set up any new project |
| Would you like to run your project yourself but need support in getting advice for writing agreements and managing contracts? | we think it's vital that the individual projects run themselves as much as possible, with a Greenhouse limiting itself to admin/secretarial-type functions. |
| What are the current licensing / IPR arrangements for the product? | copyright owned by participants (will likely be vested in consortium operator, soon). Software licensed by BSD. |
| 3. TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS | Filesender response |
|---|---|
| Do you need the Greenhouse to offer any hosting for project software (wiki, bug tracker, mailing lists etc)? | not a need; github and assembla do a fine job. Wouldn't be opposed to moving over if any operator (e.g., Greenhouse) requires this. None too many moves per annum preferably, though, |
| Do you need the Greenhouse to help you source good developers / software houses? | no, but knowledge sharing and perhaps even developer sharing between projects certainly wouldn't hurt. |
| Would you like to use a central Greenhouse helpdesk manager? | not sure what for? internal queries between project participants? queries from service users at large? Certainly the latter are handled by each individual NREN that uses the filesender software to run an NREN filesender service, not by the filesender team. |
| 4. PROMOTION AND COORDINATION | Filesender response |
|---|---|
| Would you like the Greenhouse to offer any central staffing support such as project manager, contract manager, or PR and Comms? | project manager: we think it's vital that this role is provided by the software project (almost as a heartbeat – if that role drops away the project can be considered dead) Legal advice from the greenhouse would also be very welcome. |
| 5. CURRENT USAGE AND REQUIREMENTS | Filesender response |
|---|---|
| Please provide some information about the current and potential user base for the product | https://www.assembla.com/spaces/file_sender/wiki/Existing_installations there's still two or three known big old-world NRENs to go; also, we haven't yet made a dent in Asia and Africa. Latin America is progressing well. Interest within governmental departments and NGOs is on the increase. |
| How many people currently work on the project and what is the expectation for the future in terms of involvement and funding? | about 6 people (not FTE) currently actively involved; expectation for the future is stable, perhaps slow growth. Funding would remain grassroots and will probably remain at the current level, but in the form of ever smaller donations by ever more organisations (another reason why we need a consortium) |
| 6. POSITIONING WITHIN THE GREENHOUSE | Filesender response |
|---|---|
| Would you be happy for your project to be listed with features on a Greenhouse promotional website? | no; given our near-finalised relationship with an alternative consortium operator that wouldn't currently be very opportune |
| Are you happy that your project will sit within a framework of other projects being offered similar services? | yes (by corollary of [above]) |
| Are you happy that the project must first be accepted by the Greenhouse Steering Committee and will have an incubation period of assessment? | yes; strong proponents of that procedure in fact. If such hygiene isn't enforced, it'll become unmanageable before long. Hence it's to the benefit of those already in |
| Are you willing to commit a certain percentage of project funding to the central Greenhouse function? | yes; in the order of single-digit percents. |