coWiki is looking for a new maintainer

January 3, 2005

Hello community, hello reader,

the coWiki web collaboration project is looking for a new maintainer to take over the further development, programming and extension of this excellent software. Maybe it is you?

About the coWiki project

In 2002, coWiki was the first bigger GPLed (GNU General Public License) object oriented web collaboration tool that was entirely written in upcoming PHP 5. It is a bit different to other wikis that are hyped these days: coWiki saves its data structure in XML (which has a high potential to be transformed and exported e.g. HTML, PDF or RTF formats), it consists of plugins (very easy to extend) and it provides a hierarchical document/directory structure guarded by a powerfullunixlike permission system.

coWiki never loses a hyperlink reference to a linked document as those references are automagically repaired. Hence its impossible to meet or generate a broken link within a coWiki document web site structure, even if you rename your documents while your work is evolving.

It is almost needless to say, that coWiki is template based, multilingual and based on the object oriented programming paradigm (OOP).

Meanwhile a lot of private people, companies and institutions benefit from this software world wide?.

What is coWiki good for

In 2001 I was working on different software projects for a small company in Germany, and after I was finished with my work, I reflected in my leisure time that we needed something that helps us to gather documentation for a customer.

The tedious compilation of documents, hints, hacks, links, howtos and so on for documentation purposes of a software development process was coerced me to develop an application where the involved non-tech people could gather their knowledge, and - if desired - to export it for a customer documentation on a click of a button. This idea lead to coWiki.

About my part in this game

I've been developing and maintaining the popular PHP 5 coWiki web collaboration software since 2001 and as time passes by, personal challenges and interests change as well as professional responsibilities, claims and preferences. Due to the given situation I am not able to maintain the coWiki project any further. I am very sorry to give the child away but I hope it is going to find an other place where it grow up and get adult.

Facing facts:

Either one of you gets infected by the coWiki idea, its possibilities and its future potential or this open source project is ultimatively doomed to die. I hope that there is anybody willing to take over the maintenance, the helm and lead coWiki to a better future.

What can you do? What will you get?

You can take over the development lead of the coWiki project and develop it further to make it the meet your expectations and visions.

You, the new maintainer will of course get all the technical support (the entire CVS code, mailinglists management if you like etc.) and of course my attention and answers to emerging questions. I will help you as much as I can. I am also willing to contribute code to the base and fix bugs if I have time left.

If you are interested in PHP 5, its object oriented capabilities, maybe want to learn something en route and feel challenged and want to take over this project, please write to the developer mailing list at <mailto:cowiki-dev (at) develnet (dot) org> or directly to my email private address. If you write to me personally please use the term "coWiki" in the subject.

My heartblood

coWiki shouldn't miserably perish on its last steps to evolve into a great free software application. Take a look on it, maybe you will like it and lead it in the future. Just dare.

Please note that coWiki is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and hence a potential source of money.

For further questions please drop an email to <mailto:cowiki-dev (at) develnet (dot) org>.

Thank you, regards dtg