[Rdap] NEWS RELEASE: New Fedora Initiative Underway

Carol Minton Morris cmmorris at fedora-commons.org
Wed Jan 9 09:29:06 EST 2013


*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*

January 9, 2012
Contact: Jonathan Markow <jjmarkow at duraspace.org>
Read it online: http://bit.ly/WNtbl2

*Fedora—A Repository for the Future*
*New Fedora Initiative Underway*

A group of stakeholders from the Fedora community have come together to
begin the process of planning a three year software development project
that will direct new resources toward a major Fedora overhaul, adding
capabilities that will make Fedora the repository platform of choice for
the future.  The group anticipates that improvements will include features
such as greater scalability, data management support, storage flexibility,
and others the community has been requesting. This new initiative is being
called Fedora Futures.

The Coalition of Networked Information 2012 Fall Meeting held in Washington
D.C. Dec. 10-11 was the setting for a session that introduced the Fedora
Futures community initiative. Members of Fedora Futures announced the
project and led a discussion on the future of the Fedora Repository that
included a review of the current state of Fedora, the proponents and
objectives of the Futures initiative, and a review on the use cases,
stakeholders, high level requirements and processes which are guiding the
project.  The group is now seeking broader community input and will be
reaching out to current DuraSpace sponsors and others in the near future.
 The discussion was standing room only, with 75 interested attendees packed
into the venue. The presentation is available on the Fedora Futures wiki:
https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Fedora+Futures+Home.

The discussion at CNI revolved around one central question, posed by Mark
Leggott, University Librarian at Prince Edward Island and chair of the
Fedora Futures Steering Group: “Given the success and value of Fedora as an
open source, digital repository over the last 12 years, how can the
community marshal an effort to enhance the platform in order to meet the
known and emerging needs and opportunities in the repository arena?”

“Fedora has a worldwide community of adopters, and has proven itself as
flexible, extensible and durable architecture,” said Tom Cramer, Chief
Technology Strategist at Stanford University. He added, “for the Futures
project, our objectives are to preserve these strengths, while increasing
its performance, scalability and modularity, and reducing its complexity at
the same time.” Another primary objective is to expand the pool of
developers actively committing to the project.

Matthias Razum, head of EScience from FIZ Karlsruhe, presented the use
cases and stakeholder profiles that are guiding the new wave of
development. These include managing research and heterogeneous data more
efficiently; improving administrability of the repository, and interacting
with the linked data and the semantic web. Per Razum, “Our targeted actors
are not just administrators and developers, but also curators and
researchers; the repository of the future has to serve needs across the
whole information lifecycle.”

Eddie Shin of MediaShelf LLC and a longtime Fedora committer, was
introduced as the project’s interim Product Manager. Shin reviewed the
technical and development approach that the project group is undertaking.
“We plan to provide next generation repository while ensuring a smooth
upgrade path for existing institutions. We’ll do this through a lean
development methodology, with rapid development and continuous release of
functionality produced in short iterations.”

The Fedora Futures initiative is being seeded by a coalition of
institutions that are all keenly interested in seeing Fedora adapt to meet
today’s and tomorrow’s needs for a robust repository platform. Working
hand-in-glove with DuraSpace, the founding members of the initiative are
Columbia University, FIZ Karlsruhe, MediaShelf LLC, Oxford University, the
Smithsonian Institute, Stanford University, University of Prince Edward
Island, and the University of Virginia. Each of these institutions has
committed to contributing significant financial and/or personnel to the
redevelopment effort.

Jonathan Markow, Chief Strategy Officer at DuraSpace, extended an
invitation to the entire Fedora community to participate in the effort.
“The Futures group has catalyzed renewed development for Fedora, but for
the effort to achieve its full potential for all stakeholders, we need to
enlist not only Fedora’s current committers, but also all adopters,
sponsors and service providers.” *A prospectus is available to those who
would like to get involved as contributors to this effort by contacting
Jonathan Markow <jjmarkow at duraspace.org>.*  University of Virginia,
Discovery Garden and University of Prince Edward Island, Stanford
University, Columbia University, Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, FIZ
Karlsruhe, and MediaShelf have already pledged substantial resources to the
project.

Questions about the technical direction of the project or offers of
development support can be made to Edwin Shin <Edwin.Shin at yourmediashelf.com
>

MORE INFORMATION

• A Fedora Futures prospectus is available here: Fedora Futures
Prospectus<https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Fedora+Futures+Prospectus>
.
• The Fedora Futures wiki:
https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Fedora+Futures+Home
• Slides from the Fedora Futures session at the 2012 CNI Fall Member
Meeting:http://www.slideshare.net/Tom-Cramer/fedora-futures-cni-2012
• "Fedora Futures Kicks Off at CNI" blog post:
http://duraspace.org/fedora-futures-kicks-cni

-- 
Carol Minton Morris
DuraSpace
Director of Marketing and Communications
cmmorris at DuraSpace.org
Skype: carolmintonmorris
607 592-3135
Twitter at DuraSpace <http://twitter.com/duraspace>
Twitter at DuraCloud <http://twitter.com/duracloud>
http://DuraSpace.org
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