[BioC] First business

[Vincent J. Carey, Jr.]

> 
> My proposal is to set up a discussion mailing list (that we all
> subscribe to) for Bioconductor. I don't think that we have anything to

i take it that mailing to bioconductor@stat.math.ethz.ch
constitutes even at this point a discussion mailing list

an open question is how to structure the communications system.
bioconductor-core is necessary for continuing threads like this
one.  bioconductor-help, bioconductor-devel also seem to make sense.

> discuss yet -- which is a problem. We have had four requests to join

i think we have a fair amount to discuss as core, and those
who are non-core may want to describe their concerns.  probably
not too early to start, but a bit too early to publicize very widely

> all with .de suffixes but there will be more.
> Any other ideas?
> 
> Next, libraries. I am hoping to have our new programmer (starting in
> Jan) learn how to test libraries and to handle all submissions (by
> doing some simple testing and then add them to a site like CRAN).
> Do we want to develop and start to populate the site now with the
> proviso that we will put in more stringent tests later?
> The reason for this is to gain some momentum and hopefully to find
> some more people who might be willing to do some of the organizational
> work that will be needed.

i am in favor of deployment soon.  i will be working on getting
test-functionality equivalent to Biobase.  pointers on how to get
there would be worth writing down.

> 
> Fritz/Kurt: is it feasible to set up a web page for bioconductor off
> of CRAN using mainly the existing structure and to populate it with
> unvetted software. I expect that the new programmer will be able to
> take this over in late January. So it would be the initial setup and
> population that would be required.

i hope this is possible, otherwise we need to get sourceforge
or anoncvs running locally.  i would put some effort into that
if i knew that ad hoc security considerations would not lay that effort
to waste at some arbitrary future time

> 
> Organization:
>    - we need someone (volunteers please take a giant step forward) to
>    organize some mechanism for keeping track of what we are doing and
>    what other people are doing regarding building libraries. 

http://biowww.dfci.harvard.edu/~bioconductor/ already has a little
bit in this regard.  we need to distinguish between internal
core-level tracking that can be used for strategizing and
evaluation and public tracking that is a public service and
agenda publicity

i am happy to put core-generated changes into the aforementioned
web page on short notice.

>    - it would be nice to have some place where one can see what sorts
>    of projects are being done so that collaboration etc can go on.
>    - perhaps a Wiki type interface?

this depends upon security.  i will install zope if i can get
a publicly accessible port 8080.  but perhaps that is overkill
for a wiki if that is all we really want.

robert's email is generated from bioconductor-admin, but i made
the reply to bioconductor to reach the core.  please advise
if changes to my mailing strategy are desired.

vince