Overview

OpenOffice.org maintains two repositories, one for extensions and one for templates.
While the two sites are completely independent, Extensions and Templates were born as twin sites, in that they used the same technology (Drupal), a similar visual identity and were developed by the same people; the lead developer was Thorsten Bosbach from Oracle and all development was done within Oracle.
The sites are hosted in the Oregon State University, Open Source Lab data center. Unverified: Oracle is providing financial support to OSUOSL for hosting the two sites.
Major differences between the two sites:

Extensions

Templates

Launched on Drupal 5 in September 2007

Launched on Drupal 5 in November 2008

Still runs on Drupal 5, now unsupported (currently supported releases of Drupal are Drupal 6 and Drupal 7, and end-of-life for Drupal 6 will be in 2012 or later)

Runs on Drupal 6 (updated in February 2011)

Uses the same accounts as the openoffice.org main site (you login with your @openoffice.org address)

Uses the same accounts as the openoffice.org main site (you login with your @openoffice.org address)

Daily traffic (August 2010): 110.000 page views

Daily traffic (August 2010): 120.000 page views

Language-independent (even though the interface is multilingual, the same extensions are presented to all visitors)

Language-dependent (visitors with browsers in English only see the English templates, and so on for all supported languages)

Has (limited) interaction with the OpenOffice.org program (capability to search updated extensions)

No interaction with the OpenOffice.org program: once a template is downloaded, OpenOffice.org can't know where it comes from or check if a newer version is available

See the attached presentation by Thorsten Bosbach (OOoCon August 2010, Budapest) for more information.

Current status

OSUOSL says:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Extensions and templates site down
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 07:32:14 -0700
From: Dave Fisher <dave2wave@comcast.net>
Reply-To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org

I sent an email to support@osuosl.org last night and got a response in 30 minutes.

OSUOSL admin says:

> Looks like varnish died on the machine and I just kicked it. The site(s)
> should be back online now.
>
> The sites have been in an unstable state for quite a while mostly
> because neither we (OSL) nor Sun/Oracle had time to fix the performance
> issues both of the sites entails. Couple that with the fact that the
> machines they power those sites are very underpower considering the load
> they take. It's gotten so bad that we've turned off notifications
> because they just go off all the time.
>
> What really needs to happen is to have the sites completely
> re-architected from the ground up with scaling in mind. At least one of
> the sites is a stock Drupal 5.0 with a very hacked core. I know some
> Sun/Oracle engineers had been working on fixing that into a Drupal 6
> module but I'm not sure where that left off.
>

There are no hacks anymore, all plain drupal installations with modules.

> Anyways, If you would like some more help with how these sites can be
> fixed moving forward, please let me know. But we are strectched thin for
> resources.

It looks like these two sites are going to need attention whether they are physically moved or the servers transferred to the ASF.

Statistics

Current usage:
Items available for download:
Extensions - 664
Number of downloads
Year To Date as of Aug 19, 2011

Templates available for download:
Total - 2,269

Lang

items

Da

25

De

310

El

60

En

1043

Es

80

Fr

138

He

2

Hu

15

It

100

Ja

125

Nl

47

Pl

90

Pt-Br

55

Ru

135

Sl

10

Sv

20

Zh (both)

14

Open Issues

  • License distribution
  • Balance between hosted vs distributed repository ( do we store 'it' or just the meta-data and link )

Migration plan

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