Traditionally, netbeans.org is the primary user facing site of the NetBeans project.

In addition, there's wiki.netbeans.org with information more relevant to developers of NetBeans than its users, though there's some overlap, e.g., wiki.netbeans.org includes the NetBeans User FAQ wiki.netbeans.org/NetBeansUserFAQ.

In Apache, there's in principle two sites as well, one for users and one for developers:

  • xxx.org (e.g., netbeans.org for NetBeans users)
  • xxx.apache.org (e.g., netbeans.apache.org for NetBeans developers)

However, some Apache projects redirect from the one to the other, while other Apache projects keep these sites separate. At least, we must have netbeans.apache.org – and we must decide whether we want netbeans.org or not (and if not somehow handle redirects and so on or some other solution).

Arguments for only having netbeans.apache.org (and somehow redirecting or otherwise from netbeans.org to netbeans.apache.org):

  • We cannot afford to split the community. All users/developers should be using netbeans.apache.org as primary point of entry. As now, there should be an area for IDE and one for the Platform. Having both will allow users to possible explore new things they else never would see. (Bernd)
  • There are no technical obstacles to keeping all netbeans.org links perfectly working by using redirection. (Ognyan)
  • Single netbeans.apache.org will send clear message that NetBeans is open community that welcomes development involvement. It is also "cutting of ties" with the perception of the previous "corporate model". (Ognyan)
  • There will always be some confusion why there is such split. (Ognyan)
  • OpenOffice.org is not a good example for splitting because the name of the software is "OpenOffice.org" so they have to keep it. Also, OOo is consumer software so it's not expected that users will participate in its development. (Ognyan)
  • Example of using old domain is groovy-lang.org but they decided to not use groovy.apache.org at all, so again it's single domain for the project and no split. (Ognyan)

Arguments for  keeping netbeans.org separate from netbeans.apache.org:

  • Losing the netbeans.org domain for the primary user facing links would be a mistake in my opinion, given the huge number of inbound links out there (yes, I know we can redirect, but it doesn't mean we should).  Having a site focused purely on development of the IDE and platform at netbeans.apache.org as required doesn't mean we'd split the community.  Lots of organisations use multiple sub-domains / domains for different purposes - the key is to integrate the layout/designso that people can easily find what they're looking for, with header links back-and-forth, etc.  OpenOffice roughly has this approach by the look of it. (Neil)

  • Losing netbeans.org would result in huge loss of visibility, and many dead links which points to existing content. It's not possible to redirect all the existing content. (Zoran)

 

 

 

 

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