Project OpenScholar does not have public releases, and its project page links to a external site for the download

I have sent a message to the current maintainer.

Hello, ferdi. I am writing you because the project OpenScholar doesn't have any commits.

Projects that don't contain code should not be hosted on Drupal.org. The presence of a link in the project page makes it appear like spam. Please reply on http://drupal.org/node/804664. The project has been unpublished, and it will be deleted between a week.

Best regards.
— kiamlaluno
Drupal.org site maintainer
Drupal.org contributions CVS maintainer

Not sure I understand what the issue is here but I have committed some code already http://drupalcode.org/viewvc/drupal/contributions/profiles/openscholar/

Thanks !

Not sure I understand what the issue is here but I have committed some code already

The code has been committed 13 hours ago, which means after this report has been opened. The issue is that users seeing a project page that just contains a link to an external web site, and no committed code think that who created the project page is just trying to get Google juices for the site he added the link.

If that is not the case, then I apologize, but I can understand if a user thought that something could be wrong with the project page.

I re-published the project page, but the download link should be removed, as the download is supposed to be done from Drupal.org.

Re-open this report if there are still issues with the project.

problems don't seem to be addressed.

Last time the user reported he became a father.
More than 14 days are now passed, and nothing is changed, except the user made a commit, but didn't create a release of the installation profile. I have marked the project as unpublished.

Can someone please let me know what is exactly that I should do so that the OpenScholar project page gets republished ?

Reading carefully all the comments in this thread, I'm guessing it could be one of the following:

1. There is not code in the repository, which was the original concern.
Based on #3 that problem was solved.

2. Based on #4 there is an issue about the link to the openscholar source code.

I hope you are aware about recent efforts in Drupal community to improve install profiles for creating Drupal distributions. As far as I know, there are currently 2 ways to
make a distribution available to users/developers:
- install profile + drush make
- make the full distribution available somewhere, including drupal core + contributed modules/themes + custom modules/themes etc.

Both ways have their pros and cons. Having both options available does not hurt. A good example would be one of the best / most used distribution in drupal community (http://drupal.org/project/openatrium)

3. Based on #3+#5 it seems to be a concern about the project being "fake" or "trying to get Google juices"

One of the reasons that the link to the source code was included in the project page was to just make sure that it was not just a service but an open source project where users could access and download everything.

4. #8 states that the project doesnt have a release.

It's not ready yet. I was under the impression that having a public release was not a prerequisite for the publishing status of a project in drupal.org. If that's not the case, please let me know. I'll like to offer my help writing a script to find all the projects hosted on drupal.org that do not have a public release (there are a lot of them!). So you can
unpublish them alltogether.

Thank You !

@ferdi: If you look at the other installation profiles, they don't have a link to download it from an external site; that is the main problem of your installation profile. The problem is not the fact the project doesn't have a public release, but that it doesn't have a public release, and the project page reports a link to download it from an external site.

As you are hosting the project on Drupal.org, then any links to download it from external sites must be removed.

I am changing the priority, as this report is not critical.

If you look at the other installation profiles, they don't have a link to download it from an external site

http://drupal.org/project/openatrium

Thanks!

Edited.
Cannot make out 'What is openscholar' as the page denies access (instead of a non-existing page).
Strangely I can access the issues of the project.

@kaakuu openscholar very similar to openatrium, but for public facing sites. Please feel free to try it out http://scholar-demo.iq.harvard.edu/

Or download and install it for yourself: http://scholar.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/scholar/tags/SCHOLAR-2-0-BETA4...

Thanks!

I have opened an issue report for the other installation profile (#824550: OpenAtrium profile page reports a link to download it from an external site).

I see. Thanks.
@kiamlauno : Openatrium is still accessible. And Openscholar is not. Either both should be accessible or both should not be. Since an issue is opened against Openatrium it should be unpublished OR Openscholar published, imho. If there is a delay in unpublishing what is the rule regarding how much specific time needs to be elapsed or is the entire thing "according to wish" ?

@kaakuu: If you look at the OP, and the first comment, you will notice that the project page for Openscholar has been first unpublished 5 hours after the report has been opened. If the same procedure is done also for the other installation profile, then the project page will be unpublished after 5 hours, and not instantly.

I would make notice that there are some differences between the cases. The first time the Openscholar page has been unpublished, the project didn't contain any code, and the project page merely contained a link to an external site; then ferdi committed the code, and I re-published the page, reporting also that the link to download the project from an external site should be removed. ferdi didn't remove it, and silverwing re-opened this report because nothing was changed.
Therefore, ferdi had more than 14 days to remove the download link from the project page.

Could it not be a policy that as long as the project has (GPL) code on Drupal.org, then links to other resources are okay? After all, many modules have links to sponsors, developers, off-site issue trackers (like github), off-site videos, off-site documentation … and isn't that a good thing?

It is only a recommendation, not a requirement:

See http://drupal.org/node/7765

Contributors are strongly encouraged to host at drupal.org rather than elsewhere

The advantages are described at http://drupal.org/node/648898

However, these are recommendations, not requirements.

In short, there's nothing to see here.

This should be closed out.

@laura s: Clearly, links to sponsors, developers, off-site issue trackers are fine. What I don't find correct is to have a link to download the project files from a third-party site, and no official release (or development snapshot) visible in the project page. There are some projects, in example, that with a link to a Git repository where it is being developed code that is still a prototype; that is fine, as the project page still reports the link to download the code from Drupal.org.

@bonomo: In the same page, you find the following sentence:

If you are not using the Drupal.org infrastructure, you cannot setup a project page on Drupal.org nor can you offer your module for download at Drupal.org.

Committing code, without to have any visible link to download the project from Drupal.org, but a link to download the code from a third-party site seems like a way to use the Drupal.org infrastructure, and still have users that download the project from an external site.

@kiamlaluno

The maintainers are clearly within the letter of the guidelines, which are loose at best.

They are also asking what they need to do to come more into line with expectations.

They are already within the letter of the guidelines.

Adding the following should make it ironclad:

We use our repository at [link to repo] to develop against. You can download the most current code there. We synch major releases into CVS on drupal.org

This response provides a path forward - which, in this case, is actually more than what is needed, as the project already has code in the repo.

To notice also that the download link reported in the project page takes to a ViewVC page hosted on sourceforce.net, where all the files I can see are Drupal core files. The last commit of those files have been done 7 weeks ago; I would take that are not the most recent developed files.

I could have misunderstood, but can profiles use drush make files?
See in example this profile that uses a drush make file, and declares to require Drupal 6.16; Drupal, and all required modules are packed into a single archive (see http://drupal.org/node/697412).

@kiamlaluno Can you please republish the project page ? I think this should marked "by design" as you agree here .
Thank you !

I've published the project after taking with the maintainer.

Let's give them some time to figure out drush make and get an almost-complete profile available to download. Let's say 14 days and then we'll revisit the progress?

As per http://drupal.org/node/824550#comment-3076470 I'm marking this as by design.