Mac News: Community: GroundWork Cuts Ribbon on MonitoringForge

GroundWork Cuts Ribbon on MonitoringForge

By Erika Morphy
LinuxInsider
Part of the ECT News Network
09/16/09 4:00 AM PT

There's a new clearinghouse for open source projects and systems: MonitoringForge. The site aims to corral monitoring and network management tools in one place, facilitate the exchange of information and ideas, foster collaboration and development, and build a community that rewards participation.

GroundWork Open Source, a provider of commercial open source systems and network management software, has launched MonitoringForge, a hub for IT administrators and developers interested in open source monitoring tools.

The new site aims to encompass the monitoring space as a whole, as opposed to focusing on specific products or applications, said Tara Spalding, vice president of marketing at GroundWork Open Source.

It is the first open source portal to focus on monitoring, she told LinuxInsider.

Demand for a community around open source monitoring was apparent when the beta site launched on Tuesday, said Spaulding. In the first day, there were more than 100 sign-ups and two inquiries about participation on the advisory board.

Community Goals

MonitoringForge launched with more than 1,700 open source projects and plug-ins -- many of which link back to existing community and developer sites. Eventually, it plans to have community-based governance, and is currently assembling an advisory board to oversee project presentation and participation issues.

The more participation, the better it is for users seeking more information about open source monitoring, Spaulding said.

Among the operations MonitoringForge is designed to facilitate:

package management that supports a variety of iterations;
subversion tracking and code submission;
open source license management;
project review and user rankings;
meta-tagging for identification;
Q&A, roadmap and bug tracking to connect user feedback directly to developers;
application previewing via a screenshot gallery;
sharing best practices through wikis, documentation, newsfeeds and forums; and
establishing project-based security.

Product Pull

Central sites like MonitoringForge are useful places to find information, said Bernard Golden, founder of HyperStratus and author of Succeeding With Open Source.

"They provide good, high-level evaluations for IT administrators that have been using one platform -- say, Tivoli -- and have decided they want to investigate the alternatives," Golden told LinuxInsider.

"The challenge is that most of these sites want to become a focal point [for a category] -- but then find that their energy is being spent on specific products," commented Golden, "and the site drifts into something that is more product-focused."

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