Some of you who visited the website or the github repo today might have
noticed this already: MediaCore CE is now MediaDrop!
Why?
As you probably know MediaCore Inc. runs the MediaCore.com cloud platform. In
2011 that platform started as a fork of the open source version "MediaCore"
but since the to versions diverged quite a bit. The cloud platform got a new
layout, many features and big focus on educational institutions. The community
edition added their own access restriction features, and improved testability
and pluggability a lot.
However a lot of customers were confused by the name similarity. There were
many inquiries to mediacore.com about self-hosting and questions on the open
source form about cloud features. Therefore we (MediaCore Inc. + me) decided
that it was time to change "MediaCore CE" into something different. And last
but not least there is a bit of a trademark issue: MediaCore Inc. always had
to keep some control over the open source project (through hosting it on their
servers) to prevent any potential trademark dilution.
So from now on MediaCore CE is MediaDrop.
We won't alter the old releases but MediaDrop 0.11 will be the first release
with the new name everywhere. This change also opens a lot of new
possibilities for the open source version: With a completely independent name
we can run the hosting on own servers and get more control into the hands of
the community.
Thank you MediaCore Inc.
I would also like to use the oppurtunity to thank MediaCore Inc. for open
sourcing the software in 2010 and their open source work afterwards. Also I
think they handled the transition to a community maintained software pretty well.
Technical Implications for Developers and Operators
Unfortunately the name has some implications on developers. If you deployed
MediaDrop from git you should be aware that the repository was moved to a new
location: http://github.com:mediadrop/mediadrop
If you cloned the MediaCore repository directly you need to tell git where the
latest source code is:
git remote rm origin
git remote add origin git@github.com:mediadrop/mediadrop.git
git fetch origin
git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master master
# if you also use the "v0.10-stable" branch you need to do this as well:
# git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/v0.10-stable v0.10-stable
If you have your own fork on github you don't have to do anything.
Another implication is that the Python package names will change from
"mediacore" to "mediadrop". Unfortunately this means all plugins must be
changed (and will be incompatible to MediaDrop 0.10 afterwards). Maybe I can
create a compatibility package to prevent that kind of problems but no
promises here. The rename will happen in a few weeks.
Also the mailing lists were renamed so the urls and email addresses changed:
- announcements: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/mediadrop-announce
- general discussion and support:
https://groups.google.com/d/forum/mediadrop-developers
I'm glad that we were able to make this switch with support from MediaCore Inc
and also that most of it is done now: It took quite a chunk of my time in the
past week but I have some good commits in the pipeline so you'll see new
features again shortly.