CPAN6

The CPAN6 network

• can be used to collect any kind of data: software, publications, photos, ...anything into archives;
• it helps you maintain the archives;
• it defineds how the archives exchange information;
• it adds trust in publisher and security during transport, using (optional) crypto-signatures; and
• it keeps track on license and copyright issues.

Each collection is kept in an archive. CPAN6 handles bundles of archives, and has as no equivalent as we know of. The pause6 component is a generally applicable archive maintainer, which can be configured to be forgiving, or apply very restrictive business rules.

CPAN6 started off to become the follow-up of CPAN, Perl5's module archive. Please note that CPAN is the only archive for Perl5. CPAN6 may get used as archive for Perl6 or other Parrot related language modules, but there are no realistic plans for that: CPAN6 is not even useable on the moment (as is perl6).

The CPAN6 design papers cover most of the ideas. Release 2006-09-11 of the design papers. (ChangeLog)

• global design document of CPAN6/Pause6, in postscript and pdf
• CPAN6 implementation design, in postscript and pdf
• Pause6 implementation design, in postscript and pdf

Large software components are under way. These were developed especially for this project, but generally applicable.

• XML::Compile
• XML::Compile::SOAP
• XML::Compile::SOAP::Daemon
• Log::Report
• OODoc

To be released soon:

• Text::Catalog

No public demo is yet available yet. The interface is web-browser based, using jQuery.

Other publications:

• presentation at YAPC::EU 2007 (2007-08-30, 60 minutes) and Linux Conference Europe (2007-09-03, 45 minutes) focusses at the wide range of use for this software. Available in OpenOffice 2 and PowerPoint. The procedings paper gives a short introduction to the internals, and is provided in PDF and Postscript.
• presentation at YAPC::EU 2006, 2006-09-01, 90 minutes
  a top-down approach: starting at the global design view, working towards details. Available in OpenOffice 2 and PowerPoint;
• presentation at the German Perl Workshop 2007, 2007-02-21, 3 hours
  the bottom-up approach: starting with releases and project. It names some software components. Available in OpenOffice 2 and PowerPoint;

When you are interested in the development of CPAN6, you are invited to take part in the developing community.

CPAN6 is a big project, which cannot be created purely on voluntary basis. On the moment, we are looking for various kinds of contributions:

• the foundation Stichting NLnet contributes about 30k€ to support the initial development of code and user community;
• the German Perl Mongers contributed 300€ to show their support;
• we are actively looking additional contributions: either some financial support, or from experienced Open Source developers in man-power. The latter is preferred: mail us for a list of tasks;
• we are actively seeking knowledge on the development of trust and license algorithms;
• contact has been established with the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) to come to the required license database.
• user-interface prototypes are under development. When ready, potential developer communities will be contacted. We hope for invitations to give talks.