Dear all,

As we approach the end of the year, I felt it was a good time to provide an overview of where we are in terms of open sourcing the Web Services platform.

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Restructure the authentication system - When VATSIM SSO had launched, we already had our own SSO in place.  As VATSIM SSO progress (I know .net Web Services have some plans to move this forward), the current implementation will be unmanageable.  We need to just review the entire authentication process.
Target: Q2 2016

 

This has not yet been completed, however I'm very keen that this doesn't hold the project up.  This was always a nice to have by the time we open sourced, but we'll continue to develop this and release in due course.

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New website launch - We’ve set the goal of version 3.0 (the new website) being the point at which we go open source.  With that launch there’ll be a good range of feature requests and a greater scope for change.
Target: Q3/4 2016

 

The team continue to work on this - we've now split the new site down into key modules, each of which is being tackled independently of one another.  What we hope to do is provide a steady transition over to the new systems, rather than land a massive change on the membership in one go.

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Standardised Coding Conventions  - There are a few areas where the coding conventions have differed from what our published ones would be (due to transitions from legacy frameworks and the lack of enforced code standards).  We want to tidy this up to make the platform far easier to understand.
Target: Q3/4 2016

 

For the most part, this is pretty much complete.  There are areas that still require work, but this will always be an ongoing task as we review/redevelop legacy aspects of the system.

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Documentation & Guidelines - If we expand the pool of developers, we’d like to outline the coding standards for the repository.  If we get this part right, new developers will have a simple time getting involved and we'll ensure that our code base doesn't become a mess of varied coding styles and standards.
Target: Q4 2016

 

These have been completed and are detailed clearly in the CONTRIBUTING.md file within the repository.

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TWAIN - Setup the VATSIM UK GitHub organisation, integration of StyleCI and TravisCI, and a write-up of our contribution guidelines! (A trivial task)
Target: Q4 2016

 

We are currently perfecting our setup, for this.  We have the organisation and third party tools in place and we'll be looking to transition from GitLab to GitHub in the coming month.

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Overall I'm very excited to be getting close to the open sourcing deadline.  As a test of our guidelines and expectations we have already granted access to a number of individuals that have expressed an interest in contributing.  If you'd like to also contribute, send an email to web-support][at][vatsim-uk.co.uk requesting access and I'll add you whilst we finalise the transition to GitHub. I'd like to be able to give an update and announce the location of the code base

 in early 2017.