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- Why have Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation joined together?
- Fedora Commons and DSpace foundation have come together to pursue a common mission. Jointly, they will provide leadership and innovation in open source technologies for global communities who manage, preserve, and provide access to digital content. The joined organization, named DuraSpace, will sustain and grow its flagship repository platforms - Fedora and DSpace. DuraSpace will also expand its portfolio by offering new technologies and services that respond to the dynamic environment of the Web and to new requirements from existing and future users. DuraSpace will focus on supporting existing communities and will also engage a larger and more diverse group of stakeholders in support of its nonnot-for-profit mission.
- How did you decide upon "DuraSpace" as the name of the organization?
- The Fedora and DSpace brands are very strong. Therefore, it is desirable to keep these brands associated with the existing software platforms. The DuraSpace name was created to be reminescent of both Fedora and DSpace while also being suggestive of the overall mission of the non-profit organization. DuraSpace conveys the notion of durability of digital content and evokes the sense of a digital information space. Also, DuraSpace sounds like Fedora ("Dura") and has an element of DSpace ("Space").
- What is the mission of the DuraSpace organization?
- The DuraSpace organization inherits the shared aspects of missions of both Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation. The purpose of DuraSpace is to provide sustainable open technologies and services to help individuals and organizations create, manage, publish, share, and preserve digital resources upon which we form our intellectual, scientific, and cultural heritage.
- How will the Fedora and DSpace open source software be affected?
- Both the Fedora and DSpace repository platforms will have their home in the DuraSpace organization. The DuraSpace organization will support both platforms by providing leadership in the areas of technology, community outreach, communication, and marketing. Each project will continue to innovate and evolve within their existing communities. Over time, e we expect significant synergies to emerge between the projects and the role of the new organization is to identify and build on . The DuraSpace organization will provide leadership to help identify and enable these opportunities. The priorities and strategies for each platform will be set the using the same process ( or evolving process) that is used today, primarly driven through the communities established through a community-based process with guidance and support from the non-profit organization.
- What new initiatives will the DuraSpace organization take on?
- Currently, the organization is developing DuraCloud, a new web-based service that will enable content replication to a network of cloud-based storage services, and provide an environment for running access and preservation services within the cloud. The DuraSpace organization will develop support other new mission-driven services activities that serve both existing communities and new users.
- What is the new organization leadership and structure?
- The organization will have a Chief Executive Officer (Sandy Payette), a Chief Business Officer (Michele Kimpton), and a Chief Technology Officer (Brad Kimpton). The transitional organization will be designed along functional lines to promote maximum flexibility during the startup phase. Initially, the organization have 10 people coming forth from both Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation. There will be representation from both organizations on the Board of Directors.
- Who will benefit from the DuraSpace organization?
- We believe the entire repository community will benefit from the new organization,as it will bring new resources and focus to the existing platforms and will potentially bring new software and services to the entire community of users wanting to create, manage, publish, share, and preserve digital resources.
- When will DSpace and Fedora platforms interoperate?
- Our communities will dictate when it is desirable and for what use cases the platforms should interoperate. To date, there has been work done to develop a common storage abstraction layer, so both platforms could deposit content to multiple backend storage solutions using the same API. We predict other common components and API's will be developed, particularly when there is a community of users for DSpace 2.0.
- Where will the DuraSpace organization be located?
- DuraSpace is incorporated in the State of New York and will have its main offices in Ithaca, New York and Boston, Massachusetts. As an organization that is the home of multiple open source projects, the organization works effectively with employees and collaborators distributed geographically. Several DuraSpace employees work at locations outside of the main office locations.
- When will the DuraSpace organization be effectively operating?
- DuraSpace will be operating on July 1, 2009. The two groups have been effectively working together over the past few months to prepare for this date.
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