new Bazaar homepage URL

[Brian de Alwis]

On 11-Oct-2009, at 7:20 AM, Ben Finney wrote:
> It makes the job significantly more difficult to convince such  
> people to
> commit their work to a tool when it is bound by such a perception.
> Especially when there is an alternative, Mercurial, that is almost
> identical (in an outsider's first approximation) but also free of this
> unnecessary association.


Though that's not quite true for Mercurial: their main site is hosted  
by selenic.com.  I remember being puzzled to not find a mercurial.org  
— the combination of their wiki appearing rather disorganized, and  
seemingly tied to a corporation, I questioned whether it could be the  
official location.

Martin wrote initially:
> Canonical wants to more clearly show its support for Bazaar, while  
> still recognizing that Bazaar is more than just Canonical and has  
> its own community.


Personally I'm not against such a move, but I can't see any benefit  
from it.  Martin, what does Canonical see as the benefits of a move to bazaar.canonical.com 
?    Because it seems the move will result in at least some negative  
interpretations.  (And why not bzr.canonical.com? ;-)

Perhaps the problem is that there are (at least) two interpretations  
of how people can view the relationship Canonical and Bazaar:

   1) Bazaar is a Canonical technology that Canonical chooses to share  
with the larger world.

   2) Bazaar is a community resource that Canonical contributes to  
(and incidentally is by far the largest contributor) and is committed  
to.

Moving under the canonical.com umbrella would be more consistent of #1  
than #2.

If Canonical prefers #2, then I can think of better ways for Canonical  
to show its support:

   * List Canonical as one of the featured groups at the bottom?  The  
Linux Foundation isn't a software project, after all.

   * Have have an "About" page with a statement like:

	Bazaar is a core technology used throughout Canonical.  Canonical is  
proud to have provided support for the development of Bazaar, and is  
committed to the continued open-source development of Bazaar.  
Canonical demonstrates this commitment by providing resources for  
Bazaar's ongoing development and for supporting and growing the Bazaar  
community.

(ObDisclaimer: this blither is the result of 2 minutes pondering and  
in no way associated with Canonical.  Though they are of course  
welcome to use it in any way :-)

Brian.

-- 
"Amusement to an observing mind is study." - Benjamin Disraeli