 The levitating, meditating, flute-playing gnu logo used by GNU Savannah | |
Type of site | Forge |
|---|---|
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Owner | Free Software Foundation |
| URL | savannah |
| Advertising | No |
| Commercial | No |
| Registration | Optional |
| Current status | Active |
| Written in | PHP |
GNU Savannah is a project of theFree Software Foundation initiated by Loïc Dachary, which serves as a collaborativesoftware development management system forfree software projects. Savannah currently offersCVS,GNU arch,Subversion,Git,Mercurial,[1]Bazaar,[2] mailing list, web hosting, file hosting, and bug tracking services. Savannah initially ran on the same SourceForge software that at the time was used to run theSourceForge portal.[3]
Savannah's website is split into two domain names:savannah.gnu.org for software that is officially part of theGNU Project, andsavannah.nongnu.org for all other software.
UnlikeSourceForge orGitHub, Savannah's focus is for hostingfree software projects and has very strict hosting policies, including a ban against the use of non-free formats (such asAdobe Flash[4]) to ensure that only free software is hosted. When registering a project, project submitters have to state whichfree software license the project uses.
Project owners do not have the freedom of deleting their submitted projects on their own wish and the staff has a policy of refusing all deletion requests, unless the project was approved by mistake or has always been empty.[4][5]
Loïc Dachary installed SourceForge on a server located in Boston for the benefit of theGNU Project (specifically, to power the GNU Savannah's website). When, as contributor to SourceForge, he found out it was to be turned into proprietary software, he forked it and named it Savannah (since it was the software running the GNU Project's Savannah website and had no other name). People contributing to GNU Savannah were called savannah-hackers from this day, as it was at first more a quick hack than anything else.
CERN took interest in the source code and hired Mathieu Roy, a savannah-hacker, to work in Geneva. It led to the development of Savane (software) starting in 2003.
In 2003,Vincent Caron, friend to Loïc Dachary, found out the security of the server located was compromised. A new server was bought by theFree Software Foundation to provide a clean reinstall of the software. When this server was put in place, after a four-month outage without any public news, only Free Software Foundation employees had access to it. Notably savannah-hackers had no access[6] and found out thatRichard M. Stallman decided to move GNU Savannah toGForge because it was "seriously maintained".[7] In response, Vincent Caron, Loïc Dachary and Mathieu Roy put up an alternative instance of the software calledGna!, with a specific constitution inspired by theDebian Social Contract designed to prevent any unexpected take over.[8]
GNU Savannah was totally or partly offline for months and, ultimately, did not move to GForge, which itself turned into proprietary software.
Years indicate the date of first stable release. | |||||
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