dev.globus

Globus was first established as an open source software project in 1996. Since that time, the Globus development team has expanded from a few individuals to a distributed, international community. In response to this growth, the Globus community (the “Globus Alliance”) established in October 2005 a new source code development infrastructure and meritocratic governance model, which together make the process by which a developer joins the Globus community both easier and more transparent.

The Globus governance model and infrastructure are based on those of Apache Jakarta. In brief, the governance model places control over each individual software component (project) in the hands of its most active and respected contributors (committers), with a Globus Management Committee (GMC) providing overall guidance and conflict resolution. The infrastructure comprises repositories, email lists, Wikis, and bug trackers configured to support per-project community access and management.

• The book's preface indicates that the best forum to ask questions is the gt4-friends mailing list. However, that list is now deprecated, and you should rely instead on the dev.globus mailing lists. You can find a list of mailing lists here and, as you will see, there are lots of new mailing lists! Every individual project in Globus (such as Java WS Core, GRAM, RFT, etc.) now has its own set of mailing lists, which makes it easier to send your questions to a community of users and developers actively involved in the component you're having trouble with, instead of having your question drowned in the high volume of messages typical of general discussion lists (such as the old globus-discuss and gt4-friends mailing lists). When working through the examples in the book, you will probably want to use the Java WS Core user mailing list. Of course, dev.globus still provides some general discussion mailing lists, such as gt-user, but you should not send questions about book examples to that mailing list, unless your question spans more than one Globus component. For example, a question about the FileBuy example, spanning Java WS Core, security, and the Index Service would be appropriate for gt-user. Conceptual questions about Globus, building grid applications with GT4, etc. would also belong in the gt-user mailing list. On the other hand, questions on the basic MathService examples from the first chapters should be sent to the Java WS Core user mailing list.
• At the end of the book, we encourage readers to become active in the Globus community, not just to increase their own understanding of Globus technologies, but also to revert any interesting ideas and findings to the community. The new governance model makes it much easier for anyone to contribute to Globus, from helping to solve bugs to actually becoming an official Globus committer, or even leading a new Globus project! If you are interested in helping the Globus community build a better and groovier toolkit, we encourage you to read the How to contribute page in dev.globus.
  

IDEs for Globus