On Wed, Jan 04, 2012 at 04:45:03PM +0100, Philip Homburg <philip.homburg@ripe.net> wrote a message of 33 lines which said:
Dumping the source just as a tar file on a web site is easy. But that will be one way communication. And most likely fork the project. Not good.
That's a very strange argument. Nobody asked the RIPE-NCC to spend money and time on doing a perfect tarball, complete with correct README, INSTALL and Makefile (or configure.ac). Yes, just dump the source, it will be a good step in the right direction and it will help in at least one use case (learn how the box works). One of the alternatives, Grenouille <http://git.grenouille.com/>, is currently at this step (code, zero doc). The argument about the fork is also very 20th century. The entire point of free software is the ability to use it... freely and of course this freedom implies the right to fork (whether it is a good idea or not is a separate topic).
If you want to turn it into an open source project, then a lot of stuff has to happen.
No.
In particular, the project has to be mature enough that it can actually be installed without too much pain.
No. Nobody requested a perfect system.