[development] CVS contribtions/sandbox changes

[Kjartan Mannes]

Greetings,

Originally the Sandbox was created as a place to put core patches that 
were pending review, as we did not have any issue tracker back then. 
Since then the project module has grown and can now cover most of the 
original purpose of the sandboxes. Since then sandboxes have been used 
for many original uses, some that are good and some that aren't so good. 
The good stuff are what the sandboxes were originally intended for, 
large or very experimental Core changes that weren't ready for a proper 
issue. The bad stuff is people using it as a place to store modules and 
themes, this has always been a bad idea as you loose out the option of 
using issues tracker, versions, and they are rarely included in searches 
for any new wide spread security vulnerabilities.

Since sandboxes still have some limited use we aren't completely getting 
rid of it, but it will be cleaned up. To make this happen we have made 
the current sandbox directory read-only, and only approved people can 
commit new files and changes. All the current data in the sandboxes will 
remain there until January 15, 2007. Sandboxes who have had people 
request write access, and had this granted will remain and all the rest 
will be archived and moved out of the repository. To request access file 
an issue against the infrastructure tracker 
(http://drupal.org/node/add/project_issue/drupal_org_maintenance) it 
will then be handled. I'm pretty sure the CVS administrators will be 
lenient with regards to what is considered core patches and experimental 
stuff, but I doubt we will approve people using the sandboxes as a place 
to host mp3 collections, non-Drupal projects or even whole websites.

Modules and themes that are in active use and/or development will be 
moved to the proper location upon request, this will preserve the CVS 
history whereas re-committing them to the right place will loose the 
history. Please file an issue on the infrastructure tracker for this: 
http://drupal.org/node/add/project_issue/drupal_org_maintenance.

I know some people will be unhappy with these changes, but having 
thousands of files randomly stored in the CVS repos doesn't add value 
most of the time. We definitely want to help provide the tools for cool 
Drupal developments, but it will happen under slightly more orderly 
rules than the current wild mess.

-- 
Kjartan