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Hello everyone,
as the subject says, I suggest that we retire Globe (currently available at https://globe.torproject.org/).
The main reason is that Globe is serving a similar purpose as Atlas (available at https://atlas.torproject.org/), which it was forked from several years ago. Neither Atlas nor Globe are actively developed, they only receive critical bug fixes whenever necessary. And thanks, Philipp and Isis, for doing that!
So, when deciding which of the two services we should keep, I looked at the number of daily requests to both services, which shows that Globe is used a lot less than Atlas:
https://people.torproject.org/~karsten/volatile/atlas-globe-2016-04-01.png
The hope is that retiring Globe could make it more likely that new developers start contributing to Atlas. It would also make it easier for us to add new feature to Atlas, because we wouldn't feel bad for not adding them to Globe, too. In any case, we're getting rid of yet one more thing.
Here's a suggested timeline for retiring Globe:
- By April 30, we create Trac tickets for all features we like in Globe and that are missing in Atlas. These tickets would go in component "Metrics/Atlas" in Trac. If you want to keep something in Atlas that you like in Globe, this is your chance to make that happen!
- By May 15, we'll have reviewed those new tickets and decided which of them we should implement before shutting down Globe. We might send a call for help to tor-dev@ to write these patches.
- By May 31 (hopefully), we'll have implemented, reviewed, merged, and deployed the missing features in Atlas, and we'll shut down Globe. We should probably add a static web page pointing to Atlas. If it takes longer than this, it takes longer, but let's use this date for now. Maybe nobody will be missing anything from Globe. We'll see.
Suggestions welcome, not only if you strongly object!
All the best, Karsten