# [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git

17 messages from 2009-11-18 to 2009-11-23. Participants: Intland Software, Petr Baudis, david@lang.hm, Jakub Narebski, Rakotomandimby Mihamina, Aron Gombas, Thomas Rast, Sitaram Chamarty.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/21657

## Intland Software, 2009-11-18 08:33

Subject: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <4B03B153.1020302@intland.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/4B03B153.1020302%40intland.com

```
codeBeamer MR is a new tool for teams working with Git, and striving for
fast repository management and easy access control management.
Setting up and maintaining ACL on top of Git is not trivial. With this
web based tool, you can *save a lot of boring and error-prone maintainenace
work*, and spend your time rather with coding.

FEATURES
* Starts and close projects and repositories in just seconds
* Project-, group-, and role-based administration across multiple repositories
* ACL on directory level
* SSH authentication
* Lightweight wiki, issue tracking and project management facilities
* Web based
* Remote API

PRICE?
It is *free* (as in beer). No expiration.

LEARN MORE & DOWNLOAD
More details, screenshots and downloads:
http://www.intland.com/products/cb-mr/overview.html

```

## Petr Baudis, 2009-11-18 12:09

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <20091118120936.GL17748@machine.or.cz>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20091118120936.GL17748%40machine.or.cz
In-Reply-To: <4B03B153.1020302@intland.com>

```
On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 09:33:23AM +0100, Intland Software wrote:
> codeBeamer MR is a new tool for teams working with Git, and striving for
> fast repository management and easy access control management.
> Setting up and maintaining ACL on top of Git is not trivial. With this
> web based tool, you can *save a lot of boring and error-prone maintainenace
> work*, and spend your time rather with coding.
> 
> FEATURES
> * Starts and close projects and repositories in just seconds
> * Project-, group-, and role-based administration across multiple repositories
> * ACL on directory level
> * SSH authentication
> * Lightweight wiki, issue tracking and project management facilities
> * Web based
> * Remote API
> 
> PRICE?
> It is *free* (as in beer). No expiration.
> 
> LEARN MORE & DOWNLOAD
> More details, screenshots and downloads:
> http://www.intland.com/products/cb-mr/overview.html

Interesting, thank you for the announcement; it would be good to note
that it's not open-source.

I think a lot of people wonder now, how does this compare to existing
solutions; from your announcement I thought it's something like
Gitosis/Gitolite, but in fact it seems more similar to Gitorious or
GitHub (if it was publicly available, of course); perhaps it would be
good idea to present comparison to these on the project homepage.

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
A lot of people have my books on their bookshelves.
That's the problem, they need to read them. -- Don Knuth

```

## Intland Software, 2009-11-18 13:19

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <4B03F451.4050709@intland.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/4B03F451.4050709%40intland.com
In-Reply-To: <20091118120936.GL17748@machine.or.cz>

```
  Thanks for your comments, Petr.

Petr Baudis wrote:
>> LEARN MORE & DOWNLOAD
>> More details, screenshots and downloads:
>> http://www.intland.com/products/cb-mr/overview.html
> 
> Interesting, thank you for the announcement; it would be good to note
> that it's not open-source.
  That's right, codeBeamer MR is not open source.
  More precisely: parts of the source code are actually open, including
the wiki plugins and the remote clients, for instance. The core source
is closed, because the same core is also used in our commercial offerings, and
our commercial license doesn't (currently) allow publishing the
complete code. We have quite some large customers from the defense space
that would not be happy if we opened everything ;)

  We are currently in the midst of rethinking our licensing scheme
in general, to make things more liberal or to set up some kind of a
dual license.

> I think a lot of people wonder now, how does this compare to existing
> solutions; from your announcement I thought it's something like
> Gitosis/Gitolite, but in fact it seems more similar to Gitorious or
> GitHub (if it was publicly available, of course); perhaps it would be
> good idea to present comparison to these on the project homepage.
  Good point. More on this later.
---
  Intland

```

## david@lang.hm, 2009-11-19 06:06

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.0911182205590.5646@asgard.lang.hm>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/alpine.DEB.2.00.0911182205590.5646%40asgard.lang.hm
In-Reply-To: <4B03F451.4050709@intland.com>

```
On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Intland Software wrote:

> More precisely: parts of the source code are actually open, including
> the wiki plugins and the remote clients, for instance. The core source
> is closed, because the same core is also used in our commercial offerings, 
> and
> our commercial license doesn't (currently) allow publishing the
> complete code. We have quite some large customers from the defense space
> that would not be happy if we opened everything ;)

are you sure? did you see the recent memo about OpenSource by the DOD?

David Lang

> We are currently in the midst of rethinking our licensing scheme
> in general, to make things more liberal or to set up some kind of a
> dual license.
>
>> I think a lot of people wonder now, how does this compare to existing
>> solutions; from your announcement I thought it's something like
>> Gitosis/Gitolite, but in fact it seems more similar to Gitorious or
>> GitHub (if it was publicly available, of course); perhaps it would be
>> good idea to present comparison to these on the project homepage.
> Good point. More on this later.
> ---
> Intland
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>

```

## Intland Software, 2009-11-19 10:06

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <4B0518A3.90903@intland.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/4B0518A3.90903%40intland.com
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.0911182205590.5646@asgard.lang.hm>

```
  Hey David,

david@lang.hm wrote:
>> our commercial license doesn't (currently) allow publishing the
>> complete code. We have quite some large customers from the defense space
>> that would not be happy if we opened everything ;)
> 
> are you sure? did you see the recent memo about OpenSource by the DOD?
> David Lang
  Can you direct us to an URL please? Thanks.
---
  Intland

```

## Jakub Narebski, 2009-11-19 10:43

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <m33a4adcbu.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/m33a4adcbu.fsf%40localhost.localdomain
In-Reply-To: <4B0518A3.90903@intland.com>

```
Intland Software <marketing@intland.com> writes:

> david@lang.hm wrote:

>>> our commercial license doesn't (currently) allow publishing the
>>> complete code. We have quite some large customers from the defense space
>>> that would not be happy if we opened everything ;)
>>
>> are you sure? did you see the recent memo about OpenSource by the
>> DOD?
>
>   Can you direct us to an URL please? Thanks.

Indirect links:
 * "New DoD memo on Open Source Software" (David A. Wheeler)
   http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2009/10/27/#dod-oss-2009
 * "Notes about the DoD and OSS memo" (David A. Wheeler)
   http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2009/10/28/#dod-oss-2009-notes

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git

```

## Rakotomandimby Mihamina, 2009-11-19 11:39

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <4B052E6A.7000701@gulfsat.mg>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/4B052E6A.7000701%40gulfsat.mg
In-Reply-To: <4B03F451.4050709@intland.com>

```
11/18/2009 04:19 PM, Intland Software::
> We have quite some large customers from the defense space
> that would not be happy if we opened everything

I think they are just dumb.
But they pay you, so let's just say it's OK. :-)

-- 
       Architecte Informatique chez Blueline/Gulfsat:
    Administration Systeme, Recherche & Developpement
                                    +261 33 11 207 36

```

## Aron Gombas, 2009-11-19 12:15

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <4B0536E3.8040200@intland.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/4B0536E3.8040200%40intland.com
In-Reply-To: <m33a4adcbu.fsf@localhost.localdomain>

```
Jakub Narebski wrote:
> Intland Software <marketing@intland.com> writes:
> 
>> david@lang.hm wrote:
> 
>>>> our commercial license doesn't (currently) allow publishing the
>>>> complete code. We have quite some large customers from the defense space
>>>> that would not be happy if we opened everything ;)
>>> are you sure? did you see the recent memo about OpenSource by the
>>> DOD?
>>   Can you direct us to an URL please? Thanks.
> 
> Indirect links:
>  * "New DoD memo on Open Source Software" (David A. Wheeler)
>    http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2009/10/27/#dod-oss-2009
>  * "Notes about the DoD and OSS memo" (David A. Wheeler)
>    http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2009/10/28/#dod-oss-2009-notes
Hmm, very interesting reading! Thanks a lot.
---
Intland

```

## Intland Software, 2009-11-19 13:50

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <4B054D0A.5030802@intland.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/4B054D0A.5030802%40intland.com
In-Reply-To: <20091118120936.GL17748@machine.or.cz>

```
Petr Baudis wrote:
> I think a lot of people wonder now, how does this compare to existing
> solutions; from your announcement I thought it's something like
> Gitosis/Gitolite, but in fact it seems more similar to Gitorious or
> GitHub (if it was publicly available, of course); perhaps it would be
All right, some quick comparisons with codeBeamer Managed Repository (MR).

* MR against Gitosis
In terms of access control, MR has the concept of "role", and it makes our security model more fine grained. Permissions 
can be set by role. One user account can have multiple roles. Roles are project-dependent. When you add a group to a 
project, you can assign multiple roles to the group (which is equivalent with assigning those roles to each group member 
one by one).
On the other hand, MR has a much broader scope than Gitosis. MR helps you to manage your repos, to track your 
tasks/bugs/issues, to follow commit activities, to browse repos in the web, can be extended using its APIs, etc. (And 
you don't have to install and maintain Git extensions for this.)

* MR against Gitolite
Pretty much the same applies here as well.

* MR against GitHub & Gitorious
Probably the most significant difference is that MR is available as free download, and can run behind your firewall.
MR was derived from the source code of our commercial product codeBeamer. CodeBeamer is a full-blown enterprise 
collaboration solution, thus MR is likely to focus more on the enterprise needs, not on the "social" aspect.

```

## Thomas Rast, 2009-11-19 14:01

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <200911191502.00005.trast@student.ethz.ch>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/200911191502.00005.trast%40student.ethz.ch
In-Reply-To: <4B054D0A.5030802@intland.com>

```
Intland Software wrote:
> * MR against GitHub & Gitorious
> Probably the most significant difference is that MR is available as free download

Umm... unlike Gitorious, you mean:

  http://gitorious.org/gitorious
  http://gitorious.org/gitorious/mainline/blobs/master/LICENSE

-- 
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch

```

## Intland Software, 2009-11-19 15:22

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <4B05629A.5020500@intland.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/4B05629A.5020500%40intland.com
In-Reply-To: <4B05588B.5080501@intland.com>

```
 > Thomas Rast wrote:
 >> Intland Software wrote:
 >>> * MR against GitHub & Gitorious
 >>> Probably the most significant difference is that MR is available as
 >>> free download
 >>
 >> Umm... unlike Gitorious, you mean:
 >>
 >>   http://gitorious.org/gitorious
 >>   http://gitorious.org/gitorious/mainline/blobs/master/LICENSE
I'm sorry, you're right: Gitorious is also available as download.
Thanks for spotting it, Thomas.
---
Intland

```

## Sitaram Chamarty, 2009-11-20 04:56

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <2e24e5b90911192056t706071ble163a53741017ef@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/2e24e5b90911192056t706071ble163a53741017ef%40mail.gmail.com
In-Reply-To: <4B054D0A.5030802@intland.com>

```
On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Intland Software <marketing@intland.com> wrote:
> Petr Baudis wrote:
>>
>> I think a lot of people wonder now, how does this compare to existing
>> solutions; from your announcement I thought it's something like
>> Gitosis/Gitolite, but in fact it seems more similar to Gitorious or
>> GitHub (if it was publicly available, of course); perhaps it would be
>
> All right, some quick comparisons with codeBeamer Managed Repository (MR).
>
> * MR against Gitosis

I think you meant "versus" :-)

> In terms of access control, MR has the concept of "role", and it makes our
> security model more fine grained. Permissions can be set by role. One user
> account can have multiple roles. Roles are project-dependent. When you add a
> group to a project, you can assign multiple roles to the group (which is
> equivalent with assigning those roles to each group member one by one).
> On the other hand, MR has a much broader scope than Gitosis. MR helps you to
> manage your repos, to track your tasks/bugs/issues, to follow commit
> activities, to browse repos in the web, can be extended using its APIs, etc.
> (And you don't have to install and maintain Git extensions for this.)

> * MR against Gitolite
> Pretty much the same applies here as well.

Conceptually, gitolite can do the roles stuff you mentioned,
if I understood it correctly.  Of course, gitolite's access
config is in plain text.

The web-based control, issue tracking, etc., are all on a
different plane from what gitosis/gitolite aim to be.  So
much so that I might even disagree with Pasky on the need to
mention these two products in your website.  Here's one
perspective (in round figures):

gitolite:   1600 lines of shell+perl, 1600 lines of doc
gitosis:    3300 lines of python
MR:         150 MB binary download

I don't honestly see any way to even *begin* to compare :-)

You should stick to gitorious, github, and -- here's a new
one for you -- indefero.

-- 
Sitaram

```

## Petr Baudis, 2009-11-20 07:47

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <20091120074702.GW12890@machine.or.cz>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20091120074702.GW12890%40machine.or.cz
In-Reply-To: <2e24e5b90911192056t706071ble163a53741017ef@mail.gmail.com>

```
  Hi!

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 10:26:32AM +0530, Sitaram Chamarty wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Intland Software <marketing@intland.com> wrote:
> > * MR against Gitolite
> > Pretty much the same applies here as well.
> 
> Conceptually, gitolite can do the roles stuff you mentioned,
> if I understood it correctly.  Of course, gitolite's access
> config is in plain text.
> 
> The web-based control, issue tracking, etc., are all on a
> different plane from what gitosis/gitolite aim to be.  So
> much so that I might even disagree with Pasky on the need to
> mention these two products in your website.

I brought Gitosis/Gitolite up because I got the impression that MR was
marketed primarily as a Git ACL tool, the other things being sort of
mirror; maybe my impession was wrong, but I still think the comparison
in ACL capabilities is useful.

> You should stick to gitorious, github, and -- here's a new
> one for you -- indefero.

Hmm, I didn't even know about this one, thanks for the pointer. Looks
like this suddenly is a very popular area. High competition is good!

(BTW, if you don't care about wikis and issue tracking, but you do care
about simplicity and light-weightness, you should best stick to Girocco!
;-)

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
A lot of people have my books on their bookshelves.
That's the problem, they need to read them. -- Don Knuth

```

## Intland Software, 2009-11-20 08:24

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <4B06523A.4020004@intland.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/4B06523A.4020004%40intland.com
In-Reply-To: <20091120074702.GW12890@machine.or.cz>

```
Petr Baudis wrote:
> Looks like this suddenly is a very popular area. High competition is good!
  Absolutely agreed!
---
  Intland

```

## Sitaram Chamarty, 2009-11-21 13:12

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <2e24e5b90911210512g5ec26307te63d10912a7906fb@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/2e24e5b90911210512g5ec26307te63d10912a7906fb%40mail.gmail.com
In-Reply-To: <20091120074702.GW12890@machine.or.cz>

```
On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz> wrote:

> I brought Gitosis/Gitolite up because I got the impression that MR was
> marketed primarily as a Git ACL tool, the other things being sort of
> mirror; maybe my impession was wrong, but I still think the comparison
> in ACL capabilities is useful.

Sorry; didn't mean to imply you were wrong about that...

But the bulk of MR is probably the web based stuff, wiki, issues etc.,
which means gitolite is way on the other side of the spectrum, so it
felt like any comparision is moot, and used the code/binary sizes to
highlight that.

But you said just the ACL capabilities... set me thinking...

Intland: do you have a page that describes your role based ACL stuff a
little more?  I have a feeling that, modulo it all being in one text
file, gitolite can probably come close :-)

>> You should stick to gitorious, github, and -- here's a new
>> one for you -- indefero.
>
> Hmm, I didn't even know about this one, thanks for the pointer. Looks
> like this suddenly is a very popular area. High competition is good!

Oh yeah, and indefero is actually looking pretty good -- I know some
guys at $DAYJOB looking at it very seriously.

> (BTW, if you don't care about wikis and issue tracking, but you do care
> about simplicity and light-weightness, you should best stick to Girocco!
> ;-)

:-)  yes it is nice, but again, at $DAYJOB access control (even to
view projects) is a big deal.  A very big deal, actually...!

```

## Intland Software, 2009-11-23 09:34

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <4B0A5720.6020804@intland.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/4B0A5720.6020804%40intland.com
In-Reply-To: <2e24e5b90911210512g5ec26307te63d10912a7906fb@mail.gmail.com>

```
Sitaram Chamarty wrote:
> Intland: do you have a page that describes your role based ACL stuff a
> little more? 
  This is a good starting point in our Knowledge Base, to read more about
the permission model used in MR:

  https://codebeamer.com/cb/wiki/11121

-- 
  Intland Team
  Follow @intland on Twitter: http://twitter.com/intland
  Find codeBeamer on Facebook: http://bit.ly/rcTuX

```

## Sitaram Chamarty, 2009-11-23 16:28

Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] codeBeamer MR - Easy ACL for Git
Message-ID: <2e24e5b90911230828h199ae1ccv50d1fbdf50c91296@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/2e24e5b90911230828h199ae1ccv50d1fbdf50c91296%40mail.gmail.com
In-Reply-To: <4B0A5720.6020804@intland.com>

```
On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 3:04 PM, Intland Software <marketing@intland.com> wrote:
> Sitaram Chamarty wrote:
>>
>> Intland: do you have a page that describes your role based ACL stuff a
>> little more?
>
>   This is a good starting point in our Knowledge Base, to read more about
> the permission model used in MR:
>
>   https://codebeamer.com/cb/wiki/11121

Thanks; I've read through that and the link to "Working Sets".

Modulo a bunch of *big* differences [*] in scale and scope between
gitolite and MR, I'm fairly certain that working sets (groups of
projects), user roles, user groups, etc., can all be done using
gitolite's group mechanism and its delegation feature.

It won't be as refined and nuanced as in MR, but in the main,
maintainable access control, which is the main point of all those
features, can be done.

-- 
Sitaram


[*] these big differences are:

  - gitolite config is all in one text file versus whatever MR uses
    internally
  - gitolite only deals with the git repo for each project; MR does with
    all sorts of stuff outside the actual code repo
  - gitolite has no UI for the end user, MR clearly does, and the user
    can do a lot of stuff by themselves (like create new projects)
  - possibly many more I missed

```
