Press Release
CollabNet launches UK Subversion User Group
Adoption of Subversion doubles every three months
LONDON/BRISBANE, Calif., July 14, 2006 — CollabNet, a leading provider of on demand distributed software development solutions, has held an inaugural meeting to launch the UK Subversion User Group.
Subversion is an open source version control system used for managing changes made to software in the development process. It is rapidly replacing traditional systems such as CVS, ClearCase, PVCS and other Open Source and commercial version control systems. Statistics show that the adoption of Subversion is doubling every three months and is now estimated to be in use on over 35,000 publicly accessible production servers.
CollabNet is the main corporate sponsor of the Subversion's open source project and was the first company to integrate it into a complete enterprise solution for distributed software development. CollabNet recently introduced Subversion on Demand, delivered via an on demand model or as a Web-based, managed service. As such it has initiated the formation of Subversion user groups in the US and now in the UK but it will be the members who will steer the user group and host further meetings.
The inaugural meeting was well attended, particularly by major financial companies, and there was significant interest in the support, training and consultancy services CollabNet offers. These address concerns of large enterprises seeking assurance and peace of mind when deploying Subversion company-wide.
Keynote speeches were made by Brian Behlendorf, Co-Founder of Apache, Founder of CollabNet and original idea baker for Subversion, and Michael Pilato, co-Author Version Control with Subversion and development lead on the CollabNet Subversion Team. Neil Butler, Managing Director ClearVision, a CollabNet partner, chaired a user Group discussion outlining the format of the user goup, roles and responsibilities.
CollabNet offers a unique set of enterprise-class training, support and consulting services that are available with both CollabNet Subversion On Demand and Subversion deployed as a stand-alone system. Based on their specific needs, customers can chose from three levels of support services, silver, gold and platinum. Consulting services include migration services to consolidate source code repositories on Subversion and a Quickstart program to help teams transition from a location-centric to a distributed development environment.
The History of Subversion
While CollabNet started the project, and still funds a large chunk of the work, Subversion is run like most open-source projects, governed by a loose, transparent set of rules that encourage meritocracy. Subversion's license is fully compliant with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. In other words, anyone is free to download, modify, and redistribute Subversion as he or she pleases; no permission from anyone is required.
Subversion timeline
January 2000 - CollabNet began seeking developers to write a replacement for CVS.
February 2000 - CollabNet contacted Karl Fogel along with Jim Blandy and requirements definition started.
May 2000 - CollabNet hires Ben Collins-Sussman, detailed design work begins.
June 2000 - Coding begins.
August 2001 - Subversion becomes self-hosting.
July 2002 - Subversion 0.14 enters Alpha.
December 2003 - Subversion 0.35.1 enters Beta.
February 2004 - Subversion 1.0, released, in use on 1,400 publicly accessible production servers. Release 1.1.1 and 1.2.0 follow in October 2004 and May 2005.
March 2004 - CollabNet, primary sponsor of the Subversion open source project integrates next-generation versioning in the CollabNet environment.
June 2004 - O'Reilly publishes Version Control with Subversion, the definitive text on Subversion.
December 2004 - Subversion in use on over 5,000 publicly accessible production servers.
August 2005 - Subversion in use on over 13,000 publicly accessible production servers.
January 2006 - Version 1.3.0 is released.
May 2006 - Subversion's most recent release: version 1.3.2.
June 2006 - Subversion in use on over 35,000 publicly accessible production servers and many more behind firewalls.
