GDO Options

I was talking with Mike on irc over the last couple of days about all this and as far as we both see, there are 4 basic options we have going ahead:

1. Our current setup. A VPS / Dedicated server with our own configured environment. A public/private repository hosted on same server.
2. A VPS / Dedicated server with our own configured environment. A public repository from a provider like drupal.org or github.
3. A managed server (a la something like webenabled). A public/private repository hosted on same server.
4. A managed server (a la something like webenabled). A public repository from a provider like drupal.org or github.

Talking things through, option 2 and option 4 seem like the best possible candidates for the project. Using a public repository would mean more exposure to the project and possibly more hands joining on to contribute. Those without explicit commit access would still be able to file issues in the issue queue and, as Rain said, become contributors in their own right. Thus, it would be a lower barrier to entry for those entering the project from a site-building perspective. With option 2 and 4, however, it will also mean that we will need to write out some scripts (which we could include as part of the project) that heavily sanitize the database so contributors can download the db from a link we provide. There will likely need to me some other scripting work done on the server to help out with creating new builds / deployments of the site(s). The possible advantages of a setup with Option 1 / 3 would be that having the public/private repo on the server would lend itself to forcing people to access our server and therefore knowing more about our environment setup -- which may be beneficial to the longevity / passing the torch (Options 2, 4 support this as well but may require more work to ensure it gets to that stage).