This article is the start of a new series where we let users speak about their experiences with RhodeCode Enterprise and how they use it in their day-to-day work.
Today’s interview is with Wenzel Jakob (WJ) from the scientific open source project Mitsuba Renderer, answering question asked by Sebastian Kreutzberger (SK), CEO at RhodeCode.
SK: Tell me a little bit about your project.
WJ: I'm using RhodeCode to maintain the repositories of Mitsuba Renderer. It a software framework that is used to create photorealistic renderings using advanced light transport algorithms. Most of the users are computer scientists who do research on new kinds of algorithms in this area, though an increasing number of artists have also started using it.
SK: How many users are actively using RhodeCode Enterprise?
WJ: Right now, there are ~15 developers signed up working on various repositories. Since these are ongoing research projects, most of them are in "invisible mode" until the work is published somewhere at a conference or journal, and then the features flow back into the main project repository.
SK: Why did you choose RhodeCode Enterprise and how is the outcome?
WJ: So far, I've really enjoyed using RhodeCode Enterprise. The transition was a big change! I actually never used the 1.x version and directly switched from a terrible system of creating repositories / users / permissions via a bunch of home-grown shell scripts. Having modern web interface to do these tasks means that I have more time to focus on the things that matter, like research and writing actual code. There were a few minor hitches at the start, as is to be expected with any major software release, but as far as I can tell all is working nicely now. Given that I'm "just" running an open source project and not paying for RhodeCode Enterprise, it was nice to get good support while setting up. I chose this project because it seemed the most feature complete and polished repository management software.
SK: What should we improve to make RhodeCode Enterprise even better?
WJ: My one suggestion for a policy change would be that university/open source projects get an unlimited license instead of a free one that expires after a year. It's always challenging to coordinate these kinds of projects and manage the very limited amount of time to administer things---and using a software that requires me to do some action X months later to make sure it retains all its features is giving me some headaches.
SK: Yes, that’s a good idea. We are currently collecting learnings to make our licensing process even smoother and that could be definitely something we can introduce within the next months.
SK: Thank you Wenzel for your time! I wish you and your team much fun and a rock-solid coding on your great project with RhodeCode Enterprise.
WJ: Thank you very much!
Do you want to attend to that series and speak about how you and your open source project, university, organization or company are using RhodeCode Enterprise? Please contact us!