WWW: Create project card/grid for primary AboutCode projects

[mjherzog]

We are planning to use a card/grid display to show the richness of the AboutCode stack/building blocks - similar to the Software Tools section of https://package-url.github.io/packageurl.org/ and the CycloneDX Tool Center. This seems to be a very compact way to show visitors our projects. The initial release of the website will probably not have a filter for the project cards, but we should be able to get some help from the CDX Tool Center team to add the filter for both www.aboutcode.org and www.package-url.org in the near future.

I created an initial list of projects to display in the grid in the projects-grid sheet of aboutcode.org_sitemap.xlsx - see:

• gdrive path: /AboutCode/aboutcode-internal/website/aboutcode.org_sitemap.xlsx OR
• URL: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L1hTaErF8RuKe4nX5LxVifLxoxR3qDHyA-S_r2KKe94/edit?usp=drive_link

I created this list from the list of repos that we moved from the nexb org to the aboutcode-org org on Github in March so there are probably some new projects that should be in the list. I excluded forks and repos that seem ancillary, but did include specialized projects like vulntotal-extension that are intended for general use.

My initial take is that we only need a few fields for each project (no modal page needed to display more information) with the following fields:

• project/repo name
• description
• GitHub project URL
• RTD documentation URL
• Package download URL (i.e. PyPI where applicable)
• Type: Application, API, CLI, Library (multi-value field)
  Do we need:
• Language? (mostly Python)
• Platform? (mostly Linux)
• License (mostly apache-2.0)

The projects to display are marked with yes in the Include in project grid field. The tasks are:

• Add relevant projects created since March 2025
• Validate the list of projects to display
• Confirm the data to display per project

Please review and update list of projects to display in the spreadsheet.
Please comment here about the data to be displayed per project.

[DennisClark]

For the suggested order of the Project tiles, please see
https://github.com/aboutcode-org/aboutcode/blob/new-readme/README.md#projects

[mjherzog]

@DennisClark Thank you. I came up with a bit longer list from the repos so I will cross-check against your list soon.
"Custodian" is a very odd word to use (American English at least) because it conveys either a fancy name for janitor or some legal role. Do you know why we chose this work instead of lead maintainer(s)?

[DennisClark]

@mjherzog I'm fine with "maintainer".

[mjherzog]

@DennisClark Please review and comment on the latest data in the project-grid sheet of https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L1hTaErF8RuKe4nX5LxVifLxoxR3qDHyA-S_r2KKe94/edit?usp=drive_link.

I have checked the list against your README file and filled in some other data (Apache-2.0 and Python as defaults for now).
I added a Group field with a new set of project labels:

• main: means featured / primary project
• inspector: special-purpose analysis tool
• library
• mini-lib: small single purpose library; some are Python wrappers
• other
• plugin: ScanCode plugin
• spec-xxx: implementation of a specification
• toolkit: in the name

For now I assigned one primary label. I expect that we want to streamline the Groups some.
I moved the excluded-projects to a separate sheet - primarily forks and misc.

Since almost all projects are Apache-2.0 license, Python primary language and Linux platform we may only want to show that data on an exception basis.

[mjherzog]

My suggestion is that we start with the following general layout:

• Main card
  • Project name (with embedded link to the GH repo page)
  • Description (like CDX)
  • Package Download URL: (perhaps with a line above for visual appeal)
• Modal
  • Repository URL - show the URL (same as project name)
  • Package Download URL:
  • Documentation URL:
  • Service URL:
  • Language(s):
  • Platform:
  • Software License:
  • Data License:

This is to get us started
We do not need space for project logos - we don't have any.

Lets create groups for the prototype:

• Lets use alpha as the default within a group
• We only need one Group for libraries but preferred to show the library set before the library-mini set
• Group section order should be:
  • Main
  • Library
  • Inspector
  • Toolkit
  • Other