An Open Source Project?

I've been thinking for some time about getting involved in an Open Source project. The question is whether to join an existing project or to start a new one.

The real trouble is of course time. I'm going to be emmigrating to the USA soon, so my time is going become very limited as I do the move and get accustomed to my new home (and re-aquaint myself with my family). That being the case, I really can't justify the time to spend on additional development outside of work.

However, with OSS it's always about scratching an itch, and recently I've found a rather big one. The problem is database versioning, and it's something that I've considered to be a real blight on the software development process. I've looked around and haven't really found anything to meet my (admittedly fluid) set of criteria:

• Store database schema state in the same place as the code that refers to it
• Generate an SQL script that will migrate a database from any arbitrary database state to another.
• Portable - Must either work with all database engines or (more likely) allow support for additional database engines to be added easily.
• Must be able to distinguish between delete/add operations and renames

This isn't an easy problem. I've been involed in discussions on this subject on the PostgreSQL mailing list:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2005-06/threads.php#00469

I intend to think some more about the problem and if I think I can do it I will set up the project somewhere.