-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Vincent Untz wrote:
Le mardi 24 mars 2009, à 13:23 +0000, Benji Weber a écrit :
We do have a community server paid for by several people which hosts planet suse, software portal, webpin and other things. Unfortunately these things have to be organised informally, since there is no openSUSE organisation or even a ringfenced openSUSE fund that people can contribute to towards hosting costs etc.
Nod. We discussed this a bit on #opensuse-gnome. The lack of legal entity for openSUSE makes things difficult for funding. A good solution that I'd like the board to consider is to have the project join something like the Software Freedom Conservancy [1] or SPI [2].
[1] http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/ [2] http://www.spi-inc.org/
We talked a bit about this topic at our board meeting today. I'll first get in touch with the appropriate people at Debian and Drupal, as they're both under the umbrella of SPI, to hear how it works out for them. It's definitely an option, and if we can avoid jumping through lots of paperwork and legal woes, then it's a serious option ;)
Another problem is that the opensuse.org domain is controlled by Novell not the openSUSE project, so we can't use it for things like planet suse, software portal, community wiki et al without Novell endorsing the content therein, which we've been told is not possible for things that might link to patent infringing software for instance.
So, hrm, how can we change this? :-) I guess we can't change this easily in the short term, but does it make sense in the long term to have the opensuse.org domain controlled by, say, the board? (question for the board, I guess)
Why not, but I'm not sure this would actually change a lot.
If you mean controlled on a technical level, I guess that's rather
unlikely to happen. And if you mean on a decisional level, well, I think
we already have the right connections to the right people to ask for
changes to be made.
It's really two different aspects, as Zonker already pointed out:
1) is it OK for Novell to have a DNS entry under opensuse.org that
points to a site that's controlled by non-Novell-employee community
members ?
2) requests such as a DNS change takes several months to be performed,
for whatever reason; I presume the IS&T folks do a great job inside
Novell, but for openSUSE matters, our experience wasn't all that great
(sometimes you even run into people there who don't know what openSUSE is)
1) ICHAIN: THE PROBLEM
======================
iChain is so much more of a show-stopper though.
Let's just take an example: Software Portal. It's currently impossible
to have that (web) application authenticate against our own user
database because only applications hosted inside Novell's infrastructure
can authenticate against iChain. And that isn't just "annoying", it also
makes linking between e.g. Software Portal and OBS or users.o.o
impossible (at least as far as user accounts/profiles are concerned).
2) PROS AND CONS OF BEING HOSTED AT NOVELL
==========================================
There are obviously pros for having things hosted by Novell: Novell
comes up for the costs (hardware, hosting, staff, bandwidth), but there
are also a few pretty annoying cons. The major problem with those
disadvantages, IMHO, is that they hinder community contributions as far
as NNEs ("non-Novell-employee"s) are concerned:
2.1) NNE CONTRIBUTORS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NNEs could contribute to the project by maintaining infrastructure
tools, relieving NEs (Novell employees) of some of that work.
Current situation: not possible, only NEs get access to those hosts
2.2) INFRASTRUCTURE APPS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Community contributors could develop new applications for our
infrastructure, or mashups that interlink current tools (e.g. bugzilla
information blended into Software Portal pages).
Current situation: not possible:
- - iChain only works for stuff hosted at Novell,
- - we can't modify Bugzilla because it has to be approved by IS&T and by
the various Bugzilla committees that exist within Novell
(that being said, I can understand why, N's Bugzilla is critical to its
business as it also manages security issues and bugs on enterprise and
other non-FOSS products there)
3) LEGAL ENTITY FOR OPENSUSE
============================
Would an openSUSE legal entity of its own address those problems ?
3.1) PROS
~~~~~~~~~
Partially:
We could collect donations and possibly even sponsoring (though that's
another question) and use that money for infrastructure, sponsoring
travel costs, support some initiatives/projects within openSUSE, etc...
Depending on what we're able to raise in funding, we could have hosts
for infrastructure, and that would possibly be an enabler for a few things.
3.2) CONS/ISSUES
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
But it also raises questions/issues:
3.2.1) LEGAL
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Legal kung-fu with having a non-for-profit (might be alleviated by going
through SPI or Software Freedom Conservancy)
3.2.2) CONTROL OVER THE FUNDS
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Who would control the funds ?
The board is currently the only elected body of the community so.. it
would probably make sense.
But the board also includes a Novell-appointed chairman and has the
restriction of 2 NEs and 2 NNEs (note that Michl is currently that
Novell-appointed chairman and has my complete support and trust, it's
clearly not about the person that is currently doing the job)
And if it isn't the board, then we'd need to run another election. And
how would that work out between those two presumably different teams ?
Doesn't sound too good IMHO.
The 2 NEs vs 2 NNEs rule could be removed in the future I guess. It was
originally installed to make sure that we have 2 NNEs on the board.
And not the opposite, even though I'm sure some people might think it
was in order to make sure that there are 3 NEs on the board (2 elected +
1 appointed). I know that wasn't the reason, I was part of the bootstrap
board that created those rules and kicked off the first elections ;)
Given the results of the 1st election, I'm not sure we still need that.
3.2.3) ICHAIN
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Wrt the infrastructure, iChain is clearly a show stopper
See a pattern here ? :)
Anyhow, as you can see (and probably already know or thought of), many
issues, many questions.
And sorry for this big blob of text, I tried to structure it a bit :)
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser