On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 13:29 +0100, Marcus Rueckert wrote:
Has this already happened or is it work in progress? I tried
getting a list of groups from news://forums.opensuse.org/, but it timed out.
The announcement said spring 2008. So right now they are still separate forums.
it will be a webforum afaik. not nntp.
It will have a Web Interface (vBulletin) and there is discussion going on around NNTP as well. Personally I think it should have both.
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Joe Harmon a écrit :
It will have a Web Interface (vBulletin) and there is discussion going on around NNTP as well. Personally I think it should have both.
very cute!!!
jdd
Joe Harmon wrote:
On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 13:29 +0100, Marcus Rueckert wrote:
Has this already happened or is it work in progress? I tried getting a list of groups from news://forums.opensuse.org/, but it timed out.
The announcement said spring 2008. So right now they are still separate forums.
OK. I read the spring 2008 milestone to be related to the SSO, not the actual merging of the fora.
it will be a webforum afaik. not nntp.
It will have a Web Interface (vBulletin) and there is discussion going on around NNTP as well. Personally I think it should have both.
I think so too - Novell has a running system with NNTP etc., it would make a lot of sense to use it.
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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Op woensdag 12 maart 2008, schreef Per Jessen:
Joe Harmon wrote:
On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 13:29 +0100, Marcus Rueckert wrote:
Has this already happened or is it work in progress? I tried getting a list of groups from news://forums.opensuse.org/, but it timed out.
The announcement said spring 2008. So right now they are still separate forums.
OK. I read the spring 2008 milestone to be related to the SSO, not the actual merging of the fora.
it will be a webforum afaik. not nntp.
It will have a Web Interface (vBulletin) and there is discussion going on around NNTP as well. Personally I think it should have both.
I think so too - Novell has a running system with NNTP etc., it would make a lot of sense to use it.
The webforum and the (old ?!) nntp forum (or rather in both cases fora) are the same. See for yourself.
Hi, Excuse my intrusion into the discussion, but if I can help answer questions, I'd be glad to. My name is Kim Groneman and I'm in charge of the forums at http://forums.novell.com and our openSUSE forums are one of the three partners involved in this endeavor. I've been in discussion with the folks over the other two boards and people at openSUSE for a while now and am excited this consolidation of the knowledge pool is coming together.
The announcement said spring 2008. So right now they are still separate forums.
We're using vBulletin to build out the new openSUSE forums on a staging server, folks at openSUSE are working on skinning it, and "Vir@s" from the SUSELinuxSupport.de boards is heading up the user consolidation effort. You should see some announcements on the various boards asking users to ensure their user ID matches their openSUSE login ID and hopefully most active users will be set by the time the integration occures. We're shooting for the end of April baring any unforseen problems, but you know how these things are; we can't make any promises at this point.
It will have a Web Interface (vBulletin) and there is discussion going on around NNTP as well. Personally I think it should have both.
I agree, but I'm only borg unit three of three. There are security concerns that have to be addressed and frankly, a learning curve to overcome for people that haven't experienced NNTP. Novell doesn't run this forum consolidation project, we're only a player in this project.
You won't see much on forums.opensuse.org until it's showtime, but rest assured the work is progressing.
Freek de Kruijf wrote:
Op woensdag 12 maart 2008, schreef Per Jessen:
I think so too - Novell has a running system with NNTP etc., it would make a lot of sense to use it.
The webforum and the (old ?!) nntp forum (or rather in both cases fora) are the same. See for yourself.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant. And I was just suggesting that it would make sense to do the same with the merged setup.
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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Kim Groneman wrote:
It will have a Web Interface (vBulletin) and there is discussion going on around NNTP as well. Personally I think it should have both.
I agree, but I'm only borg unit three of three. There are security concerns that have to be addressed and frankly, a learning curve to overcome for people that haven't experienced NNTP.
But people without desire to use nntp would just continue to use the webforum interface, right? I'm not sure I quite understand why there is a learning curve here.
Novell doesn't run this forum consolidation project, we're only a player in this project.
Aha. But the three fora (suseforums.net, suselinuxsupport.de and the openSUSE support forums at forums.novell.com) will all be merging onto a Novell-run/-owned site = "forums.opensuse.org" ?
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 16:17 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:
Kim Groneman wrote:
It will have a Web Interface (vBulletin) and there is discussion going on around NNTP as well. Personally I think it should have both.
I agree, but I'm only borg unit three of three. There are security concerns that have to be addressed and frankly, a learning curve to overcome for people that haven't experienced NNTP.
But people without desire to use nntp would just continue to use the webforum interface, right? I'm not sure I quite understand why there is a learning curve here.
Kim is referring to the learning curve for people who have not used NNTP, not for those already using NNTP. They have to figure out a) what is NNTP?, b) how do they allow NNTP traffic if their local firewall blocks it and c) what software supports NNTP.
Beyond that, there is the issue of people like me who frequently use web interface over NNTP because of environmental limitations. When I'm at a customer site and I need to get a quick answer to something, I may not be able to use NNTP because either a) they don't have NNTP installed on their machines, and b) their firewall may explicitly ban NNTP.
When Novell switched to their new format a year or so ago, I had to stop using the forums specifically for this reason. I couldn't get in to post questions/answer questions, because some of my customers wouldn't allow NNTP. I sorely missed the web interaction option, and thus, Novell lost me as a participant/contributor to the forums. (Maybe they did have a web interface, but I sure couldn't find it. I could only read posts.)
Novell needs to keep both options open and offer that flexibility to its users, customers and partners because Novell can't predict what environment I'm going to be in day-to-day.
Bryen
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But people without desire to use nntp would just continue to use the webforum interface, right? I'm not sure I quite understand why there is a learning curve here.
We're merging three forum sets and the managers/moderators of two of those haven't dealt with NNTP integration to date. Users on the NNTP side aren't authenticated like they are on the web side so from a moderator and administrator viewpoint, there are things to learn when it comes to controlling spam, etc. when it comes from NNTP.
Aha. But the three fora (suseforums.net, suselinuxsupport.de and the openSUSE support forums at forums.novell.com) will all be merging onto a Novell-run/-owned site = "forums.opensuse.org" ?
Not quite. Novell has agreed to host the infrastructure because we have a full data center with an IT group and I have a budget for hardware/software purchases. We also have a daily full backup system for MySQL. It was just logical that Novell host the infrastructure. To say that Novell "owns" the site isn't correct. Ownership is a full collaboration of the administrators/staff the made up the individual forums. I have no more say in what happens than Keith or Vir@s.
On 2008-03-12 08:41:09 -0600, Joe Harmon wrote:
On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 13:29 +0100, Marcus Rueckert wrote:
Has this already happened or is it work in progress? I tried
getting a list of groups from news://forums.opensuse.org/, but it timed out.
The announcement said spring 2008. So right now they are still separate forums.
it will be a webforum afaik. not nntp.
It will have a Web Interface (vBulletin) and there is discussion going on around NNTP as well. Personally I think it should have both.
if you get it working with the proposed forum software why not. much success.
darix
Kim Groneman wrote:
But people without desire to use nntp would just continue to use the webforum interface, right? I'm not sure I quite understand why there is a learning curve here.
We're merging three forum sets and the managers/moderators of two of those haven't dealt with NNTP integration to date. Users on the NNTP side aren't authenticated like they are on the web side so from a moderator and administrator viewpoint, there are things to learn when it comes to controlling spam, etc. when it comes from NNTP.
Got it.
Aha. But the three fora (suseforums.net, suselinuxsupport.de and the openSUSE support forums at forums.novell.com) will all be merging onto a Novell-run/-owned site = "forums.opensuse.org" ?
Not quite. Novell has agreed to host the infrastructure because we have a full data center with an IT group and I have a budget for hardware/software purchases. We also have a daily full backup system for MySQL. It was just logical that Novell host the infrastructure. To say that Novell "owns" the site isn't correct. Ownership is a full collaboration of the administrators/staff the made up the individual forums. I have no more say in what happens than Keith or Vir@s.
Got it. Thanks for explaining it.
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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Bryen wrote:
But people without desire to use nntp would just continue to use the webforum interface, right? I'm not sure I quite understand why there is a learning curve here.
Kim is referring to the learning curve for people who have not used NNTP, not for those already using NNTP. They have to figure out a) what is NNTP?, b) how do they allow NNTP traffic if their local firewall blocks it and c) what software supports NNTP.
Kim explained it very well in his reply - he was talking about the admin side rather than the user side. For the end user, AFAICT nothing will change unless he or she decides to switch to nntp.
Beyond that, there is the issue of people like me who frequently use web interface over NNTP because of environmental limitations. When I'm at a customer site and I need to get a quick answer to something, I may not be able to use NNTP because either a) they don't have NNTP installed on their machines, and b) their firewall may explicitly ban NNTP.
But that's not really an issue is it? I'm not suggesting nntp instead of the web interface, I'm suggesting it in addition.
When Novell switched to their new format a year or so ago, I had to stop using the forums specifically for this reason. I couldn't get in to post questions/answer questions, because some of my customers wouldn't allow NNTP. I sorely missed the web interaction option, and thus, Novell lost me as a participant/contributor to the forums.
Uh, maybe I'm way off track here, but I really thought the web interface was still there??? I don't use it myself, so I could well be talking rubbish.
Novell needs to keep both options open and offer that flexibility to its users, customers and partners because Novell can't predict what environment I'm going to be in day-to-day.
Absolutely - I wasn't suggesting anything else.
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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1.
On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 18:02 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:
Bryen wrote:
But people without desire to use nntp would just continue to use the webforum interface, right? I'm not sure I quite understand why there is a learning curve here.
Kim is referring to the learning curve for people who have not used NNTP, not for those already using NNTP. They have to figure out a) what is NNTP?, b) how do they allow NNTP traffic if their local firewall blocks it and c) what software supports NNTP.
Kim explained it very well in his reply - he was talking about the admin side rather than the user side. For the end user, AFAICT nothing will change unless he or she decides to switch to nntp.
Hmm... I thought Kim was a she. :-)
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Bryen wrote:
1.On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 18:02 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:
Bryen wrote:
But people without desire to use nntp would just continue to use the webforum interface, right? I'm not sure I quite understand why there is a learning curve here.
Kim is referring to the learning curve for people who have not used NNTP, not for those already using NNTP. They have to figure out a) what is NNTP?, b) how do they allow NNTP traffic if their local firewall blocks it and c) what software supports NNTP.
Kim explained it very well in his reply - he was talking about the admin side rather than the user side. For the end user, AFAICT nothing will change unless he or she decides to switch to nntp.
Hmm... I thought Kim was a she. :-)
You're right, he could have been - I had to google him:
http://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/ana19980202.html
"Kim Groneman, from American Fork, Utah, is Novell's SysOp Program Manager. He has been with Novell for 6 years working with Novell Technical Services. He has worked with managing electronic communications systems and programs for 11 years."
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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Per Jessen wrote: | Bryen wrote: [...] |> When Novell switched to their new format a year or so ago, I had to |> stop using the forums specifically for this reason. I couldn't get in |> to post questions/answer questions, because some of my customers |> wouldn't allow NNTP. I sorely missed the web interaction option, and |> thus, Novell lost me as a participant/contributor to the forums. | | Uh, maybe I'm way off track here, but I really thought the web interface | was still there??? I don't use it myself, so I could well be talking | rubbish.
The primary user interface for forum.o.o will be the web-based one, obviously, it's a "web forum" after all ;D
*If* vBulletin's NNTP gateway works properly and the related potential security and/or spam issues involved with it can be addressed (see Kim's previous email on this thread), then there will *also* be an NNTP interface.
But clearly, it's a web forum :)
cheers - -- ~ -o) Pascal Bleser pascal.bleser@opensuse.org ~ /\ http://opensuse.org -- I took the green pill ~ __v FOSDEM::23+24 Feb 2008, Brussels, http://fosdem.org
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The Wednesday 2008-03-12 at 09:56 -0600, Kim Groneman wrote:
But people without desire to use nntp would just continue to use the webforum interface, right? I'm not sure I quite understand why there is a learning curve here.
We're merging three forum sets and the managers/moderators of two of those haven't dealt with NNTP integration to date. Users on the NNTP side aren't authenticated like they are on the web side so from a moderator and administrator viewpoint, there are things to learn when it comes to controlling spam, etc. when it comes from NNTP.
I understand it is possible to force requirement of a login/pass for nntp posting. That method could make moderation and spam fighting easier, no?
- -- Cheers, Carlos E. R.
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Pascal Bleser wrote:
The primary user interface for forum.o.o will be the web-based one, obviously, it's a "web forum" after all ;D
*If* vBulletin's NNTP gateway works properly and the related potential security and/or spam issues involved with it can be addressed (see Kim's previous email on this thread), then there will *also* be an NNTP interface.
OK, now I'm just being curious, but that sounds like reinventing the wheel? At http://forums.novell.com there is already a number of active webfora, which are all available over nntp too.
Why not just use the exact same setup for these new/merged fora?
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 4:02 PM, Kim Groneman kgroneman@novell.com wrote:
We're using vBulletin to build out the new openSUSE forums on a staging server, folks at openSUSE are working on skinning it, and "Vir@s" from the SUSELinuxSupport.de boards is heading up the user consolidation effort.
Any special reason it will use a closed source product? Are there no open source web forums that will do?
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I understand it is possible to force requirement of a login/pass for nntp posting. That method could make moderation and spam fighting easier, no?
It is possible, but it's a manual process. The forums at http://forums.novell.com has had almost 10,000 registrations since February 11th and the cost/beneft to handle that isn't there. The Novell forums have been running with NNTP since 1994 and there is no significant problem with moderation & spam fighting. NNTP posts have a user ID and an IP address and can be handled almost as easily as a web forum post. Keep in mind we're not talking about feeding USENET here. There is no tie in from the Novell NNTP servers to USENET.
We're using vBulletin
Any special reason it will use a closed source product? Are there no open source web forums that will do?
Three reasons. First PHPBB is the closest open source product available but history has shown that security and features in PHPBB is significantly lacking compared with the closed source products being used. Second vBulletin is the most ubiquitous web forum software in use today so a lot of people are used to it's features and interface. Third is pure supportability. vBulletin is fully supported by the company that owns it for updates/security/etc. which is extremely important in an environment like this where you want optimal up time.
You'll notice that the existing boards that are coming together for this project are all using closed source product for their forums.
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The Thursday 2008-03-13 at 10:22 -0600, Kim Groneman wrote:
I understand it is possible to force requirement of a login/pass for nntp posting. That method could make moderation and spam fighting easier, no?
It is possible, but it's a manual process.
Ah :-(
The forums at http://forums.novell.com has had almost 10,000 registrations since February 11th and the cost/beneft to handle that isn't there. The Novell forums have been running with NNTP since 1994 and there is no significant problem with moderation & spam fighting. NNTP posts have a user ID and an IP address and can be handled almost as easily as a web forum post. Keep in mind we're not talking about feeding USENET here. There is no tie in from the Novell NNTP servers to USENET.
Ok. As long as you get running both the web forum and nntp interfaces simultaneously, that will be good. For instance, I won't participate on a web forum, but I might on an nntp one. If both are joined, each user will choose the one they prefer and get answers from both.
- -- Cheers, Carlos E. R.
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On Mar 13, 2008, at 11:58 PM, Cristian Rodríguez wrote:
Because probably they dont know anything better. ;-)
How about I won't call you uniformed in your functional area if you won't slam a big chunk of the openSUSE community in their functional area? Your arrogance is disappointing.
We used IPB because, as small, unfunded, Linux community volunteers, we needed something we could hold someone accountable for when we ran into issues. We didn't have programmers on staff we could turn loose on the code when we needed support or fixes. There were just a few of us running a community, not programming discussion board software, so we chose a route that gave us the best scenario for survival. That route involved having a company to depend on for support.
In any case, the choice of software for the new forums has been made. The volunteers who have to do the work made it. We're more interested in making the new forums a success than in making a ideological statement.
Keith
--- Keith Kastorff kastorff@yahoo.com
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Kim Groneman escribió:
Three reasons. First PHPBB is the closest open source product available but history has shown that security and features in PHPBB is significantly lacking compared with the closed source products being used.
While I indeed agree that PHPbb security history is nothing to be happy with, Im sorry to tell you that "closed source" products dont it better,at all, do you want a simple proof eh ?
try this in the vbulletin source tree..
find . -name "*.php" | xargs grep eval
PHP's eval() is almost unsecurable, most of that matches may be a potential sources of holes, not to mention that does not scale well as eval()'ed code is NOT cached by opcode caches like APC or Xcache.. as it is evil self-modifing code.. truly scary... I wish you much luck with this ;-)
Third is pure supportability. vBulletin is fully supported by the company that owns it for updates/security/etc. which is extremely important in an environment like this where you want optimal up time.
That's a valid point.
You'll notice that the existing boards that are coming together for this project are all using closed source product for their forums.
Because probably they dont know anything better. ;-)
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Cristian Rodríguez wrote: | Kim Groneman escribió: |> Three reasons. First PHPBB is the closest open source product |> available but history has shown that security and features in PHPBB is |> significantly lacking compared with the closed source products being |> used. | | While I indeed agree that PHPbb security history is nothing to be happy | with, I'm sorry to tell you that "closed source" products dont it | better, at all, do you want a simple proof eh ? [...]
Well you could, indeed, try to make your point in a slightly less offensive way ;)
My personal opinion is that there is no silver bullet option. All candidate web forum software packages are written in PHP and, as such, have a rather high potential of security issues (compared to, say, running something in a JVM that can easily be locked down with access rules and has a much better record in terms of security).
We already have discussed whether we should go with an opensource solution instead, for obvious reasons, and if there had been a good opensource candidate in terms of features, support and security, we would have given it a preference, for the same obvious reasons.
Point is, the people who run it should be the people who decide on the software they want to use. Kim's point below is a very valid one IMO.
|> Third is pure supportability. vBulletin is fully supported by the |> company that owns it for updates/security/etc. which is extremely |> important in an environment like this where you want optimal up time. | | That's a valid point. | |> You'll notice that the existing boards that are coming together for |> this project are all using closed source product for their forums. | | Because probably they don't know anything better. ;-)
Note that you didn't propose an alternative that would have the same feature set as vBulletin or IPB :) phpBB really has a terrible security record.
cheers - -- ~ -o) Pascal Bleser pascal.bleser@opensuse.org ~ /\ http://opensuse.org -- I took the green pill ~ __v FOSDEM::23+24 Feb 2008, Brussels, http://fosdem.org
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Pascal Bleser a écrit :
Point is, the people who run it should be the people who decide on the software they want to use.
absolutely :-)
Note that you didn't propose an alternative that would have the same feature set as vBulletin or IPB :)
open source software is what it is. open. and if there is no secure forum, may be openSUSE could do something for this, as forums are probably the very most used php software.
my feeling is than it's not a langage problem but a programmer/spirit problem. Mediawiki and pmwiki, for example, seems very secure (I may be in error though).
having openSUSE run a proprietary software is a bad advertisement for open source (even, may be mostly, if justifiyed), so IMHO we sould make some sort of effort to try solving this for the future.
I don't know how is setup the participation Novell gives to various open source projects, but I'm sure it could be possible to have a "secure forum" project, let only advertising to the open source community the need to drive programmers to this direction (google summer of code??)
how do the other distribution solve the problem?
thanks jdd
Pascal Bleser wrote:
Note that you didn't propose an alternative that would have the same feature set as vBulletin or IPB :)
Interestingly, the current forums at http://forums.novell.com use vBulletin.
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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On Friday 14 March 2008 09:34:09 jdd wrote:
how do the other distribution solve the problem?
ubuntuusers.de is made with Django, that's the only other solution I know.
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jdd wrote:
how do the other distribution solve the problem?
The obvious solution is to stick to mailing lists and newsgroups <BG>.
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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Fredag den 14. Marts 2008 09:34:09 skrev jdd:
having openSUSE run a proprietary software is a bad advertisement
I won't claim to know the implications for admins, but I agree on this.
how do the other distribution solve the problem?
Mandriva, Debian, Knoppix and Gentoo use phpBB.
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On Friday 14 March 2008 11:02:35 Per Jessen wrote:
The obvious solution is to stick to mailing lists and newsgroups <BG>.
One key to success of Ubuntu is their web forum. That's what the kids know and like. We saw a lot of new users on forums.novell.com when Novell introduced the vBulletin forum. Before that it was NNTP and a hardly useable web interface. And yes, I noticed the "<BG>" :-)
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Uwe Buckesfeld wrote:
On Friday 14 March 2008 11:02:35 Per Jessen wrote:
The obvious solution is to stick to mailing lists and newsgroups <BG>.
One key to success of Ubuntu is their web forum. That's what the kids know and like. We saw a lot of new users on forums.novell.com when Novell introduced the vBulletin forum. Before that it was NNTP and a hardly useable web interface. And yes, I noticed the "<BG>" :-)
Good - it was of course a joke. I may never understand why many people prefer the webfora over email or nntp, but I do totally accept it, and I think it's very important to _also_ offer that type of access.
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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On Friday 14 March 2008 16:06:31 Per Jessen wrote:
Good - it was of course a joke. I may never understand why many people prefer the webfora over email or nntp, but I do totally accept it, and I think it's very important to _also_ offer that type of access.
Where "access" is the important point: The data should be accessible through web, mail and NNTP, but the content itself should be the same. Gateways for NNTP and mailing lists would be awesome.
I don't like mailing lists, but it took me a while to find out why: In my mailbox I want person-to-person communication, and most of what I keep in my mailbox is "personal", not "published". It confuses me. I guess I could live with mailing lists if I used a separate mail client for lists only. Web forums, that's easy: I need to click way too much to get things done. That's why I don't like them.
I prefer NNTP. I don't have to use a web interface and I keep the data away my personal belongings :-)
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jdd wrote: | Pascal Bleser a écrit : |> Point is, the people who run it should be the people who decide on the |> software they want to use. | | absolutely :-)
And why are you contradicting yourself below then ? "the people who run it" = the admins of the forum, not the users
If the admins decide to go with vBulletin, then vBulletin it shall be.
It's always easy to criticise and say "you must do this" or "you should do that" or even "you have no clue" when you don't have to set it up, make it work and provide a reliable service. Because of that, and purely out of technical reasons, the people who make the service work are the ones to decide on the technology.
|> Note that you didn't propose an alternative that would have the same |> feature set as vBulletin or IPB :) | | open source software is what it is. open. and if there is no secure | forum, may be openSUSE could do something for this, as forums are | probably the very most used php software. | my feeling is than it's not a langage problem but a programmer/spirit | problem. Mediawiki and pmwiki, for example, seems very secure (I may be | in error though).
They're not "very secure". They're not even "secure". Mediawiki hasn't got a good security record either. And it is also a language problem to a certain extent. But let's try to stay on topic.
| having openSUSE run a proprietary software is a bad advertisement for | open source (even, may be mostly, if justifiyed), so IMHO we sould make | some sort of effort to try solving this for the future.
Ah, you are proposing to write a new opensource web forum project from scratch, secure from the ground up yourself ? Or to audit and fix and support all of phpBB's source code ?
You clearly need a reality check: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/30
phpBB is estimated to 31 person/years of effort, this means over
~ 1 500 000 $
of investment. And it doesn't even have the features of vBulletin or IPB.
So a gross estimation of the required effort would be... hmm... 5 m/y at an absolute minimum.
| I don't know how is setup the participation Novell gives to various open | source projects, but I'm sure it could be possible to have a "secure | forum" project, let only advertising to the open source community the | need to drive programmers to this direction (google summer of code??)
So now you'd like to steer priority on the people and money Novell puts into FOSS projects. GSoC ? Please check the numbers above.
| how do the other distribution solve the problem?
Just to clarify: the announcement wasn't an invitation to discuss which software should be used. The software to run the forum has already been discussed and selected by the ones who are concerned by its maintenance (primarily Kim, Keith and Wolfgang).
It is, of course, absolutely valid to ask why vBulletin has been chosen. And Kim gave enough reasons for that. The people who host it have plenty of experience with it, and they're happy with the service the vendor provides, and they're happy with the security record of vBulletin. And it has more features (such as the NNTP gateway). And they know how to integrate it with iChain. I still fail to see anyone giving reasons why phpBB would be superior on the above mentioned items.
Maybe this will clarify the reasons for the decision:
~ | phpBB | vBulletin - -------------+--------------+-------------------------- experience | - none | ++ a lot security | -- awful | 0 acceptable service | 0 unknown | ++ very good features | 0 average | ++ lots (NNTP, roles, ...) opensource | +++ yes | --- no - -------------+--------------+-------------------------- score: | 0 | +++ (and notice that I'm giving a lot of weight to the "opensource" criterion)
Yes, choosing an opensource option would be better for certain reasons, but there's no black and white, you have to throw pros and cons into the balance. That's exactly what we did, including taking the fact that it isn't FOSS into consideration, and the outcome was vBulletin. Period.
The option of "just" writing our own or having Novell spend insane amounts of money to write a new one is simply ridiculous, to put it mildly.
- -- ~ -o) Pascal Bleser pascal.bleser@opensuse.org ~ /\ http://opensuse.org -- I took the green pill ~ __v FOSDEM::23+24 Feb 2008, Brussels, http://fosdem.org
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On Friday 14 March 2008 17:19:33 Uwe Buckesfeld wrote:
In my mailbox I want person-to-person communication, and most of what I keep in my mailbox is "personal", not "published". It confuses me. I guess I could live with mailing lists if I used a separate mail client for lists
Your mail client doesn't support folders and filters? :-)
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Uwe Buckesfeld wrote:
On Friday 14 March 2008 16:06:31 Per Jessen wrote:
Good - it was of course a joke. I may never understand why many people prefer the webfora over email or nntp, but I do totally accept it, and I think it's very important to _also_ offer that type of access.
Where "access" is the important point: The data should be accessible through web, mail and NNTP, but the content itself should be the same. Gateways for NNTP and mailing lists would be awesome.
In principle I agree completely, but in my opinion the core engine has to be a news-server with bi-directionally gated fora and mailing-lists. Fora and email should be interfaces only, the news-server does the actual message management.
I don't like mailing lists, but it took me a while to find out why: In my mailbox I want person-to-person communication, and most of what I keep in my mailbox is "personal", not "published". It confuses me.
To start with with, use filters to sort out mail into personal and list folders. That's what I did 10 years ago until I set up my own news-server and fed all the list emails into that. (like a personal gmane).
Anyway, we're going off-topic.
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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Pascal Bleser wrote:
It's always easy to criticise and say "you must do this" or "you should do that" or even "you have no clue" when you don't have to set it up, make it work and provide a reliable service.
Oh, will you get off your high horse for second.
Because of that, and purely out of technical reasons, the people who make the service work are the ones to decide on the technology.
I beg to differ. The technology is not just for admins to decide. There are other considerations to take into account than just how to run it. For instance, in the current case, why on earth was http://forums.novell.com/ not chosen as the common platform? Everything is already implemented, almost nothing left to do. But no - presumably the "admins" didn't know that, and decided they needed to reinvent the wheel.
| having openSUSE run a proprietary software is a bad advertisement | for open source (even, may be mostly, if justifiyed), so IMHO we | sould make some sort of effort to try solving this for the future.
Ah, you are proposing to write a new opensource web forum project from scratch, secure from the ground up yourself ? Or to audit and fix and support all of phpBB's source code ?
You clearly need a reality check: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/30
Pascal, is it just me, or are you being unnecessarily aggressive? Do relax for a second, please.
Just to clarify: the announcement wasn't an invitation to discuss which software should be used.
Who are you to clarify the announcement made by somebody else? Besides, we don't need an invitation to have a discussion.
The software to run the forum has already been discussed and selected by the ones who are concerned by its maintenance (primarily Kim, Keith and Wolfgang).
Ah, then I have to repeat my question - why wasn't the existing platform chosen? It's already being maintained ....
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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Per Jessen a écrit :
Pascal, is it just me, or are you being unnecessarily aggressive? Do relax for a second, please.
yes, Pascal should, and he will, certainly. Let alone read before aswering.
we can have a choice now and accept the administrator choice, and think this very choice shows a problem and look how to fix it *in the future*
as I said forum are one of the main web use nowaday (and I don't like them, don't say I advocate for them!!), so a security improvement should be good and may be openSUSE can give a look in this direction.
give a look, ask for help, give directions, not reinvent the wheel nor take the project intirely. in fact aven phpBB is greatly used and nobody died, no? so security probelems may not be that urgent nor vital... just an example, not to say this is the one we should work on...
just as an enhancement entry in bugzilla, nothing mandatory nor imperative, ok?
for now, let's go as the admins want to go...
jdd
* Stephan Binner stbinner@suse.de [03-14-08 14:10]:
Your mail client doesn't support folders and filters? :-)
mail clients and their usage are a lot like editors. I learned word star and the key-strokes remain, so I use editors that for the most part clone ws key-strokes.
Old-timers used mail for personal contact and news for bbs lists, etc.
With slrn and mutt, I see little difference with functionality except for having mail locally and news remote. But both can be the other way...
On Mar 14, 2008, at 2:33 PM, Per Jessen wrote:
I beg to differ. The technology is not just for admins to decide. There are other considerations to take into account than just how to run it. For instance, in the current case, why on earth was http://forums.novell.com/ not chosen as the common platform? Everything is already implemented, almost nothing left to do. But no - presumably the "admins" didn't know that, and decided they needed to reinvent the wheel.
When you're spending the time we spend running a discussion board, you learn some things. You make some mistakes, you make some good choices. In the end, that experience makes you better qualified to make additional decisions regarding running a board. There is so much more to this project than just what software is used, or who hosts what, or what structure we have.
We're not killing two forums in order to let one stand alone. We're merging three forums to create something new, while preserving the content and membership as much as possible. We're growing and evolving the existing openSUSE forums community. We see our primary roles as forums staff as creating a positive environment for discussion, and as being caretakers of the effort and time the community spends in creating forums content. We chose to preserve that as much as possible, to evolve, rather than destroy one component in favor of another.
But since we volunteer the time, money (with the existing forums), and do the work, the technology _is_ ours to decide. It's only fair. Especially since we're already taking into account the big picture, and we've already proven we know what we're doing. We're stepping up, and making something happen. Don't we value that in our openSUSE Community? It's the nature of the community to criticize when nothing is done, and criticize when anything is done. Either way folks will complain. Too bad we can't put other things first.
We're leveraging the experience of three discussion boards into this new endeavor, and this new openSUSE Forum, a merger of three separate forums, is gonna be a huge positive for the community. Let's not get distracted by lesser issues. We're trying to build the best open source Linux community on the planet, and we all have a role to play. The existing forums are giving up something we've busted our asses to create in favor of a better option for the community. That's an honorable course, and we could use the support of the openSUSE Community as we pursue it.
Keith
--- Keith Kastorff kastorff@yahoo.com
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Per Jessen wrote: | Pascal Bleser wrote: |> It's always easy to criticise and say "you must do this" or "you |> should do that" or even "you have no clue" when you don't have to set |> it up, make it work and provide a reliable service. | | Oh, will you get off your high horse for second.
No high horse there, just a knee-jerk reaction to "Novell should write a secure PHP based web forum on its own". As I wrote, it's always easy to tell everyone what to do on a topic one isn't involved in. I absolutely love those.
|> Because of that, and purely out of technical reasons, the people who |> make the service work are the ones to decide on the technology. | | I beg to differ. The technology is not just for admins to decide. There | are other considerations to take into account than just how to run it. | For instance, in the current case, why on earth was | http://forums.novell.com/ not chosen as the common platform? | Everything is already implemented, almost nothing left to do. But no - | presumably the "admins" didn't know that, and decided they needed to | reinvent the wheel.
One of the 4 people heavily involved into the process is Kim Groneman, and he's the current admin of forums.novell.com
Incidentally, the software and infrastructure running forums.novell.com is the platform for forums.opensuse.org Actually, as I wrote in my previous post, that fact + Kim and the staff at Novell knowing vBulletin well is a point that had quite some weight into the forum software evaluation.
|> | having openSUSE run a proprietary software is a bad advertisement |> | for open source (even, may be mostly, if justifiyed), so IMHO we |> | sould make some sort of effort to try solving this for the future. |> |> Ah, you are proposing to write a new opensource web forum project from |> scratch, secure from the ground up yourself ? Or to audit and fix and |> support all of phpBB's source code ? |> |> You clearly need a reality check: http://www.ohloh.net/projects/30 | | Pascal, is it just me, or are you being unnecessarily aggressive? Do | relax for a second, please.
Not sure whether I was aggressive, certainly wasn't my intention, or well... maybe just slightly. I was just trying to point out to jdd how ridiculous his argumentation for having to use an opensource web forum software at all costs was. Especially the "you/Novell should write its own".
And sorry, what I do find aggressive is someone not involved into the process and not even knowing how to write software telling others what they must do, implying they're wrong and too ignorant to have weighted the pros and cons of every option.
|> Just to clarify: the announcement wasn't an invitation to discuss |> which software should be used. | | Who are you to clarify the announcement made by somebody else? Besides,
Because I'm part of the people who are discussing and organizing the forum merge -- even though the hard work is clearly being done by Rupert, Keith, Wolfgang and Kim. I'm just there to help a bit where I can, but I did follow and participate in the whole discussion.
| we don't need an invitation to have a discussion.
True. Of course, anyone may comment and give his opinion. But that's different from criticizing the people who worked on the task so far without knowing the background or making assumptions they have no clue (I'm not saying _you_ did ;)).
|> The software to run the forum has already been discussed and selected |> by the ones who are concerned by its maintenance (primarily Kim, Keith |> and Wolfgang). | | Ah, then I have to repeat my question - why wasn't the existing platform | chosen? It's already being maintained ....
It is the existing platform. And indeed, it was the best option as it's already being maintained ;)
cheers - -- ~ -o) Pascal Bleser pascal.bleser@opensuse.org ~ /\ http://opensuse.org -- I took the green pill ~ __v FOSDEM::23+24 Feb 2008, Brussels, http://fosdem.org
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fre, 14.03.2008 kl. 15.42 -0400, skrev Keith Kastorff:
Snip: Keith said a lot of good/right words/arguments......
Keith Kastorff
Keith, Rupert, Wolfgang and Kim, what you all are doing are a fantastic thing for openSUSE.
I for one am very glad to see this merger happen, and I think I have a lot of people with me on this.
Now, if the "Überforum" is going to be run on vBullitin, phpBB, heck run it out of Personal Web Server on a unpatched Win98se box for all I care. The important part here is that it happens. The existence of a official webforum is crucial for the further growth of openSUSE, so do not let a few malinglist-heros fsck this up.
Further, the NNTP interface, if it's possible great, if it's to much work, screw it. Us oldschool ML/news users are not the target for this forum anyway (not saying we are not welcome :) )
Keep up the great work, just ignore the noise.
Bjørn
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why on earth was http://forums.novell.com/ not chosen as the common platform? Everything is already implemented, almost nothing left to do. But no - presumably the "admins" didn't know that, and decided they needed to reinvent the wheel.
You know, that is actually a very good question and a very bad presumption. :-) The reason it isn't being implemented on forums.novell.com is quite simple. First because these aren't Novell forums, they are openSUSE forums and for some people that is a very important distinction. If we can accomodate those people by separating them, I say why not. Second, the staff for the Novell forums and the staff for the openSUSE forums are completely separate and honestly it would have been kind of a security nightmare I really glad I didn't have to deal with (we have private forums and non disclosure agreements and stuff like that). Lastly, it's really a benefit to users who want questions answered on openSUSE to go to forums where all there is is talk about openSUSE. Same with Novell branded products. As for your presumption, all the admins did know that but in discussion we chose this other path.
| having openSUSE run a proprietary software is a bad advertisement | for open source (even, may be mostly, if justifiyed), so IMHO we | sould make some sort of effort to try solving this for the future.
I guess this is kind of a "religious" thing that I really do understand, but I don't share the point of view. My personal opinion is that I'm going to choose the best tool to do the task I need done. If the opensource community makes a better wrench, I'll gladly switch to using that wrench. I know...kind of pointless to even start discussing this as it's a discussion that's been happening for years now and hardly anyone is convincing anyone else to their point of view, so that's all I'll say on the matter. :-)
Because I'm part of the people who are discussing and organizing the forum merge
And I, for one, am very grateful people like you, Pascal, are involved and giving input. As with almost every project I've been involved with, people start out with different opinions and by constructive discussion, including disagreements, we eventually come up with the "best of show" or a good compromise and in the end it's usually a better result than if one person made all the decisions.
openSUSE could have said "We want official forums and we want them our way" but they didn't. Everyone reached out to each other for a better solution and you have to realize to bring a company like Novell and openSUSE to the table with two fiercely independant board admins and come up with a win-win workable solution is nothing short of a miracle. Will the final result be perfect? Of course not. Will it be better than what is available now? I'm certain of it. Will it help the openSUSE user community? Absolutely. If we allowed the project to get bogged down in disagreements about detail, it would never happen and everyone, including openSUSE itself, loses.
--- Kim Groneman Manager Novell Services Operations Web Team email: kgroneman@novell.com phone: 801-861-7652
Novell, Inc. Come see us at Novell BrainShare 2008 Register now at http://www.novell.com/brainshare
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Pascal Bleser a écrit :
well... maybe just slightly. I was just trying to point out to jdd how ridiculous his argumentation for having to use an opensource web forum software at all costs was. Especially the "you/Novell should write its own".
but I never ever write so... read again my mail. I just said go ahead as you like and think how openSUSE could help to have somewhere a more secure forum *in the future*.
I don't think openSUSE did reinvent KDE but poeople of openSUSE *are* working on kde, for example. I not even suggest this, but simply to *advertise* the need and ask people to work in this direction.
the fact you couldn't find an open secure forum software is sad, that is.
And sorry, what I do find aggressive is someone not involved into the process and not even knowing how to write software telling others what they must do, implying they're wrong and too ignorant to have weighted the pros and cons of every option.
here you are pretty arrogant. Who can pretend "to have weighted
the pros and cons of every option" on any point? God?
so far without knowing the background or making assumptions they have no clue (I'm not saying _you_ did ;)).
I hope so because I never did
jdd
Pascal Bleser wrote:
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Per Jessen wrote: | Pascal Bleser wrote: |> It's always easy to criticise and say "you must do this" or "you |> should do that" or even "you have no clue" when you don't have to |> set it up, make it work and provide a reliable service. | | Oh, will you get off your high horse for second.
No high horse there, just a knee-jerk reaction to "Novell should write a secure PHP based web forum on its own". As I wrote, it's always easy to tell everyone what to do on a topic one isn't involved in. I absolutely love those.
Yeah, but my point is - just because it's easy to comment doesn't mean those comments are not valid.
Incidentally, the software and infrastructure running forums.novell.com is the platform for forums.opensuse.org Actually, as I wrote in my previous post, that fact + Kim and the staff at Novell knowing vBulletin well is a point that had quite some weight into the forum software evaluation.
I can't really follow you here - so the current forums.novell.org setup will also be the platform for the new merged fora? But that's perfect. Then maybe I'm just the one who hasn't got a clue.
And sorry, what I do find aggressive is someone not involved into the process and not even knowing how to write software telling others what they must do, implying they're wrong and too ignorant to have weighted the pros and cons of every option.
Perhaps it's a choice of words - the above may be arrogant, but not aggressive IMHO. But it's not important.
|> The software to run the forum has already been discussed and |> selected by the ones who are concerned by its maintenance |> (primarily Kim, Keith and Wolfgang). | | Ah, then I have to repeat my question - why wasn't the existing | platform | chosen? It's already being maintained ....
It is the existing platform. And indeed, it was the best option as it's already being maintained ;)
Somehow I've managed to completely miss that. From the previous discussions, I got the distinct impression that something new was being put together. Sounds to me like you _have_ chosen the best platform. I'll go away quietly and shut up.
/Per Jessen, Zürich
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-
Bjørn Lie -
Bryen -
Carlos E. R. -
Claes Backstrom -
Cristian Rodríguez -
Freek de Kruijf -
jdd -
Joe Harmon -
Keith Kastorff -
Kim Groneman -
Marcus Rueckert -
Martin Schlander -
Pascal Bleser -
Patrick Shanahan -
Per Jessen -
Stephan Binner -
Uwe Buckesfeld