(pretending this was send to the list :D)

Le 21 sept. 2012 à 09:49, "Alexis \"Agemen\""  a écrit :
> On 21 September 2012 07:45, Florian Leparoux  
wrote:
>> Le 20 sept. 2012 à 23:35, Jim Henderson  a écrit :
>>> On Thu, 20 Sep 2012 22:20:25 +0200, Florian Leparoux wrote:
>>>> We need to think for all non-english openSUSE community and not just
>>>> for
>>>> the french community.
>>> 
>>> We do currently have a number of non-English language sections on the
>>> openSUSE forums, including a French one - I don't know if you've talked
>>> with the moderators of that group (though I know someone from Alionet is
>>> talking to swerdna as well).
>>> 
>>> Jim
>> 
>> In fact there is a thread in alionet.org, in the ML-FR, a discussion with
>> opensuse moderator, #opensuse-fr and for finish in this ML
>> 
>> Flo
>> 
>>> --
> 
> Hi everybody,
> 
> I guess it's time to explain a bit why we did this proposal, and why
> we think it is a good idea...

Thanks for that, it clarifies things.

> The original objective is, as underlined by Florian, to make the
> french community more coherent. I say french here for simplicity, but
> that's a bit broader because this forum is used by french speaking
> people, not only french. The french community is quite parceled out.
> Participation to the broader, international project, does not suffer
> from any problem. There are people participating to packaging, IRC and
> other parts of the project from both forums. Fortunately. That would
> be a real shame otherwise.

Agreed. Note that when we like to get things on openSUSE infrastructure, that 
is NOT against alionet or anything - we just happen to think that less 
fragmentation is better, just like you want. People who search for openSUSE 
are most likely to end up on openSUSE.org - and thus on the french stuff 
there, and miss alionet. So, having everything on openSUSE.org is better.

> Currently, Alionet is offering some services. There's not only a
> forum, but blogs, a CMS dedicated to news and an independant wiki.
> There has even been an IRC chan... To be honest, that does not work.
> We don't want to do that anymore, splitting our energy in redundant
> projects. Whatever will be decided in the end, the wiki will certainly
> disappear. It's already hard enough to maintain one, let's not
> maintain both. And as I've said, we already decided to remove public
> IRC chans linked to Alionet. There are still some private ones, but
> dedicated to technical discussions around the website.
> 
> In my opinion, though, three things must not disappear. First, the CMS
> (for the news), then the blogs. There are not much that are written in
> french, and that's a good store front. People interested in openSUSE
> can have news about it in french. That may seem silly, but... well...
> french people are not always at their ease when it comes to speak
> english. So they can't stay tuned with the projects and actions made
> by openSUSE, or not in a single place.

Nah, it is understandable. That's why planet.opensuse.org is multi-language. 
News.opensuse.org is not but we're actually currently looking for a solution 
for that - as you see, the announcement of openSUSE 12.2 was translated but we 
put links to the wiki page on news.o.o as a work-around...

> That said, it's time to speak about the forums. Alionet is way more
> used than the french forum in forums.opensuse.org. There are many more
> posts there... Of course, that does not do everything. That's just
> some "fact"... If we consider only people using forums (everybody does
> not particpate to a project the same way... some prefer MLs, other
> IRC, other forums, some use many of them...), it seems the Alionet
> community is wider. I may be wrong.
> 
> On the technical side, we're actively working to enable nntp. That's a
> problem because, for historical reasons[1], our DB uses an iso
> charset, while the vBulletin nntp plugin requires UTF8. The SSO part
> may be more difficult, however...
> 
> Finally, some side notes. Florian presented Alionet as a "concurrent"
> of openSUSE. I don't think it is. Alionet is an association "loi 1901"
> in France. The main reason, originally, was that we wanted to have a
> clean way to collect money to pay our server. Until then, it has been
> proven that, at a local level, it is a good way to gather people and
> to strengthen the  links between them.
> 
> The Alionet association has been legally created to "promote free
> software, the GNU/Linux operating systems, and particularly SUSE and
> openSUSE". I think it is self-explanatory. Moreover, since the
> creation of the association, we've tried to participate to FOSS
> events, on openSUSE stands. I went to the RMLL last year, in LUGs and
> in Solutions Linux this year. I may be in Paris again in October. Each
> time, we've made this with openSUSE mates. And I say mates. Even if
> I'm the "president of the association Alionet", I'm also a member of
> the openSUSE community, and that is always a real pleasure to meet
> other members of this commmunity. And I personnally don't care if they
> are "from Alionet or not". Alionet as been thought as a relay, as a
> support, from the beginning. We won't fork the distribution, we won't
> try to beat openSUSE. We want to work with and for openSUSE. Call us
> concurrent if you want. I, personnally, wouldn't.
> 
> I hope this message helps the debate in some ways. I will follow this
> thread, of course... as I do most of the time on openSUSE MLs.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Alexis "Agemen".
> 
> [1] The former server were Alionet lived was not dedicated, and we
> then did not have the choice of the charset for the db. That's a
> shame... and fixing that takes some time.

First, I wouldn't call Alionet a competitor, rather a family member. 
on the Alionet association: that is absolutely awesome, and that should be 
kept. Heck, it should be mentioned on the openSUSE side. I do prefer to keep 
things centralized where it makes sense but of course having Alionet for 
planning booths and handling money is really cool!

>From your post I take it we agree that fragmentation is bad. Two things:
- first of all, the French community has to make the final decision, not the 
global one. I think it's your work and your community. I think we all agree on 
that, I just want to say it out loud.
- Second, IF you decide to stay on alionet.org - I'd rather remove the 
openSUSE french pages and forums and link them to alionet.org than keep the 
fragmentation.

But. I really think it's better if we manage to move everything to openSUSE 
servers. That would mean you guys benefit from our sysadmin work (and maybe 
our sysadmins can get help from you, too). And it is easier for people to 
find. And if you have ideas for improvements, we can do that together and it 
benefits everyone using our stuff! And if something goes wrong (fights or a 
forgotten renewal of a domain) it is easier to fix/safer in openSUSE. Together 
stronger and all that.

We don't want too loose anything (or as little as possible, so we could for 
example import the posts from alionet.org to forums.opensuse.org. If that is 
possible of course. And if there are other things you guys miss, we should be 
able to run that on our systems - too. Or fix our systems, with your help of 
course.

And we can do this step-wise. So you guys run a bunch of things - we can start 
moving those one by one, have a multi-year plan for all I care. Take the time 
to do it right. But have consolidation as a long term goal!

Just something you have to decide on. I think the others in the thread made 
clear: we'd like to have stuff on openSUSE.org, preferably running the same 
way and in the same software as the rest. But it is your call - you're doing 
awesome and we'd much prefer to keep you doing that than discourage you. So, 
think about it, talk to our sysadmins maybe, yell at us if our infrastructure 
can't do things you need (because that would be something we have to fix) 
etcetera, and pick what works best please!

Hugs,
Jos

On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 10:42:04 +0200, Florian Leparoux wrote:

...

...

In fact there is a thread in alionet.org, in the ML-FR, a discussion with opensuse moderator, #opensuse-fr and for finish in this ML

Just to clarify, what I meant was the moderators on the French forums on forums.opensuse.org - I don't know if there's overlap in our French forum staff and Alionet, but they should definitely all be included in the discussion if they're not already. I should also mention (for those who may not be aware), I'm one of the non-technical admins on the openSUSE forums (though I've been involved in a lot of the technical side of things as well and know the infrastructure involved).

...

In my opinion, though, three things must not disappear. First, the CMS (for the news), then the blogs. There are not much that are written in french, and that's a good store front. People interested in openSUSE can have news about it in french. That may seem silly, but... well... french people are not always at their ease when it comes to speak english. So they can't stay tuned with the projects and actions made by openSUSE, or not in a single place.

CMS is a part of the current releases of vBulletin, so blogs and articles aren't an issue. Should the merge take place to forums.opensuse.org, that's something that's easily acommodated.

...

That said, it's time to speak about the forums. Alionet is way more used than the french forum in forums.opensuse.org. There are many more posts there... Of course, that does not do everything. That's just some "fact"... If we consider only people using forums (everybody does not particpate to a project the same way... some prefer MLs, other IRC, other forums, some use many of them...), it seems the Alionet community is wider. I may be wrong.

It may be a larger community - but I think the discussion shouldn't necessarily be about which is "larger", but what makes sense for the project. I think if the openSUSE Forums' French category were made "the place to go", we'd have more traffic there.

...

On the technical side, we're actively working to enable nntp. That's a problem because, for historical reasons[1], our DB uses an iso charset, while the vBulletin nntp plugin requires UTF8. The SSO part may be more difficult, however...

Actually, the NNTP gateway issue is more serious than just a character set. The NNTP gateway itself hasn't been maintained by the original creator (not that it ever was, it's not an 'official' plugin) since vBulletin 3. I currently maintain it for the forums hosted by Novell/ NetIQ/SUSE/openSUSE, mostly providing bug fixes and minor enhancements. Getting it to work with vBulletin 4 took some work, but it is working. We also migrated from ISO- charsets to UTF8 already (that was really needed on a forum with multiple languages - selecting ISO charsets caused issues if you switched, for example, from Chinese to French).

...

I hope this message helps the debate in some ways. I will follow this thread, of course... as I do most of the time on openSUSE MLs.

Thanks, that does help a lot - and in the end, whatever the project and community opt for, those of us on the forums will do what we can to support the decision made. :) Ultimately, it's about the community. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, email: opensuse-project+owner@opensuse.org