<div dir="ltr"><div><div>The following are my personal views, and not that of my previous or current employers.<br><br></div><ol><li>At least for the near-term, all <a href="http://laptop.org" target="_blank">laptop.org</a> hosting seems to be in stasis. It is not likely to go away, but without additional help it is not likely to be kept up-to-date and/or improved.<br>
<br>My personal stance is that the items on paid hosting are at a higher risk of suddenly disappearing than the items hosted by MIT (<a href="http://dev.laptop.org" target="_blank">dev.laptop.org</a>, mailing lists, git, etc.). Should OLPC-A decide to go to a new primary webhost then the Wiki, RT, and a few other things could disappear quickly and possibly without notice.<br>
<br></li><li>Given the lack of publicly known resources being provided by OLPC to maintain Linux software development (besides low-level bugfixing), all XSCE may be currently getting by using <a href="http://laptop.org" target="_blank">laptop.org</a> is free hosting and a spot under the domain name.<br>
<br>It may be worthwhile to have someone contact the business team at OLPC to see what their long-term plans are for Sugar, XS, and open source software in general. From the outside it looks like almost all of their resources have been shifted to the proprietary tablet product line.<br>
<br>XSCE may still wish to associate with OLPC. But as best as I can tell the corporate side of OLPC has already given XSCE and Sugar the cold shoulder.<br>
<br></li><li>Personally I would prefer to see all non-commercial hosting consolidated with Sugar Labs. They already have a multi-site primary infrastructure, download mirrors, and a group of system administrators who regularly keep things up to date and monitor things.<br>
<br>Most importantly, almost all of their hosting is done by third parties who do not have a financial interest in Sugar or XSCE. I do not mind if OLPC and/or Activity Central want to help host, but the community as a whole should not be dependent on either being present.<br>
<br></li><li>We are never going to find hosting that is guaranteed never to go away. Witness Google's regular discontinuation of products, and SourceForge's apparent decline in favor of GitHub.<br><br>It therefore may be prudent not to rely on any single host to be able to provide a role for XSCE, and take an approach similar to Sugar Labs' dual primary sites.<br>
</li></ol></div><div><br><br><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 5:14 PM, George Hunt <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:georgejhunt@gmail.com" target="_blank">georgejhunt@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Organizationally, I think there's a lot more leverage staying within the <a href="http://laptop.org" target="_blank">laptop.org</a> fold, as long as it still exists. We don't need to repeat disconnects, and bad feelings, when there are really no egos involved. We have few enough people and resources that any dilution is a bad strategy.<div>
<br></div><div>I think I over reacted to Samuel Greenfeld's concern about <a href="http://laptop.org" target="_blank">laptop.org</a> hosting going away. It seems to me that it's in everyone's interest to plan for an orderly transition from one hosting arangement to another, if that ever becomes necessary. If during the interim, there needs to be bridge funding, I'd be glad to spearhead taking up a collection among the people that follow these things.</div>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<div><br></div><div>George<br><br></div></font></span></div><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 4:06 PM, David Farning <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dfarning@activitycentral.com" target="_blank">dfarning@activitycentral.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 7:13 AM, George Hunt <<a href="mailto:georgejhunt@gmail.com" target="_blank">georgejhunt@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> This is a more related to Samuel Greenfeld's comments than the XSCE<br>
> documentation/install thread from which I branch.<br>
><br>
> I think it makes sense to grab off of <a href="http://laptop.org" target="_blank">laptop.org</a> all the essential stuff and<br>
> put it some new place. We don't know the future, but in the present the<br>
> prospect of ongoing support and maintenance of <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org" target="_blank">wiki.laptop.org</a> seems more<br>
> shaky to me.<br>
><br>
> When I was first exploring the process of building something on top of<br>
> schoolserver 0.7, I found ancestry of different components (documented at<br>
> <a href="http://schoolserver.wordpress.com/xs-installation/rpm-heritage/" target="_blank">http://schoolserver.wordpress.com/xs-installation/rpm-heritage/</a>). I think we<br>
> should contact the most recent contributors to these ancestral repos, and<br>
> with their cooperation/approval, move them to <a href="http://github.com" target="_blank">github.com</a>.<br>
><br>
> How to pay for a server somewhere? Three candidates come to me. Sugarlabs,<br>
> activitycentral, and unleash kids. Of these, activitycentral is the only<br>
> for profit organization, I'd vote for the synergy that needs to exist<br>
> between a for profit open source shop, and the ecosystem which it needs to<br>
> remain legitimately part off a larger open source community.<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>The question in my mind is what would be best for XSCE. While I am<br>
personally investing in XSCE. I am also financially invested as XSCE<br>
is the community upstream to Dextrose Server. The better and more<br>
popular XSCE becomes, the more opportunities there are for AC to sell<br>
services.<br>
<br>
There seem to be three general options of XSCE. Stick with OLPC, go it<br>
alone, or partner with someone else in the ecosystem.<br>
<br>
So far we have chose to stick with OLPC. The benefits of building on<br>
the OLPC brand have been greater than the costs. The benefit is that<br>
the <a href="http://laptop.org" target="_blank">laptop.org</a> site is still a 'hub' of the ecosystem. The cost is<br>
XSCE appears to be an unapproved and undesirable server clone piggy<br>
backing on the Association's message and brand. The question becomes,<br>
will the Association endorse XSCE as a successor or upstream to<br>
OLPC-XS or will it continue to live in the bowels of the wiki.<br>
<br>
Going it alone. This would be pretty straight forward. Getting a cheap<br>
VM somewhere or piggybacking on a larger project is possiable.<br>
Although it can be a lot of work and mean jumping though hops. The<br>
questions becomes, do XSCE have the ability to thrive on it's own.<br>
There are about a dozen similar projects floating around in various<br>
states of completaion.<br>
<br>
Finally, there is partnering with someone with aligned goals such as<br>
Sugar Labs, unleash kids, or Activity Central.<br>
<br>
Whenever I think of the relationship between XSCE and AC, I think of a<br>
conversation I had years ago with Greg DeKoenigsberg (<br>
<a href="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Gdk/Experience" target="_blank">https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Gdk/Experience</a> ) about the relationship<br>
between Fedora and Redhat. He considered Fedora's relationship to<br>
Redhat it's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The financial<br>
support and developer resources were valuable... but there were<br>
strings attached.<br>
<br>
We would be happy to host XSCE site on the AC infrastructure. We could<br>
handle it the same way we do the XSCE build VM.<br>
<a href="http://xsce.activitycentral.com/" target="_blank">http://xsce.activitycentral.com/</a> is an independent VM with root access<br>
granted to community Sysadmins. DavidR, our web and communications guy<br>
could assist in setting up and migrating the site.<br>
<div><div><br>
<br>
> George<br>
><br>
><br>
> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Samuel Greenfeld <<a href="mailto:samuel@greenfeld.org" target="_blank">samuel@greenfeld.org</a>><br>
> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> I think you need to be careful how you phrase that -- you just half<br>
>> implied that all <a href="http://laptop.org" target="_blank">laptop.org</a> hosting is going away. There has been a fair<br>
>> amount of fear that resources may suddenly disappear, and I have been<br>
>> concerned about fragmentation where hosting of resources ends up all over<br>
>> the place.<br>
>><br>
>> If there is a perceived need to migrate resources then that should be made<br>
>> clear, as others have already offered potential alternative hosting. But<br>
>> there needs to be coordination.<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> Focusing on the Deployment side, I would tend to agree with John's<br>
>> comments as well.<br>
>><br>
>> Both Sugar and the Schoolserver have been historically focused on being<br>
>> their own ecosystem. This has never changed, yet Sugar and the XS are often<br>
>> offered for use where existing DHCP, DNS, and other services already exist.<br>
>><br>
>> Due to local policies, you may not be allowed to name your schoolserver<br>
>> "schoolserver". You may have to support 802.11x network authentication,<br>
>> etc. It is possible to kludge these but the solutions are not elegant.<br>
>><br>
>> If the Sugar and XSCE communities feel that the "enterprise"/first-world<br>
>> use case is a desired scenario where Sugar, IIAB, and/or Moodle may only be<br>
>> a part of a school's network instead of the primary role, then this<br>
>> specifically needs to be targeted.<br>
>><br>
>> ---<br>
>> SJG<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 3:33 AM, James Cameron <<a href="mailto:quozl@laptop.org" target="_blank">quozl@laptop.org</a>> wrote:<br>
>>><br>
>>> I agree with John. Every point in his documentation section should be<br>
>>> handled. Especially the point about <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org" target="_blank">wiki.laptop.org</a>, which has so<br>
>>> many distracting links on the navigation bar that we are all used to,<br>
>>> but which new people become lost in.<br>
>>><br>
>>> With regard to forums, the type that Google Groups has where they can<br>
>>> also be received in mail may suffice.<br>
>>><br>
>>> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 11:44:33AM +0530, Anish Mangal wrote:<br>
>>> > Hi,<br>
>>> ><br>
>>> > I would like to share this blog post from John Ellis with the XSCE<br>
>>> > community:<br>
>>> > John is a high school student who is trying to setup XSCE in his<br>
>>> > class/school<br>
>>> > under the supervision of his teacher Jeff Elkner.<br>
>>> ><br>
>>> > <a href="http://johnmichaelffs.blogspot.in/2013/11/problems-with-xsce.html" target="_blank">http://johnmichaelffs.blogspot.in/2013/11/problems-with-xsce.html</a><br>
>>> ><br>
>>> > Some of the stuff he points out certainly makes a lot of sense to me, I<br>
>>> > think<br>
>>> > the core underling message is to make XSCE more approachable to the end<br>
>>> > user<br>
>>> > and the advanced end-user/deployer. He has gone to some lengths to<br>
>>> > point out<br>
>>> > specific aspects which could be improved.<br>
>>> ><br>
>>> > As we think about the possibilities for XSCE-0.6, I would like to<br>
>>> > further the<br>
>>> > discussion along these topics here and/or on IRC. I think the project<br>
>>> > could do<br>
>>> > well listening to end users' needs for the 0.6 cycle, especially that<br>
>>> > we now<br>
>>> > seem to have our house in order codewise thanks to the terrific work by<br>
>>> > all the<br>
>>> > software hackers here :-)<br>
>>> ><br>
>>> > Thoughts?<br>
>>> ><br>
>>> > Cheers,<br>
>>> > Anish<br>
>>> ><br>
>>> ><br>
>>> ><br>
>>><br>
>>> > _______________________________________________<br>
>>> > Server-devel mailing list<br>
>>> > <a href="mailto:Server-devel@lists.laptop.org" target="_blank">Server-devel@lists.laptop.org</a><br>
>>> > <a href="http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel" target="_blank">http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel</a><br>
>>><br>
>>><br>
>>> --<br>
>>> James Cameron<br>
>>> <a href="http://quozl.linux.org.au/" target="_blank">http://quozl.linux.org.au/</a><br>
>>> _______________________________________________<br>
>>> Server-devel mailing list<br>
>>> <a href="mailto:Server-devel@lists.laptop.org" target="_blank">Server-devel@lists.laptop.org</a><br>
>>> <a href="http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel" target="_blank">http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel</a><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> _______________________________________________<br>
>> Server-devel mailing list<br>
>> <a href="mailto:Server-devel@lists.laptop.org" target="_blank">Server-devel@lists.laptop.org</a><br>
>> <a href="http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel" target="_blank">http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel</a><br>
>><br>
><br>
><br>
> _______________________________________________<br>
> Server-devel mailing list<br>
> <a href="mailto:Server-devel@lists.laptop.org" target="_blank">Server-devel@lists.laptop.org</a><br>
> <a href="http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel" target="_blank">http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel</a><br>
><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
</div></div><span><font color="#888888">David Farning<br>
Activity Central: <a href="http://www.activitycentral.com" target="_blank">http://www.activitycentral.com</a><br>
</font></span></blockquote></div><br></div>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>