Topic: Hosting the SME Server Project files

[ngomes]

Following the recent crash of the Contribs.org website, the following poll is an important issue for all of us. Please do participate.

Note that hosting the SME Server Project files (forums, bugs, patches, feature requests, mailing lists, subprojects and tasks, documentation, news, cvs repository, source and binary files) is very different from hosting the Contribs.org website (our front-end to the general public that should be mainly for marketing purposes).

Thanks.
Nuno Gomes

[SalaTar]

To Bad it looks like Contribs.org due to bad Data center (if that’s what you call it) planning is looking into a pay to play solution.
You would have thought that when Mitel said "we quit you can have the site"
That the people (contribs) would have had the foresight to realize that new sme site would be an ongoing project that would take time and Money.
“We can no longer afford to keep contribs.org running without significantly more participation from the community.”” 3 - Contribs.org closes down”.Looks more like a spoiled brats Knee-jerk reaction to loosing some cash.
 I have a server on a great line with space that could easily take some load off you but you don’t list that as an option. Not to mention with that kind of attitude I see above I really don’t think I want to give you access to the box.
What even makes it a worse slap in the face is that we wont have access to the old forums/data from e-smith.org as it was moved here.

How about giving someone else what Mitel gave you (e-smith data) so we can start again at a better data center.Move to sourceforge for files and be allowed to mirror data.

Rant done

[guest22]

It's not 'just' about hosting, we can all do that 'cause we all can use SME Server. It's more to that.

Anyone willing to donate _real_ participation on a day to day basis, please sent an e-mail to volunteers@contribs.org and we will be happy to hand over/share some tasks.

Please take into account that _real_ praticipation will require 1 to 3 hours on a daily basis. If you are interested in what it takes and why, please sent an e-mail to volunteers@contribs.org

Mitel donated the data to the community and contribs.org is living up to it's responsibility. Join us if you have good ideas, we would appreciate that very much.

RequestedDeletion

ps. Sourceforge is just another way of doing stuff. Step up if you are willing and capable of converting all information to sourceforge format and continue it at all.

[Anonymous]

Prob is volunteers@contribs.org kicks back

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at contribs.org.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<volunteers@gpl.contribs.org>:
Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.1.1)

[ngomes]

RequestedDeletion

Sourceforge is a very good plataform for conducting software development and hosting related files. Of course, there are out there better examples, most of them using very mature and stable CMS systems (one good example is http://openacs.org).

Seems to me that the main issue here is about reducing expenses from Resource Strategies, not increasing funds. If so, I have to agree with that, and you (and all the people behind Contribs.org) should accept the possibilities raised from some members to transfer the SME Server files and, eventually, the Contribs.org website somewhere else (could be sourceforge.net and/or mirror sites provided by other memebers). That's a start for cutting expenses...

About converting all information to sourceforge format there is no need to. Just lock the actual foruns for searching purposes on the Contribs.org website and start new ones on sourceforge with the same topics (or new ones). That's what you did with some mailing lists you transfered from Mitel.

Thank you,

Nuno Gomes

[SalaTar]

Id also like to Project Manager in charge of the distro not to be "in the market, with somthing to gain from it."
Im sorry Ive seen the dev list, for some time those in charge now have something to gain, and fight for the gain,reguardless of how other fell about it.

[SalaTar]

It's not 'just' about hosting, we can all do that 'cause we all can use SME Server. It's more to that.

From the house dont count...
How about something with 13 gig lines to backbones...

Anyone willing to donate _real_ participation on a day to day basis, please sent an e-mail to volunteers@contribs.org and we will be happy to hand over/share some tasks.

I did mail was kicked back..I spend more than 3 hours on that server anyway...

Please take into account that _real_ praticipation will require 1 to 3 hours on a daily basis. If you are interested in what it takes and why, please sent an e-mail to volunteers@contribs.org.

look up

Mitel donated the data to the community and contribs.org is living up to it's responsibility. Join us if you have good ideas, we would appreciate that very much.

data to the community feel free to drop that in a tgz on a ftp

ps. Sourceforge is just another way of doing stuff. Step up if you are willing and capable of converting all information to sourceforge format and continue it at all.

look up

[kmccarn]

Well - looking through the posts, I'm not sure what to think.

I have been through my share of disasters - and send kudos to whoever got this back up and running.

If I had an idea of how much server space/bandwidth we need - I might be able to provide a significant portion - if not all.

I personally have no idea what it would take to move to sourceforge.

I also wish I could afforf to spend 1-3 hours daily to help out. (1-3 hours a week I can commit to)

We can all make plenty of money with this stuff if we work together..........

 

[guest22]

Prob is volunteers@contribs.org kicks back

Sorry for that, corrected now. A small left over from the restore process. Thanks for the heads up.

RequestedDeletion

[ngomes]

Just wondering: after Mitel gave the SME Server project and files to Contribs.org, didn't Contribs.org staff setup a project on Sourceforge?

I think they did because there is a SME Server project on SourceForge registered on 2003-12-08. We can found the project here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/smeserver/

Why didn't you (Contribs.org staff) continue with that?

Cheers,
Nuno Gomes

[dalesyk]

It's not 'just' about hosting, we can all do that 'cause we all can use SME Server. It's more to that.

Hsing,
   Could you or Jeff elaborate on the costs of running contribs.org on a per month basis?  I think the community could/would help more if they knew where the expenses were.  Personally, I would focus on lowering expenses rather than raising money.  

Thanks,

Dale

[andymcp]

I agree with Dale on this one. Knowing what's needed makes the decision to contribute or participate much easier. I've sent a long email basically saying the same thing to donations@ but had no reply....

[tdbsoft]

My 2 cents, Contribs have done a good job so far, I think it just needs a 2nd site to share load just echo of this one in case of outages.

On the financial side Contribs need to collect some annual fees to help fund the site etc.  Fees should be small so as not to stifling use and incentive to use etc.

Why not set a charge to use the forum and download updates etc.
$20 per server/year for home users and charity orgs.
$100 per server/year for companies

Price it low so most should have no problem paying.  Annual fee's should help maintain and refray some of the costs etc to maintain the site.  I think subscription / membership (whatever) would be fine if low.  I for one would have little problem explaining $100 per/annum for updates to the site that use the SME system.

Also fee needs to be set and published boldly and clearly on the site so all know.  If the fee is low most will pay as SME as we all know is Fantastic for small businesses and home users.

[psdata]

Hello all,

To gife the user's off contribs.org a view on the needs can any one tell us what are the server loads off contribs.org

how many user =

how many files =
how many in Mb =

How many post's =
   post's/month =
how many in Mb  =

How many hits  =
How many Unique=

How many Bandwidth =

I hope a member off the contribs team can support us these kind off information?

If the user's see these number they see it's not a hobby server it's realy a server load.

And may by is there a user are a ISP who say's I have a rack in a NOC are in a internet center and Contribs.org can place a the servers in these rackspace and can use the bandwith, the UPS, the airco every thing.

But if we don;t now these info nobody can stand-up and say "I have place"

I hope on a few answere's

Grtz from the Netherlands

John

[Boris]

To SME server community and Contribs.org staff.
Contribs.org expressed concerns about their ability to further host and maintain support website for the SME Server project due prohibitory high cost of the maintenance. We do appreciate their effort for doing it for as long as they did and now is my turn to make some contribution to the project, from which we benefit greatly.

If this project is not moved to sourceforge.net or similar free hosting service, I can offer to host the server on behave of SME community in our university's datacenter. It will be provided with power, AC, rack space and network connection (100Mb) for the single 1U server for as long as needed. Basically, collocation service. Firewall protection is possible as well.
The conditions of the offer are following:
SME server remains free for any user (commercial or not). Donations are optional and go to (and managed by) community. Money can be used for upgrade, repair server’s hardware or to award developers, contributors, or to whatever community decides they should be spend on. Server hardware is purchased on targeted donations and belongs to the community. As an option community may decide to buy out existing server from contribs.org to help recover some of their expenses. If there is later better place to host (collocate) this server, I will ship it at my own expense within US upon the request of SME community. I am not offering to manage the development process or directions of the project. Just simple free collocation and hardware/OS maintenance for as long as project stays free. I am NOT paying to contribs.org for the project files and database, nor reimbursing their expenses for the previous voluntary hosting this project.
SSH administrative access to the server will be provided for developers and contributors for maintenance and administration. Hardware repairs, backup and restore by me. We have also experienced techs that mastered SME server management on many servers deployed internally and might participate on their own free time in the maintenance routine if they choose to. I only can promise firmly my own participation at my spare time.

Let’s discuss this option in the forum and try to make the decision on the future of this great distro.

Boris.

[smeghead]

Nice one Boris, a great offer that deserves serious consideration.

I for one have a very close affiliation with my ISP here in Australia and it may be possible to provide a similar sort of setup here in their NOC (actually sitting on the main WAIX backbone).

They currently host a mirror of the Ibiblio SME stuff which is free access for almost all Perth users.

If they have some spare rack space and I sweet talk them a bit you never know (they actually provide SME servers to some of their clients and the owner has an SME server at home!).

On the commercial front I agree with keeping the base product free for all.  To raise some $$ I like the idea of a geographic listing of SME consultants being available on the site where the consultants pay a listing fee; allows users to see who can help them locally and in person if needed.

HTH

[del]

Hi Boris,
This seems a great offer, thank you. I have not got the technical expertise to help in development but I did volunteer to help with testing etc. but I have never been approached to do anything. I think we should all look at your offer and thank you for bringing some sanity to this discussion. Contribs have done a great job so far and deserve praise for their efforts and hard work, but Contribs must either let the community know the costs involved as requested by other members or take up Boris's offer and lets move forward. Shad Lords is the only person trying to move on, I saw his excellent attempt at moving SME to Fedora on his site http://lordsfam.net We should all be helping him out and not bickering and letting this easy to install and use software disappear. I know that without SME (E-Smith) I would never have been able to get a Linux box running and actually be able to use it. I had tried Red Hat, Mandrake etc and found it all too confusing but this worked right off the CD. Just my 2 pennies worth.
Regards,
Del  

[satovey]

Hi Boris,
This seems a great offer, thank you. I have not got the technical expertise to help in development but I did volunteer to help with testing etc. but I have never been approached to do anything. I think we should all look at your offer and thank you for bringing some sanity to this discussion. Contribs have done a great job so far and deserve praise for their efforts and hard work, but Contribs must either let the community know the costs involved as requested by other members or take up Boris's offer and lets move forward. Shad Lords is the only person trying to move on, I saw his excellent attempt at moving SME to Fedora on his site http://lordsfam.net We should all be helping him out and not bickering and letting this easy to install and use software disappear. I know that without SME (E-Smith) I would never have been able to get a Linux box running and actually be able to use it. I had tried Red Hat, Mandrake etc and found it all too confusing but this worked right off the CD. Just my 2 pennies worth.
Regards,
Del  

Thanks for the Info on the SME7.0. There are already several rpms on the site to download and begin the process of converting a Redhat7.3 base SME6.01 box to a Fedora2 base SME7.0 box.

I apreciate good leadership, and SLords has shown it by taking the initiative in this endeavor. He has my vote for Project Leader and President. I have seen many posts and suggestions from people advising a Debian core distro, but I think that SLords having his SME7.0 Fedora Core in running test mode already should trump any other suggestions at this point. Not to mention, it appears that the upgrade to the SME7.0 will not need a bootup and install process, but rather a simple unistall these rpms and install these rpms, make changes to these config files and reboot the system. All of this can be automated with a well designed upgrade script.

Talk about an easy install. Comming with the SME7.0 Fedora core is apache 2.0 and smb3 and the Linux kernel-2.6.5-1.358. The 2.6 kernel by the way is faster and more efficient than the 2.4 kernel. That makes it like upgrading your processor without actually changing the processor. Faster.

I agree, the community should all get begind SLords Fedora Core 2 SME7.0. Any further discussion on a base core at this point is mute. If however, someone wants to put out a debian core as well, I don't see a problem with it. This would give users two options and they may both head in different nich directions.
One could be a streaming media setup with darwin installed, while the other is the basic server we all use today. So if someone who is able, has the gumption and fortitude, and realy wants a debiam based core, he should like SLords put one together for the community to peruse. Otherwise, get on board the Fedora Core which is already in progress.

Scott

[Anonymous]

Boris' offer as many others who have offered mirroring etc. seems like an excellent way to keep SME Open & Free & Safe.

Voluntary contributions as Boris has outlined is surely much fairer, than imposing a fee based system on the freely given, Open & Free SME NOS, some can afford to pay & some cannot.

The forums are a community effort, people around the globe freely helping other people around the globe, and one in which I as I gain understanding would wish to contribute to, but could not if I had to pay a mandatory, imposed fee.

I had a look at the SourceForge link, as this is already running then perhaps some of the load & stress can be distributed?

I thank all here, the forums & Contibs.org & E-smith of late, for helping create, develop & support a robust easy to use Network OS, that is Open Source & still remains Free Software.

I sincerely hope that these issues, can be sorted out to allow SME to continue as an Open, Free, Global community project & resource.

Cheers, Miles

[:hammer:]

Thank you Boris for your offer, I really mean that.

Folks, Boris' offer truly is in the GPL spirit, mainly keep the software free!

If we could all donate some of our server's resources to this project I am sure most of us would.

I seem to recall a high availability package somewhere that could probably help us out there.

I really am grateful to the SME package, it saved me from a MS disaster, however if the distro is going to cost me $100 per year, I have to look somewhere else.

I would not be against adding a small portion of my server's resources to a distributed cluster platform for the contribs.org website, providing that someone knows how to set one up securely.

After all, a 1%-5% hit on most servers is next to nothing, upgrades and updates would become automatic, and the website downtime would be virtually eliminated.

Integration with the cluster could be an option selected during the install process.

Sounded slick to me, anyway. FWIW  

I will check out  http://lordsfam.net/ and see what is up with Shad's 7.0 project, it sounds positively delightful.

cheers,
 

[ngomes]

Thanks to everyone who posted and voted until now, 03.07.2004,

Right now, from 2000+ members of Contribs.org this thread had 55 votes and 1036 views. From the poll results we come to the conclusion that 88% agree with  a mix of SourceForge.net (main site) + several servers provided by the Contribs.org members (mirrors).

From my point of view, the Contribs.org website should remain the SME Server "entrance point" for newbies and general public. It should provide an introduction to the SME Server (how it works, the architecture, the beneficts, ...), news from the core distro and addons/contribs developpers, and have several tutorials about basic concepts like DNS, Email, basic linux commands and docs. It also should provide the complete lists of Distro Developpers, Addons Developpers and SME Consultants/Companies all around the world.

I ask you now to all of you that can provide server mirrors to host files (iso's, contribs, manuals, rpms, srpms) or to host a copy of the Contribs.org website to make your offers on this thread providing the following information:
- Name
- Location/country
- Bandwith provided
- Space provided
- Type of hosting (http, ftp, rsync for files and webserver for the Contribs.org website)

Finally, a word for Shad Lords: Thank YOU for your visions and efforts. I have my hope that other SME developpers will join you on your task.

Yours,
Nuno Gomes