Topic: The State of the Distro

[jcoleman]

It seems that we do not learn from history.

As late as January 2004, the contribs team was offering leadership and direction for this distro. Some of you were so vehemently opposed to "any" leadership at that time that we (the contribs team) publicly withdrew from attempting to lead this community. There were dozens of posts complaining that contribs was being "lead" down the wrong path, by the wrong people.

OK. The complainers won. Since January, the contribs team has not made any efforts to direct, lead, or influence the development of the SME Server. Please notice that since then, no one else has offered any consistent time, energy, or direction to leading the development of this distro.

Oh sure, we have had some people who "demand" that contribs does this or that. Or a few others telling people how they would like to see things go. But very few people have actually attempted to make something happen other than posting their opinions in the forums.

Here is what you should expect from contribs.org and what the community itself should be providing.

Contribs.org is hosting a site that was brought up as a hobby site supporting the SME Server and its community. We do NOT own the software. We do NOT provide leadership and direction (at your request). We do NOT develop or maintain the software. We DO provide hardware, software, bandwidth and many, many hours of volunteer effort to keep this site up and running for the benefit of the community.

Do NOT look to us for paid technical support. We do not have the skills or the desire. Do NOT look to us for updates and new versions. These are up to the community to provide. The real way an open source community stays alive and grows is for it's USERS to create a life and a support system for the distro.

This is where WE are failing as a community.

SME Server needs people to maintain the distro, update the rpms for security and functionality purposes, and generally move towards a more engaging and inclusive model. So far, there has been just short of zero new development in the last few months. This complete lack of development is the single best indicator for a project that will soon be dead.

So, what are YOU, the community, going to do about it?

Complain that contribs should do it? Complain that someone else should do it? Go over to ClarkConnect or some other distro site and start complaining that "they" don't have what you want?

Frankly, the contribs team is sick of the complaints. YOU (not someone else), start figuring out how to get the recent e-smith updates into the SME Server. YOU (not someone else), develop a leadership structure and get those leaders to set an agenda for the future. Once that is done, YOU (not someone else), needs to participate with code snippets and development and helping out the newbies that will be the future developers of SME Server.

The problem is not where or how the site is hosted. Moving to Sourceforge or any other location or system will not cure the root ills of this distro. What WILL cure it, is to stop expecting other people to do these things for you.

We do not forget that quite a few of you volunteered to help out for the community. But no one volunteered to lead, and to take the responsibility (and arrows) that leadership entails. And we don't forget those of you who volunteered with your pocketbooks to help out with the costs of running the site. To all of you, we offer our heartfelt thanks.

We at contribs provide a site, forums, polls, links, lists, file storage, a wiki, bug tracking, and recently chat. We even provided the first SME Server distro with all then current updates and a new branding. It is up to the community to provide the life blood of the distro - development and self support.

So, quit expecting other people to do YOUR jobs. Start developing leadership and code or it simply won't matter in the long run. We'll be here to provide the venue. YOU need to provide the rest.

Thank you,

-jeff
On behalf of contribs.org

[wallyrp]

Good Morning,

Let the political campaigns begin and end the inevitable anarchy. I hope that my postings weren't viewed as complaints but rather points of interest in regards to the direction of the community.

NOTE: Any and/or all of my suggestions require participation by all registered community members. IF YOU REGISTERED, STEP UP TO THE PLATE! NOTHING IS FREE IN LIFE! I personally have more time than money.

My hierarchial suggestion for the SME community is this:

NOTE: An election process will need to be setup for this to work. I believe that the first administration should be largely made up of people that have seniority and experience. Term limits should be put in place to avoid stagnation. After the first administration, we should see the way more clearly as to electing new people. Also, I believe that the terms should be staggered so that there is not a complete change of administration but rather a mix to allow for stability. This will, at first, give some of the administration longer terms starting out.

CEO - President - Big Dog - < whatever the term elected by everyone.

5 Member Advisory board:

This board needs to consist of at least one programmer, site host (Jeff or someone from his staff), someone with no programming experience but is an experienced user of SME, and two "at-large" members.

Departments represented by a board member (to be determined.) My suggestion for departments are:

Programmers: Folks that contribute, find/fix bugs, maintain, etc.

Updaters: Folks that gather updates to present to the programmers and/or package the updates from the programmers to ready them for distribution.

Distributors: Folks that do the work of burning CD's and shipping them. They would also need to place them on a download site ready for download.

Moderators/Site Managers: Folks that maintain the forums, website, and any other related issues. This may need to be separate groups but I think it could be kept together with relative ease. This group should also consist of record keepers and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) updates/maintenance.

Some type of schedule needs to be presented along with job descriptions. If I am going to be involved, that's what I would demand. I want a clear direction from everyone involved so that everyone can be held accountable for their respective responsibilities. This should all be able to be accomplished by volunteers.

Regarding my suggestions, I still believe that a "TechNet" CD of the forum's and a "Contribs" CD would be great revenue generators. I withdraw my suggestion of a paid subscription for a tech support forum.
Regarding updates, I still believe that any expedited service should be paid for, otherwise, it should only be expected on a quarterly schedule. If you need an update for an immediate threat, I would consider that as an expedited service and should be paid for. If you need it bad enough you will either pay for it or go find it yourself. Along this same vein of thought, I strongly believe that any commercial ventures that stem from SME and want to be recognized by the SME community should pay some type of referral fee to contribs.org for any business thrown their way. Along with this though, standards should setup to meet a "SME Certified" status.

Regarding my suggestion of contributors receiving some kind of royalty, I still feel strongly about this. It should be defined so that there is an incentive for innovation but also cost control for "contribs.org." Tied to the royalty there should also be a "SME Certified" status assigned to those that meet a certain criteria.

Now, with that said, I will volunteer my time to contribs.org as a Moderator/Site Maintainer. At this point I'm not ready nor do I have time for any higher position. Everyone else, GET INVOLVED AND PRESENT/IMPLEMENT SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS INSTEAD OF JUST TALKING ABOUT THEM!

[guest22]

Thanks for your suggestions and offering wallyrp,

Please contact staff@contribs.org so we/I can hand over the administartor tasks, responsibility, development and knowledge of the current site. A bit of moderating is involved too.

Current runnig taks are:
- Mirroring system
- Backup
- Moderating (only if really needed)
- Security checks
- Site updates and maintenance
- Being around and available for other on a daily basis
- Chat a bit to keep in contact with the 2000+ subscribers
- Think of new enhancement etc. etc.

Much appreciated!

If the community thinks there should be another way of doing the hand-over, please feel free to speak up.

RequestedDeletion

[marianol]

It's a pitty that I don't have the knowlege to be a programmer or developer.

But there are a lot of stuff that I think I can get to get this group going. SME is an outstanding product and I will be very sad if this proyect dies.

But I totally agree that a group NEEDS it's leadership. And a leader with a good group of people and a great comunity can achive much more that a comunity alone.  

I totally agree with the previous posts And I think that we need to work and organize ourselves to make this proyect live again.

MarianoL


----
  Excuse my english. But is not my mother thonge, but in second thougth... my spanish is not much better  

[jcoleman]

Now, with that said, I will volunteer my time to contribs.org as a Moderator/Site Maintainer.

Wally,

Thanks for your offer to volunteer.  I'm sure we can make use of your efforts.

The first and easiest task required is to have someone go through all of the posts and lists and start adding more howto and file links into the weblink database.  That database is falling seriously behind the times.

You (or anyone else) can do this without help, admin rights, or any direction.  Please go after it...it is a much used feature in our site.  We can certainly come up with some other easy things to do that go wanting for attention.

Here's the deal...

If anyone volunteers here, we will gladly assign you a task that needs to be done and fits within your skills.  It's then up to you to do the work   and we will ALL benefit from the results.

Cheers,

-jeff

[ergozd]

Just wanted to drop a few files to say thank you to contribs people.

SMEServer is a great solution and as it shows in these forums a lot of people make good use of it.

The last few weeks discussion is alike the discussions when Mitel decided to discontinue e-smith server.

As long as we (all of us in the community) continue to help each other the product will be developed and more useful.

I don't do much, I try to login every now and then and try to help with my knowledge - whatever that is worth.  

I saw a few constructive comments and offers. I think it makes a lot of difference to discuss what we can do instead of discussing what's missing. I will continue to login every now and then to see if there are any posts and people need some help. I will also continue to create HowTos (Metadot, WebGUI maybe some others) and make sure that they are available.

Thanks for your time. We all can do better so why don't we...

Best rgds from Sweden
Ergin

[wallyrp]

Good Afternoon,

I suspect that this will be a very busy thread within the coming days/weeks. I highly encourage everyone to get involved.

I'm assuming Jeff, after you last post, that I can proceed as a Moderator/Site Maintainer in the department as described in my previous post. If this is the case, excuse my ignorance here, could you email me privately describing in more detail as to how I can accomplish your expectations.

On another note, I believe a deadline needs to be set for elections and the hierarchy to be put in place. Forgive me for being a little forward here but I STRONGLY propose a deadline of no later than September 1. This would give enough time for candidates to form as well as give some time for "primaries" if needed.

I believe some of the confusion surrounding these issues that I bring up can best be described as, how do I get involved. I kind of always thought to be involved in any official capacity that you would need to be classified as an "administrator" on this site. To avoid this assumption, I believe strongly that we need to put together an application for each position above complete with certain criteria to match the position. Put this application online so that people can apply. I feel strongly that if you registered, you should apply for something and make this your place. BE INVOLVED! I wouldn't be against putting some kind of restrictions on the majority of the forum's in regards to being able post if your registered or not.

There has to be a string to tie registration and involvement together. Some kind of hierarchy. I would step up to the plate as a board member or the "CEO" in a heart beat if I had a little more time to devote to it. I've been involved in Chairmanships before. Example, President of the local gun club where I lived in Oklahoma after only five months of membership, man that was a trip. Went from that to chairmanship of the local Friends of NRA Banquet committee. In the middle of that, ran for a State Senate post as a Republican. Got 25% of the vote with only $600 and a complete newcomer/nobody to politics against a 4-year well-liked incumbent. Was planning on running again but moved before that happened. Back to the real world again, I get off on too many tangents sometimes.

I'm for forging ahead and setting the deadline on September 1. In fact, I set the deadline as September first. Ballots/voting procedures will be ready by the end of July. Am I out of line here?

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

Some of you may know me, but the big majority not. It gives me the advantage to be less involved in some discussions that are -to my opinion- to be compared with children’s fighting’s.

I was not involved at the very beginning of the ‘contribs’ site, but was convinced that something has to be done for the French speaking community, since joined efforts are always more efficient. As a result I came in the process, and contacted the staff with some propositions… .

At that time, I was really convinced that something very positive could be done, giving to the communities ( International/French ) the needed ‘logistic‘ support to concentrate development, support, help, contributions efforts.

If I try to summarize my feeling right now, I am certainly less convinced than I was, not only due to the current situation, but also due to the SME philosophy :
SME is something easy to use, and do not requires a lot of skills to be implemented. As a result, even if the ‘help’ forums, and ‘features’ contributions are growing in the right way, there are not so much peoples that have the needed skills to be involved in some ‘core’ development. ( also true for me ! ).

In the range of peoples that may have the skills, who is still ready to SHARE knowledge, in a TEAM MINDED spirit, accepting to invest TIME for a non-profit organisation that has a lot of peoples that feels to have the right to just ‘ask’ and ‘complaint’ ?
The time were the ‘core system’ was developed by peoples that were paid to do it is gone, this seems not really clear to everybody.

As a result, trying to learn from the past and from current situation, I only have one question to the community : WHO ( names ! ) wants to MAKE something for the SME ‘core’, knowing that it requires TIME and personal INVESTMENT, and also feels enough TEAM MINDED to SHARE knowledge ?

If nobody wants to keep the challenge, I really thing we better stop, but I will always follow the TEAM decision.


-Herve

[Anonymous]

I'm assuming Jeff, after you last post, that I can proceed as a Moderator/Site Maintainer in the department as described in my previous post. If this is the case, excuse my ignorance here, could you email me privately describing in more detail as to how I can accomplish your expectations.

Wally,

Let's keep these conversations public.

I am hopeful that you will go through the last 4-5 months of posts in both the forums and dev-info archives and track down the new contribs and howtos.  From there, simply verify that the links are good, and as a registered user, you have complete access to entering those new links in the WebLinks module.  It should be relatively simple to do searches for: announce, howto, rpm, etc.

As far as expectations go, the only thing we're looking for is help and some reasonable amount of accuracy in the links.  The more of this that you care to do the more valuable the weblinks database becomes.

As to your other organizational issues....why would you ask me? :>

You have posted in the forums.  If you can generate interest then your ideas will work.  If you can't, then that is a vote in and of itself.

I am not tying to be negative.  It is simply that in order to develop momentum you must have a certain critical mass on your ideas.  Calling for elections is just fine.  But do you think all of the issues have been discussed yet?  This thread has only had 73 views at this point.

Based upon this thread so far, there is no traction for your ideas.  Perhaps that will come with a little more exposure.  I hope so.

A good timeframe for looking at responses is about a month.  That will decide whether or not the community wants to act on your suggestions.  If reads and responses keep going, it has a chance.

Glad to have you participate.

-jeff

[wallyrp]

Good Afternoon,

Yep, this thread has had only 70+ views. There are a number of other threads dealing with the very same issues discussed in this one.

Regarding keeping the discussion public, ok.

Do you have any type of deadline that would reflect any of your statements regarding everyone stepping up to the plate including, but not limited to, if and/or when you would sell the site?

Regarding traction, the official poll about the pricing of updates only garnered 300+ participants. That's hardly a quorum of 2,000+ registered users. How is any one idea or group of ideas going to gain any traction with that amount of participation? This all goes back to the root of this discussion thread.

Regarding the verification of links, is there any aging criteria to be applied? Example, to make it convenient and/or easier to accomplish, setup a warning label of some sort that states that we cannot verify any links that are "x" number of days/weeks/months old?

Outside of this, I'll start running through the Weblinks checking the links. I will also "shaddup" until more traction is gained.

[Muzo]

Hi,

So, i think i must be more involved in the community.

First, I'll tried send a mail from may yahoo mail, and i've been rejected (contribs don't like yahoo?)

Second, I continue my contributions, but can't help anymore because I have only one computer for sme (witch is a 5.6 one). When I have more time (or energy) to upgrade to 6.01, then I'll could help you in ftp (proftpd), iptables (masq), and Netatalk (I don't know anything about netatalk, but i have a Mac).

Any way, to get more involved, I want to help and make easier search in contribs page. I found this page horrible and i'll never found what i want easily. And the best is wiki section, still make 5 mn to find it.

[edit]DOH! i found it in 5 second today...[/edit]

So where must I sign with my blood?

[RavenIV]

g'day to the leadership

i am ready to help the community.
my skills:
- master degree in computer-science
- good programming knowledge in C/C++
- very good experience of networking, NAT, firewall, TCP/IP, etc
- experience with Redhat linux since version 6.0
- User of SME since 09/2003
- admin of a small network (8 users, 5 PCs, two linux-servers)
- good team-player
- much more free time than i need (out-of-work)

my only problems:
- resident in Germany
- not very good english

if my german residence is not a problem for you, please feel free to contact me and give me some work to do.

cheers klaus

[ryan]

I have used SME since 4.1.2 which was my first linux iso install.  Since then I have explored many linux flavors and use SME in several locations.  I have helped others when ever I felt I could in the forums.  I even took basic linux/bash courses to better my ability with E-smith server and Red Hat.  Maybe future 'jobs' or 'tasks' can be offered in a forum.  Registered and qualified users/supporters can then accept jobs.    

How was the orginal E-smith site/distro held together?  It appeared to have leaders and a direction.  Are these people still involved in the current SME server?  E-smith 4.1.2 became very popular and got noticed.  How did they accomplish this?  SME is too great of a project to let the momentum die.

If the SME project dies, I will be giving Microsoft ISA server about 10 server licenses.  I desperately do not want to do this!  I lack programming skills, but am willing to monitor this discussion and offer non-programming assistance if needed.

As a network administrator, I am willing to pay or subscribe to help keep the distro moving...just consider per user pricing rather than per server.  I can write off these costs, but not if the 'ownership' should reside with the owner of the server hardware.  

Hoping for the best,

ryan

[NickR]

I have a suspicion that the SME distro is suffering somewhat because it is actually a victim of being "good enough" for the vast majority of people using it.  The number of people who are sufficiently motivated to "scratch their itch" appears to be woefully low, but it could also be interpreted as satisfaction with what is currently provided.  Over time this satisfaction level will drop and *then* we might get some new blood and some momentum again.

By way of illustration, I'm still supporting sites that run Netware 4.11, which has had no patches issued since late 2000.  These sites still trust their entire datastore to this old version BECAUSE IT WORKS.  They see absolutely no need to change a working solution & I suspect the same could be said of SME.  Stability & reliability are precious commodities and the SME has both in spades, particularly in version 6.

All of the above doesn't help with a "way forward", but I do think it goes a long way to explain why things are as they are.

[Muzo]

gla made a french translation of the news :
Et maintenant... Que vais-je faire ? (And now ... what did I do?)

Great thanks to him!