Topic: The State of the Distro

[wellsi]

For the support work there is a plan, and the activity has increased recently.

There is a task list: http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/Site%20Work%20List

And there is a volunteer page in progress:
http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/Volunteering

Which includes one part of the current development work:
http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/Package%20Maintenance

However the 'tasks for the next release' list is empty:
http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/Distribution%20Work%20List

I have suggested tasks for this, based on emails on DevInfo:
http://lists.contribs.org/mailman/public/devinfo/msg06860.html

All is not rosy, there is not yet a project lead for the next release:
http://lists.contribs.org/mailman/public/devinfo/msg06868.html

No-one has stepped up to be the project leader for the next release (yet)
The community has not yet agreed what will be in this next release (maybe
"6.2 The Email Release"?)
A team has not formed to deliver this release.
(all IMHO there may be many things happening behind the scene)

So there is life, but I feel that it needs a strong lead to put the volunteers to work to make the next release.

----
Just to add that the contribs are arriving at a great rate, as shown by the announcements below. So there is activity but not so much visible towards the next release.
June: http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/New%20Development%20Announcements%20June%202004
July: http://no.longer.valid/phpwiki/index.php/New%20Development%20Announcements%20July%202004

[remi]

Hi !

At first I am anxious to apologize for two reasons: my English is very bad, and I hope that you will manage to read me
I was not able to read all messages, and I hope that my weak contribution in this thread will not hamper the rest of th discussion.

Let's go !

I will to thank the team of "Contribs.org" for the already carried out and future work.
Moderator of a French-speaking support site of Ixus.net ", I was able to see the despair of the members when "Contribs.org" was down.
Network administrator in charge of profession, I set up SME in my company since the version 5.6.
Completely satisfied by this distribution, I try in my scale to make a little of advertisement:

http://www.indexel.net/doc.jsp?id=2653&origin=900
http://www.01net.com/Pdf/DIN200406280599040.pdf (Décision Micro n° 599)

Repeating certainly the thought of everybody: SME should not go out

Then here are some ideas and points of view on the question :
- Be inspired by the architecture of communities which work : I notably think of the distro " IPCOP " ( www.ipcop.org ) TAKE EXAMPLE !!
- Ask to the persons of the site for the features that they like to have. Form for example (whit multichoice)
- As say, define the road(s) map (core / contribs)
- Define leader Teamship.

But Here we are, when it is necessary to make decisions, there is any more nobody.
Everybody would like that but who decides?
There will be always persons who will not agree.
To shout it's good, but at the end of moment it does not advance things.

Without contribs.org, SME would certainly be already dead.
We have a call. It is necessary to follow it.

And personnaly, I think that the person who appealed deserves to be the leader of the project SME.
There has to have a person who has a person who makes the decisions to put back.
Jeff, I don't know you, but you have all my respect. And if people reflect it little. I hope that they shall understand like me that is needed a dictatorship, aristochratie provisoir to put back on the rails the project.


Sincerly,

Rémi

[kkolle]

Hello folks.

Having used e-smith/SME since 4.1.2 I have enjoyed the easiness of the administration of a firewall/gateway/server.

I use contribs.org infrequently mainly to get inspiration to solve problems or read Howo's etc. Today I just jumped onto contribs to learn something about some administrative tasks when I saw the post about the “crisis”.

Having only used but not contributed to the community I feel this may be the time to offer my spare minutes/hours to something great - the SME server.

Having read through the thread I find that there are several tasks needed to be dealt with. As I see it (and others see it) there are two main groups of tasks:

1. The Community - contribs.org
2. The continuing development

As I understand from the thread the community maintenance can be done by several even non technical  persons; moderation I believe does not require any or just a little technical knowledge. So I will leave this part to others.

The second group of tasks are development. As a B. Sc. E.E. with software development as my main work area since mid eighties and running my own small SW-development company for 11 years I would hereby offer my self as a kind of project manager for the development team.

I do develop a little my self still, but my time are through the last 3-4 years more and more spent on project management as well as general management. The reason for me offer my spare time into project management.

From my point of view we need to gather a some developers with different profiles including at least these:

a. User interface specialists (the Perl and HTML stuff)
b. Kernel developers
c. Server specialists (mail, samba, apache, etc.)
d. Distribution specialists
e. Probably more ... your suggestions

I would be happy to lead some of the groups or the general management for all groups. I think that even in the Open Source community we need leadership as mentioned in other posts.

Please NOTE: Leaders or managers does not mean dictatorship on the contrary; as a Dane I am accustomed to democratic leadership letting the individuals have a high degree of self motivation through a great freedom in planning the work to be done.

I see the leaders or managers more like a chairman of a board who has to listen to all parties and try to bend the opinions toward a common one. The chairmans main responsibility is to facilitate that the board are moving forward by pointing out directions to go.

Of course the leader sometimes has to decide between two or more alternatives, but the decision has to be based on what the leader has heard from “the board” - here the team members. In Denmark we do have very flat company organisations with only a few managers and not a deep level of leaders, managers, vice presidents, CEO's, etc. as I have seen in other contries.

I do not think that geographic location means anything in a project like the SME-server. Maybe it might even be a strength in the length by for instance focusing on that the software will run properly with local languages (having quite a lot more letters than in the English alphabet) or focusing on that different cultures may have other requirements than the North Americans has.

SourceForge for development and distribution I find is a good idea as it facilitates exactly the needs a development team has, but I think we should have the forums, howtos, etc. on a member driven site of our own like the contribs.org.

I will offer backup capacity for contribs.org if needed on my servers in my company so we can avoid future lost of material from the community and relatively quickly restore the site if ever again needed. I do not yet have the line capacity to offer a true mirror.

Finally please forgive my English - it is just my second language and accept my offers if you can accept my humble terms of conditions.

Klaus Kolle

[gcrumb]

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.

e-smith.org (which preceded contribs.org as the community-oriented site) was operated by e-smith, inc. and largely supported and administered by its staff. There were - and still are - a number of volunteers who have made valuable contributions to the product itself, some of which were subsequently rolled into the core product.

I worked for e-smith (and later, when it was purchased , for Mitel) for a few years, and can attest to the significant amount of time and effort that was expended keeping things up to date, maintaining the discussion forums and mailing lists, etc.

Especially after e-smith's acquisition by Mitel, it became harder for staff to invest the same amount of time and effort into the maintenance of the site. I'd go so far as to say that efforts to give freely to the community were viewed by some at Mitel as counter-productive. Why couldn't we focus on things that made the company money? That was, after all, what we were paid to do.

I went to work for e-smith, inc. because of an article I saw, written by two individuals at the core of early e-smith development. This article described a server that was able to run on old machinery in adverse circumstances and provide needed communication ability to people who didn't necessarily have the means to configure and maintain current server OSes.

Years later, I find myself working in a developing nation, running e-smith^WSME Server on Pentium-class machines for organisations who would not otherwise be able to access the Internet or use a network. I've installed 2 such networks already, and will install 3  more within the next month. The networks currently running e-smith both have better than 99.9% uptime.

I'm glad that this server is back in the hands of the community, and I genuinely hope that the recent rancour will be replaced by the kind of volunteerism that characterised this distro's early days. There has been sniping in the past, and there likely will be again in the future. I ask you all to bear in mind, though, that the way this distro became so good is because people like you and me made it that way.

As someone once said, 'A single line of running code trumps a thousand lines of argument.'

[cranky]

Pardon me for asking but, after the big ruckus that the original post caused, has anything changed?

In my earlier post in this thread, I lamented that communication was lacking.  As I monitor this forum, the  thread is no longer sticky, and is dropping from the radar screen.  Are we to assume that things are OK now?

I DO NOT wish to rake up the muck here.  But I find myself asking:
1) Has the urgency surrounding our potential demise changed?  Have we as a group resolved that things are progressing as desired?  Have we resolved our financial and volunteer needs?
2) Do we have a roadmap to the next release or is a group in place that is planning it?
3) A number of polls were created to gauge the position(s) of our community.  Are any of these recommendations being acted on (or discussed)?
4) Are we in a satisfactory position with regard to volunteers working on the next release, the web site, documentation, etc.?
5) What are the PLANS for our next releases and website changes.

This is not meant to be harsh or mean spirited.  I ask these questions not to annoy those in charge, but simply due to a lack of feedback (see my earlier post).  Who are we to turn to for answers?  Please advise.

[wellsi]

cranky,

I can understand the frustration. Each time there is a burst of enthusiasm it lasts for a few weeks, but then it fades.

You have five good questions, I hope you get good answers otherwise we need to consider that the end may be near.

[mbachmann]

1. I see quite a few people volunteer and working. For the financel part i don't know, probably not. But a lot of people offered substantial help and support.

2. Don't know.

3. They are being considered. Takes time.

4. As i can see: yes.

5. My plans are: contribute constantly.

[Tino]

If this thread is still alive, I don't know that, but I feel complelled to add my thoughts to this paticular matter.

Firstly, I have nothing of value to offer, due to the fact that my knowledge on managing this type "community" is non-existent.

I would like to say this to Mr Coleman, with all due respect to him, the day that you upgraded your hobby to , unfortunately, an inherited responsibility, you took control of an International "community". If this was an International company, you would be the CEO of the company.

No matter what type of company you work for, and being at the head of it all, you will always find unhappy employees. No matter what you do...., and I have compassion for the problem caused by the "community employees".

This is where leadership come in to play - regardless of all the fleck you WILL get. You and your team has the responsibility in FOCUSSING and LEADING this "company" into a certain direction.

Direction? The direction of a company is generally decided upon by multiple parties.  My thoughts will lead me to ask "What are we trying to achieve with the SME Server Product, and who are we going to involve in getting us to the "public" direction of the product.

I started using SME about 8 months ago, I have never been more "treated" by this product than ever before. But it has its problem areas, from a integrator side that is not knowlegdable on the platform - like me. I would rely on this type of "community" to guide me, not repairing or suppoting the product - in that case we are all soon to head the MS way - rather get the customer to pay for support...what the hell, to hell with this Linux SME Server business.......


WRONG thinking. Do not carry this across to your International install-base. They will loose faith in the product. Like any other business....when there are bad rumours about the company, people won't invest, they tend to go elsewhere. (You might think...Yeh let them go...see if I care).

Wrong again...
I have been happy with the original steering committee, and would like to see that you do not loose focus because of a few kids hanging around in the halls complaining at everything. Do not get emotional about this...this is part of business / life.

SME is a Linux Business Solutions Server. - not for the kids at home wanting to play mp3 and surf porn-sites.

Let people in business assist in driving the FOCUS. With common knowledge of Small to Medium size Enterprises (SME) business requirements, you will have an understanding of the real value of the SME server is and where to drive the FOCUS AND DIRECTION to.

SME Server is a jewel, that we as Linux believers can't afford to loose. It is crusial to continue with driving the Focus, setting goals, achieving those goals and ensure that the required input from the public (not end-user) be gathered.

It is my believe that, should this community fail, it will be the last of a Linux server solution, known throughout the world as one of the fastest install-base servers out there, that is stable and continually advancing in technology and functionality. Don't screw this up for the rest of us.

You have a lot of bright people out there that already spent hours of their free time to supply us with solutions, regardless if was only an url to point somebody to more information. PLEASE DON'T LOOSE THESE HIGH CALIBRE PEOPLE....PLEASE.!

I also feel that the forum has become more of a kiddies play ground wanting to know how to play movies, play mp3's, how they can host a lan game with three people connecting. That is absolutely B/S!!.

People must be interested in SME for its tremendous value within the corporate world not to play friggin games on it....


I realy don't want to see this community fail because of ignorance. Please keep this forum PURE and ALIVE.

I hope it work out well in the future.


Best Regards,

Tino Fourie
(mind the spelling, I was speed typing this one.)

[CharlieBrady]

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?

Venture capital.

[RMOORE]

Adding clustering to this package would realy  make it
more robust.

[guest22]

What kind of 'clustering' are you thinking of ?

[RMOORE]

I would like to cluster multiple sme servers.
I read a couple of articles and did not finde any easy.
can anyone point me in the right directions?

[guest22]

RMOORE,

I was refering to what type of 'clustering' you mean, what is it that you exactly want to achieve. What docs did you find?

[RMOORE]

I would like to use  two or more sme 6.5 servers as clustered to provide faul tolorance and also provide a form of load balancing.Any sujestion

[guest22]

Your clustering request is a 2 part thing:

1. High availability
2. Load balancing

I have 'played' with High availability (1 active, 1 standby server, with LAN/WAN Raid-1) Search for High Availability How-To on contribs.org, maybe it helps you in your search.

guest