Topic: Its True E-Smith dies with RedHat

[Bill]

Devinfo list members,

As has been hinted on this list, we are following Red Hat's lead with
Fedora and turning the SME Server developer release over to the community.

I don't think that this should come as a big surprise to anyone who has
followed developments within the industry or on this list over the past
years.

As was eloquently stated on the list earlier today, Mitel is a
commercial enterprise and has decided to focus our developers on our commercial products. Some of our developers may choose to continue to stay involved with whatever community effort emerges, doing so on their own time and outside of their regular responsibilities within Mitel.

As noted below, we will be continuing to develop applications on top of our commercial release and as we make changes to GPL components we will
release them to the community just as any other developer should do.

What does this mean for the SME Server unsupported developer release,
this list, e smith.org, our commercial products, etc.?

Read on...

* SME Server 6.0 unsupported developer release

We will be preparing a 6.0 unsupported developer release in the next week or two that will essentially be 6.0beta3 plus a few recent security updates. This will be the
last "official" unsupported developer release that we have planned. Any future releases are really up to you. (For all of you who have been asking for a roadmap in the past, now is your chance!)

* e-smith.org bulletin boards

We have already
received agreement from the ontribs.org staff that they could host the forums there and we had tentatively agreed to prform the move next week. (I was actually waiting to announce this until fter the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and after I had received confirmation from the contribs.org folks that they were all set up their end)

* devinfo mailing list

Given that the development will be taking place utside of Mitel, we
would like to see another host found for this mailing list. The contribs.org staff has indicated their willingness to host the list and we will continue to maintain this list until such a list exists.

* Bug reporting

Again, as this will now be a community project, we are expecting that the community will start up a bug reporting database. Mitel Networks will continue to accept bug reports to smebugs@mitel.com, and will continue to process them there until an alternative system is running, and will thereafter forward new bug reports to the new system.

Commercial customers should, of course, continue to contact their reseller for support as they do today.

* Copyright and licensing

The code in the SME Server remains copyright Mitel Networks and is released under the GNU General Public License. The GPL provides you with the freedom to modify the software as you choose, but also comes with the requirement to share those modifications. We trust that those people who derive software from the SME Server will comply with the requirements of the GPL.

* 6000 MAS commercial release

We currently use the 6000 MAS base operating system as the base for several solutions including the 6010 Teleworker Solution, the 6040 Office Server Suite and 6042 Managed VPN.

Given that the 6040 Office Server Suite and 6042 Managed VPN are both mature, stable, robust products that have the range of functionality that our customers have asked for, we have moved our developer focus to the Teleworker Solution and several other upcoming products. At the current time we do not have any plans to further develop the 6040 and 6042 packages. We will continue to fix reported bugs and issue security updates for supported releases, but do not plan on adding additional features until we are presented with appropriate business reasons to do so.

In regions where we currently have trainedresellers who can support
the products, we will continue to sell the 6040/6042 products and
support existing customers.

Development continues strongly on our 6010Teleworker Solution and other telephony-focused products and sales continue to be available globally.

If you have further questions about our commercialproducts, please contact me directly.

I am extremely pleased to see the comments posted both here and already
over at the contribs.org forum and very much look forward to seeing whatwill evolve out of this community.

If you have questions about all of this, please do let me know.

Unfortunately, I will be offline for the next four days celebrating
U.S. Thanksgiving but I will certainly review comments when I return Monday, December 1st.

Thank you all for the efforts you have put into the SME Server over
the many years and I look forward to seeing how it evolves.

Regards,

Dan

- --
Dan York, Director of Product Management, Mobility Solutions
Mitel Networks Corporation

[Byte]

That doesnt mean its dead!!!

[Greg]

Thank you Dan for this information

We've been expecting this..
It's up to us now...
Let's go to Contribs.org to continue this great product.

Cheers

Greg

[John Willby]

Isn't it more a case of "the king is dead - long live the king".

[tobyd]

looks like it is time for a fork - any takers???
personally, i hate contribs.org - i think it is hard to find anything, looks unprofessional & dreadful, has too many links that lead nowhere or are dead and so on...
there must be something better?

[Karl]

tobyd...... I thought I was the only one who thought this....I'm with you

[rick]

I would have to agree that contribs.org will need a makeover if it is to be a success. Poor navigation, dead links etc are all frustrating at best.

[tobyd]

no you are not the only one....
i am sorry to have had to say that, i appreciate the work contribs.org have done but i do not think it is good enough for such a good product - i feel we would loose a lot of good development and users (who provide the ideas for dev&contibs) if we as a community were to rely on contribs.org as our main base of support & communication.

I don't want to put their work down but there has to be something better?
If not I would be willing to develop a site & donate space and i'm sure lots of others would too.
I have been dependant on e-smith and these forums & contribs for my business for the past 3 years but as I am not known here I am not sure if I would be trusted to take this on.
Maybe others who are interested in keeping this alive should speak up and we all create a wishlist for what is needed and put a few demos together that can be put to a public vote???

[Harold]

tobyd wrote:

> I have been dependant on e-smith and these forums & contribs
> for my business for the past 3 years ...

Well, you (and no doubts lots of others) should have been partners with
e-smith/Mitel, shouldn't you, so some of your profit went to support development ...

H.

[tobyd]

Harold wrote:
>
> tobyd wrote:
>
> > I have been dependant on e-smith and these forums & contribs
> > for my business for the past 3 years ...
>
> Well, you (and no doubts lots of others) should have been
> partners with
> e-smith/Mitel, shouldn't you, so some of your profit went to
> support development ...
>
> H.
I was a partner/reseller for the second of these 3 years but because of the pricing and some local issues did not feel that it added value to my clients so decided not to continue being a partner!
Harold, are you a partner or reseller? - different argument for a different forum...

any constructive ideas here?

[John Willby]

Hi

Well I am glad somebody has said that. Maybe the dev guys are listening?

I think it will take a while to get things setup.

I personally have a few ideas I would put forward.

I think many of the addons that a lot of people on this list use (the GPL ones) could use with being finally intergrated into the system.  This could be a short term goal that can be achieved with the current version 6 that will be released.

It would be great if it were possible to intergrate some sort of anti-virus and spam filtering into the distro. So these things load and come pretty much setup and ready to go. I personally, as somebody who is by no means experienced, found them quite difficult to install (specifically spamassasin and especially Clamav). As a aspect of the admin side I would like a place for the monitoring and tweaking of these things in the server manager.

I would be like a pig in mud if that were to happen.

Also there are things like ntop or something similar that I would like to see as an option and I am sure many others can pipe up with their own favourite contribs.

I think the user manager panel is another contrib that ought to be a more permanent fixture.

In the longer term I would like to see a better way of updating or installing  programs. I am a mandrake user (sorry!) and I like their urpmi system for installing rpms. Can't we get something like that which sorts out dependencies etc...

Just my 2p worth.

[Karl]

I seem to recall a few years ago, there was a breakaway from "e-smith", that had great ideas and possabilities. It died... and was never heard of again.....I can only hope we're not heading down the same path...

[Shane]

Whatever community evolves from this situation, they need to take a look at how other such forks have succeeded...
Postnuke and IpCop for example.

Sure they have had their tribulations, but look at the results...

[Steve Brock]

I can volunteer some server space for a new project. Should I throw something up temporary (like forums for example) to discuss possibilities and ideas?

[tobyd]

excellent steve, good to see someone else take an interest here...
before anybody sets anything up maybe we should have a discussion here on features wanted/needed for a site to take on hosting of contribs, howtos, support forums and so on...

so any ideas?

[Arjay]

sorry i havent noticed this thread. i posted "follow up on webmin issue"
(http://www.e-smith.org/bboard//read.php?f=1&i=34613&t=34613)
first before i saw this... the author of webmin is quite positive to the idea of making a webmin version that will work with the SME Server. in my first email, here is reply:

Sure, I could probably do that, as long as it is similar to Redhat 7.2.
What does the /etc/redhat-release , /etc/esmith-release or /etc/issue
file contain on that OS?

 - Jamie

On Fri, 2003-11-28 at 18:28, Arjay wrote:
> hi,
>  im a user of Mitel SME Server and Gateway (formerly known as
> e-smith). i just want to ask if there will be a release for that os. i
> find webmin very very usefull for me but its just that i cant just
> move from one os to another coz im hosting websites. hope you could
> release one for e-smith too. by the way, e-smith is a modified redhat
> 7.2
>  
> good day
>  
>  
> Arjay


please no flames! im just suggesting.


Arjay

[tobyd]

Arjay wrote:
>
> please no flames! im just suggesting.

no harm in suggestions - however going on my experience of both e-smith and webmin, webmin is completely over the top for e-smith and would break a lot of funcionality (i could easily be wrong here...)

webmin is great for a full system but e-smith is a scaled down system - what does webmin provide that you want and is not controllable by the e-smith server manager?

[Noz]

contribs.org may not be perfect but it's great start.  Don't forget that the contribs are already hosted there and that the existing forums are due to move there.  There's already a thread running on where to go next.

we have already received agreement from the contribs.org staff that they could host the forums there and we had tentatively agreed to prform the move next week. (I was actually waiting to announce this until fter the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday and after I had received confirmation from the contribs.org folks that they were all set up their end)


All the offers of hosting and web design are great but come on guys.  Give contribs a chance!  If you've a suggestion or opinion go over there and make it instead of criticising it here.  Contribute to contribs! (sorry)  It's be running for while but I'm sure the maintainers will listen to what you have to say.  Nothing is set in stone.

All the best
NTB

[tobyd]

Noz wrote:
> ...go over there and make it instead of criticising it
> here.  

sorry if it came accross this way, the idea was not to criticse contribs.org...

> Contribute to contribs! (sorry)  It's be running for
> while but I'm sure the maintainers will listen to what you
> have to say.  

It has been running a while and has been a good addon to this site but in my opinion is not good enough to sustain an interest in e-smth (or whatever it will be called) and be the main point for development/support/contact.
Also, as it has been around for a while I would expect it to be easier to use, easier to find what you are looking for and contain a lot less dead/pointless links....

> Nothing is set in stone.

all the more reason for this discussion here now...

[Steve Brock]

> All the offers of hosting and web design are great but come on guys.
> Give contribs a chance!
Absolutely!

[Reinhold]

> All the offers of hosting and web design are great but come on guys.
> Give contribs a chance!

YEP!   contribs  is the place to go !

[tobyd]

Reinhold wrote:
>
> > All the offers of hosting and web design are great but come
> on guys.
> > Give contribs a chance!
>
> YEP!   contribs  is the place to go !

fair enough, maybe I should drop the idea of an alternative (whats the harm in an alternative?), but I know if I pointed some of my clients in the way of contribs.org they would laugh at me....
it is ok for home users but again in my opinion is not the right place for business users and even though this is an opensource project a lot of business do quiet work in the background...
the offer of webdev & hosting space is still open so if anyone is interested, please post here...

[Michiel]

> the offer of webdev & hosting space is still open so if
> anyone is interested, please post here...

Why don't you get in contact with Jeff Coleman and offer to redo the website on contribs.org. I suspect the people at contribs.org would welcome support on that front too and it would combine the best of both approaches

Michiel

[peter]

Michiel wrote:
> Why don't you get in contact with Jeff Coleman and offer to
> redo the website on contribs.org. I suspect the people at
> contribs.org would welcome support on that front too and it
> would combine the best of both approaches
>
> Michiel

good idea, but offering to redo someone elses website is not allways the best of ideas...
and as far as my knowledge goes, most (if not all users here) are happy with contribs.org and it could be just me that feels that contribs.org is not up to scratch for what is required of a project that has and could contribute to an even better development & user base.
I'd be happier to contact Jeff after a good discussion here on what is needed/wanted for a good replacement of this current site.

[ian wells]

I also think that contribs.org will need further improvement, it is a great start, but there is a way to go.

I have put some effort into writing How-Tos, and most are linked from both the e-smith site and contribs.org. Looking at my web-site stats, the majority of people come from the e-smith site, next via google & contribs.org does not even register. Will all the people manage to find them in the future? (I don't claim my work to be good, but the same would applies to other work)

I have also had problems finding things. Given time you can find what you need - but it is not easy. Hopefully these are teething problems.

I think that the Mitel team have given us a wonderful product, I have been very grateful for the help that they have given (does Charlie ever sleep?)  and wish them well for the future.

For the community, I hope that we can prevent e-smith from dying. I will continue to support it in my small way.

Ian

[Charlie Brady]

peter wrote:

> I'd be happier to contact Jeff after a good discussion here
> on what is needed/wanted for a good replacement of this
> current site.

Please join the devinfo mailing list for that discussion. Discussions work much better on mailing lists than they do on BBs.

Charlie

[Charlie Brady]

ian wells wrote:

> Looking
> at my web-site stats, the majority of people come from the
> e-smith site, next via google & contribs.org does not even
> register.

Very interesting data.

IMO contribs.org was created without there being an obvious need for it. Hosting space was already available for anyone who wanted it at e-smith.org.

The situation is different now. contribs.org may be the answer. Time will tell.

> ... (does Charlie ever sleep?)  ...

Charlie doesn't sleep as much as he'd like to

Charlie

[tobyd]

Charlie, good to see you brought in on this discusion.....


Please join the devinfo mailing list for that discussion. Discussions work much better on mailing lists than they do on BBs.


sorry, i should have done that at the start but changed mail providers recently and never re-registered...


ian wells wrote:

> Looking
> at my web-site stats, the majority of people come from > > the e-smith site, next via google & contribs.org does not > even
> register.

Ian, good to see you looking at stats, this is one of my major concerns - as a business using (but not dependant) on e-smith I would like to see major SEO work completed on e-smith related sites;... it is pretty hard to find updated info and contribs related to current versions of e-smith...


> IMO contribs.org was created without there being an > obvious need for it. Hosting space was already available for anyone who wanted it at e-smith.org.

I agree and realise there is now a need for a site likre the
contribs.org site but can not agree that it will keep the  community live...lets keep the discussion open and all agree on what is needed/wanted to keep an excellent product alive...

[Charlie Brady]

tobyd wrote:

> Charlie, good to see you brought in on this discusion.....

Nobody brought me in. I bought into the discussion myself.

Charlie

[Del]

Hi All,
I think that the real problem with contribs.org is the lack of a search facility, every thing else is there, I just find it hard to find stuff! I don't rely on SME for my income but I have used for my own use for the last couple of years and I hope we can keep it alive. So let's give contribs.org a chance, if everyone goes off and starts their own sites it will surely die, as they say, united we stand, divided we fall.
The other thing is can it be called e-smith again? It was a much better name!
Just my 2cents.
Del

[Andy Parkinson]

Shouldn't  Sourceforge  be the way to go for any future releases. contribs.org could still be the project home page but then there would be all of the mirrors that are part of sourceforge which contribs.org cannot supply (I assume).  I'd like to take the opportunity to thank all of the Mitel guys for SME. I have about 50 servers in the wild that I support and they give me very little grief. Many small businesses have benefited from not being tied into  Microsoft, and the SME server has allowed me to convert many sceptical people to Linux. It has allowed me to put Mailservers into schools and colleges which otherwise would have to do without due to budget constraints. It gives me easy secure remote access to customers via SSH and has saved me many miles of travelling.  I think this project is too important to be allowed to die. There is nothing else out there that comes close to SME.  I don't want to spend more of my customers money lining Bill Gate's pockets.  

Andy Parkinson

[SloopJohnB]

E-Smith doesn't have to die! I to have several of these in the field and love the simplicity of the web and the command line admin structure.

I am willing to help support the effort to maintain this great product, even if it envolves donating money to help pay for the costs of keeping this great distro from falling off the edge of the earth!

It would seem that Mitel could support and promote the e-smith website and the development of e-smith in the same ways as IBM has partnered with Redhat...??? It's just a thought though.

What can we do in this forum to help keep e-smith alive??

SloopJohnB

[JeffC]

Howdy,

Contribs.org is originally my baby, and while the team has some pride of ownership, we don't believe it's a perfect site by any means.  But it is cogent to say that while contribs has been up it is averaging about 300K hits per month and over 20Gig of bandwidth usage.  

I find it interesting that none of the folks that have been complaining in this thread about contribs.org has offered to help redesign or mangage it, or has volunteered in any way.  Contribs is run as a volunteer effort with a huge amount of help from RequestedDeletion and virtually no one else.

I supply the server, storage, backup, bandwidth, maintenance, bug fixes, and personally have entered over 300 links to hotows, contribs etc.

There is a forum on contribs to report dead links that has a total of 17 posts in it.  Who are you folks reporting these dead links to?  It certainly isn't us :>

To those of you who believe that contribs was started without a reason, please go back about a year and try to find a contrib or howto that wasn't hosted on the Mitel site.  While there was a lot of complaining at that time, only contribs.org stepped up to try and solve the problems.

Volunteers to host?  Good.  I can easily cancel one of my T1s if I don't host contribs.  Please order the extra bandwidth you'll need as soon as possible.  Sourceforge?  Great idea!  Where will you put your links to offsite contribs?  

I don't mean to sound bitter here, but where are all of the good ideas and volunteers when it comes time to put money, effort and time where the flames are.

We welcome any constructive comments, and yes, we'd be happy for your suggestions and your time to redesign the site to be more "professional".

You have my email address, let's see how many of you actually volunteer to help.  You will be very welcome.

-jeff

[Del]

Hi JeffC,
Why don't you set up a PayPal account for donations? Then those of us (like myself) who can't help technically can help financially. Just  a thought.
Regards,
Del

[JeffC]

Thanks Del,

We have resisted the temptation to capitalize on the traffic we have and sell banner ads like Sourceforge or popups like so many other sites.

We don't do anything commercial on the site vecause we want to give something back to the distro that we also use and support for our clients.  In the next week or so as we migrate the forums we're expecting to almost double our traffic.  

Our plans are to keep this site non-commercial as long as it is possible.  However, your suggestion about PayPal donations sounds viable.  We'll give it some thought.

-jeff

[guestHH]

Hi all,

reading through this thread, we see some very good ideas and good comments. And you are absolutely right about contribs.org, it's not perfect yet.
contribs.org is not yet prepared for a big task like we are all talking about, but that is just the front side (www side) whilest on the backside we are really putting in the effort to get things done like you all want it to be in good coorporation with Mitel staff. Therefore we really appreciate you all comments and suggestions.

So while contribs.org is getting ready to serve you all, please continue to give your appreciated feedback.

Btw, contribs.org could really need the experience of the above posters, so please contact us at staff@contribs.org and we would love to have you aboard.

on behalf of contribs.org
guestHH

[SloopJohnB]

I would buy a hat or T-Shirt if you went commercial!! Ok but if not, I would still donate using Paypal...


SloopJohnB

[John Willby]

I tried emailing that address to offer some help but it bounced - was going to offer to help with the web site in some small way.

Maybe RequestedDeletion Wong you would like to mail me and make some suggestions about what I can do to help.

Even if its just going through the links and reporting all the dead stuff.

[guestHH]

Thanks John W., the mail won't bounce anymore

contribs.org is looking into what 'organisational' changes to our frontside we need to make due to the wishes of the community.
If that is clear, there will be a list of tasks.

Anybody who wants to help out in a way, please mail staff@contribs.org.

Thanks for your patience, comments and ideas.

on behalf of contribs.org
guestHH

[Paul]

I will back up the fact that contribs.org is VERY willing to listen to us.  I made a suggestion and within a few hours somebody over there made a change.

These guys a very willing to make contribs.org into a workable site.

Some people are excellent at writing code but need help with the artistic side of a web site.  Others are pure artists but can't write code.

I, unfortunately, have neither.  I do however have $$ and some good ideas.  Please give us (without talent) a way to make monetary contributions.

Thanks,

Paul

[Stefan Braunstein]

Charlie Brady wrote:

> Please join the devinfo mailing list for that discussion.
> Discussions work much better on mailing lists than they do on
> BBs.

And what about a news group?  I prefer writing in news groups instead of BBs or mailing lists.  Both (or even all three) could even be combined.

I know, there is a french news group for E-Smith/SME, but no english one or german (which I would prefer ).

Maybe someone can setup an extra news server for groups regarding SME.

just my two Euro-Cent.

Stefan

[guestHH]

Paul,

Thx for the offer. Other community members also wanted to donate in a monetary way.

contribs.org is taking these kinds of contributions in considereation too, but before we do accept monetary contributions, contribs.org wants to make sure that we are all set up right to cope with it wisely.

on behalf of contribs.org
guestHH

[ChS(Christophe)]

Hi there :
1 Great thanks to all former e-smith now Mitel's guys. This was the distribution to make me crazy in love with Linux. I used it since version 4.12 (remember these old times ?)
Well, we are a few froggies over here using it and loving it. Grand Pa, for example made the first steps of helping any french guy to translate and install his own version, designed to fit his needs. Could we now contribute to the french versions ...  and else   Andy Parkinson wrote:
>
> Shouldn't  Sourceforge  be the way to go for any future
> releases. contribs.org could still be the project home page
> but then there would be all of the mirrors that are part of
> sourceforge which contribs.org cannot supply (I assume).  I'd
> like to take the opportunity to thank all of the Mitel guys
> for SME. I have about 50 servers in the wild that I support
> and they give me very little grief. Many small businesses
> have benefited from not being tied into  Microsoft, and the
> SME server has allowed me to convert many sceptical people to
> Linux. It has allowed me to put Mailservers into schools and
> colleges which otherwise would have to do without due to
> budget constraints. It gives me easy secure remote access to
> customers via SSH and has saved me many miles of travelling.
> I think this project is too important to be allowed to die.
> There is nothing else out there that comes close to SME.  I
> don't want to spend more of my customers money lining Bill
> Gate's pockets.
>
> Andy Parkinson

[Marc]

Ah oui! les cousins Français avec papi e-smith...

The question is if Red Hat is discontinuing their development on Linux Red-Hat 9.0, On which Linux distribution should an e-smith continuation run with?

[Paul]

Marc,

That has become the question of all questions!!!

ClarkConnect's website states that it will continue to use redhat/fedora.  I think this might ba a mistake as fedora will become very developemental.  There is already a dozen updates and another dozen apps in testing.

Fedora Quote:

Availability of updates should not be misconstrued as support for anything other than continued development and innovation of the code base.

End Quote:

We need something a bit more stable.  Can we use the REL3 code base?

Just a thought,

Paul

[rk]

I know this should probably be on the dev list, but I haven't participated there, and I wanted to throw this out in the public forum first.

What do we need to use Redhat as a base?  Couldn't we remove the OS from the software in this case?  This may sound like sacrelige, but I'm sure the dev community over at Gentoo would embrace the web frontend that e-smith presents.  Why not split e-smith into a few areas (web admin, overall web config/ibays, /etc management), and offer it as packages to install on top of a base system?  One of the biggest complaints in Gentoo is the lack of more packaged server material that doesn't require you to be a propellerhead, and one of the complaints about e-smith is the lack of tools for people who want to be propellerheads.  These two extremes might make a porrage that's just right.

I know I've been trying to set up a Gentoo box to run with stuff like E-Smith, but alot of the config is way over my head, or way too much code pounding.  I'll likely upgrade to version 6, but then begin actively working to convert to Gentoo.

Another bonus is that their emerge tool can be used to keep up to date without having to rely on updating everything yourself, now that up2date is not going to be supported.

Just throwing some chum in the pool....

[Michiel]

> What do we need to use Redhat as a base?  Couldn't we remove
> the OS from the software in this case?  This may sound like

I don't think this is something we need to decide on in the short term. SME 6.0 will be released shortly, which should keep us quite happy for a couple of months. If there is enough interest, we could upgrade to e.g. RedHat 9.0, which could buy us a couple of extra months and is easyer a task than changing distro's. By that time we should know more about how Fedora evolves and have still enough time to decide on a different distro if needed.

However, we should not underestimate the work involved in changing distro's. You can't just throw all the e-smith*.rpm files on Mandrake and expect it to work. I would like to see some very strong arguments in favour of a different distro before breaking with redhat/fedora.

Michiel

PS: Did you notice? This was the first time Mitel gave a release date for SME. Too bad it is also the last time :-/

[Peter Baldwin]

Just to clarify... we haven't made a decision on what platform to use for the ClarkConnect 3.x release.  We have committed to keeping the Red Hat 9 (or Fedora 1.x if it's stable enough) for the current 2.x series... but this is just to keep things similar for the 2.x versions.

I'm lurking to see what the new E-smith/contribs.org plans to do -- ClarkConnect and other Red Hat-based distributions are at a similar crossroads.  There are many options:

- Use the Enterprise Red Hat version (with all the necessary trademark and licensing changes of course).  If Red Hat continues on their current trajectory, then this option may end up being a dead end.  I can understand RH's push to drop the consumer product, but there seems to be a pricing gap in their product line for the SMB market.  That's another can of worms...

- Use another distribution ... but which one?

- Go it alone and maintain a core set of server/gateway packages for ClarkConnect, E-smith/contribs.org, et al.  Maintaining all those the "non-interesting" packages (basesystem, bash, bc, bzip2 to name packages that start with the letter 'b') is not exactly a business we want to get into.  We want to be much more focused on the gateway/server feature set.  Regardless, this is still an option.

The next 12 months will be interesting!

Cheers,
Peter

[Paul]

Well,

REL3 just strikes my fancy because of stability and it's eol is 2008.

I have kinda had the same thought about making it more modular.  Have a base core and then add the modules you want.

I really like the way ClarkConnect does this with apt-get but there web-based interface is a bit hard to navigate and their set-up is not as friendly as is/was SME.  A lot of their apps need too much tweaking for my taste.

Start with a good, reliable base with minimal features (just about the same as SME5.6).
Keep the templates and web-based server manager. (I think they work better than any other method I have tried JMHO)
Mantain a distro based update/upgrade/add-on database system with modules and contribs that utilizes something like apt-get.

I am not a prophead but I can manage to get around this distro.

More chum, the sharks should start feeding now

[Paul]

Peter,

Why would you even consider RH9 as a base when it's eol is 4/2004.

Isn't it going to be difficult to provide an eol on Office 2.0 of 3/2007 (or even Home 2.0 of 1/2005) when it's base's (RH9) eol is 4/2004?

RedHat's decisions must just be killing you guys.  I feel for you.

P.S. Peter wrote: "(or Fedora 1.x if it's stable enough)"

This is the biggest understatement in this entire forum.  Fedora is going to turn into a cutting/bleeding edge, unstable playtoy.  JMHO:)

[Paul]

Another question/thought:

Is the "template system" and the "server-manager" GPL and if not, is Mitel going to allow thier use in any kind of developement situation?

Paul

[Peter Baldwin]

I'll answer any other ClarkConnect related questions offline since it's not appropriate in this forum  Just remove the "j2003" from my e-mail address.  I will still chime in on E-smith/contribs.org issues if I have something to say.

> Why would you even consider RH9 as a base when it's eol is 4/2004.

Just to keep things consistent in our current 2.x release.  We will have at least one more point release before moving to the new core system.  And, we will be maintaining the base Red Hat RPMS via a third party company (probably).

> RedHat's decisions must just be killing you guys. I feel for you.

It's not too hard!  We already maintain a fair number of packages already -- it's just not really something we or contribs.org should spend much time on (if it can be avoided).  There is no need for E-smith or ClarkConnect to re-invent (another) Linux distribution... just my opinion though.  I know that ClarkConnect can run on any Linux distribution with very few changes.  I would hazard a guess that E-smith/contribs.org is in the same boat.

> templates

The template system is quite elegant, but it only fits the user-driven deployment model.  Example 1: when a school district wants to deploy 70 boxes, having a single backend to configure all the machines is a must.  Example 2: a kiosk application deployed at 200 sites requires a custom datacenter-to-gateway application developed -- templates don' work in this case.  We do some of these things for our clients, so a template system is not the right framework.

Cheers,
Peter

[Paulc]

Hi,
     probably a stupid question but Redhat are releasing the source of the enterprise edition. What is wrong with using that?

Cheers Paul

[David Trask]

Long live E-Smith!  I remember my nervousness when E-Smith became a Mitel product....funny...I have a new nervousness when going back to a community developed product.  On the K12OS list we've had the same discussions about Fedora vs. Redhat and we've decided to go with Fedora.  Once thing we need to do is pick "benchmarks" and go with those....not necessarily try to always "keep up".  I love E-Smith and so do many other IT folks in Maine schools.  I plan to pitch in any way I can.  Long live E-Smith!

[@nonymouse]

why not just use http://www.whiteboxlinux.org?

[w.raj]

You have absolutely right!!

[Walter Padgett]

Good Afternoon,

After reading all of the posts in this thread with interest and amusement, I have a thought or two.

I appreciate anyone's effort to bring about a better distribution. There is a lot of "unappreciated" work and effort that goes into maintaining a website much less one of this magnitude. Team members can easily become burn out due to the lack of appreciation and/or monetary income. Pride of accomplishment only goes so far. People that have either complained or criticized the efforts of contribs.org have a few problems as well. When posting, I try to make sure that my English grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc., is correct and professional looking. If the complainers were to take over the site, I'm afraid of what I would see.

On another note, I haven't been keeping up with the industry moves but it looks like folks are hurting for money or are, like I said earlier, tired of working for "the pride of accomplishment." I installed SME v6 this afternoon and was pleasantly surprised by the very professional appearance of the server manager panels. What would stop anyone from just updating the little things that need to be updated and continue to use v6 for a year or more? I remember reading posts on the forum's not too long ago that stated some folks were still using v4.x. I have thoroughly enjoyed E-Smith/SME since v3.x. It took a lot of persuading by a gentleman on the #linuxhelp IRC channel on the Undernet before I took the jump.

With all that out of the way, where is the PayPal account to send money!!!!

Sincerely,

Walter "Wally" Padgett

[JeffC]

Walter Padgett wrote:

>
> With all that out of the way, where is the PayPal account to
> send money!!!!
>

I think you'll find it now on the top right corner of the front page.  Please feel free to use it :>

Cheers,

-jeff
On behalf of contribs.org

[Walter Padgett]

Good Afternoon,

While donating money via PayPal, I noticed that the recipient was unverified. Will this change soon?

Later,

Walter "Wally" Padgett

[JeffC]

Yup.  This afternoon.  We just got our deposits verifed.  Thanks for your donation!

-jeff