Koozali.org: home of the SME Server
Legacy Forums => General Discussion (Legacy) => Topic started by: JeffC on January 18, 2004, 11:35:19 PM
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There have been a lot of questions about "rebranding" and what is going on "behind the scenes" at contribs.org. Hopefully this will shed light on some of the process.
I apologize for the length of this post but there are a lot of points to cover.
When Mitel made it's announcement about discontinuing GPL development of the SME Server, it left the project entirely to the hands of the community. There are a number of sites that offer support and a home to the gpl version of the Mitel product.
Contribs.org is just one of them, nothing more and nothing less. Why Mitel picked us to offer the hosting of the forums and lists is not known to me. I suspect it is because we had arguably the largest user community on our site, but I don't know why for sure.
As the owner of contribs.org and speaking for no one in the community, I asked a number of developers if they would like to have a conference call to discuss the future of the project. The original participants were:
Dan York, RequestedDeletion, Darrell May, Abe Loveless, Michael Soulier, Shad Lords, Greg Zartman and Jeff Coleman (apologies if I left anyone out)
Charlie Brady was also invited but declined to participate. Stephen Noble participates quietly in his own style.
Some of the people invited were suggested by others and I had not met or corresponded with them prior to the teleconference. During that teleconference Dan York and Michael Soulier indicated they would be supportive of our efforts but would take a hands off approach to the situation for a while.
This team of people (without Dan and Michael) was eventually called DevTeam and a publicly viewable mailing list was established on contribs. The reason that the list was then taken private was publicly discussed and has been posted on contribs.org for weeks.
No person who has ever requested to become a part of DevTeam has been refused.
The current Mitel Developer's release does not have gpl documentation included in it. A documentation team called DocTeam was established out of additional volunteers that had written to contribs.org and offered their time.
No person who has ever requested to become a part of DocTeam has been refused.
There is one other group called Admins. It is, for obvious reasons, closed and by invitation only.
The original operators of the contribs.org site, RequestedDeletion and myself, decided that we would have to replace our existing software and hardware to handle the heavier traffic loads we were taking. Other people were asked to participate in helping to build the site. Most of them were from DocTeam and Shad Lords who has been of great help on the sysadmin side.
I then ordered an *additional* T1 to handle the new loads we were taking with contribs.org. It was installed two weeks ago.
We spent quite a lot of time building a beta site in TikiWiki only to find out that it would not scale. We then moved to Xoops which seems to give us what we require for the site. Here are the basic points:
- Complete search integration - includes, News, Forums, Documentation, Wiki, Weblinks, and everything else in one search.
- Complete user integration, one login works for all modules. Login is not required to view everything on the site.
- Comments and ratings on weblinks, news, wiki and most other areas.
- Added a wiki module for the users. That gives us, lists, forums, comments, and a wiki for feedback and contributions of ideas.
- Added an integrated version of Mantis for bug reporting and tracking to the new site. (Still in beta at this moment)
- Added screenshots of the server-manager (themed) to help those of you who want to see what it looks like and also those new users who have never downloaded and installed the software. (See more info a few paragraphs later)
- We asked the community to provide logos for the new site and received a number of them. We chose one we liked and have posted the others on the new site for your comments. A vote may be taken if the community wishes to do so.
- Added some internationalization to the site. There will be quit a bit of French laguage content available as we fire up and other languages are ccoming as we find the volunteers.
- Arranged to have Ibiblio provide primary mirroring and are working with other volunteers to have mirror sites all over the world.
- Credit will be given on new site to all of the volunteers and team members who have participated in helping to get this thing started and the roles they have played.
We have also worked on the Mitel 6.0final ISO. Here is what has been done:
- Changed the branding from "Mitel Unsupported Developers Release" to "SME Server". SME Server has been in use for quite a while and we believe that it is public domain. We have asked Mitel for permission to use the name out of courtesy. The have not yet responded but if they are negative to the idea it can be discussed. SME Server can be changed if the community believes it is important to do so.
- We added a "themed" look that we felt was nice to look at and reflected the difference between the Mitel version and the version that the community will manage. If you don't like this theme we will be glad to host any others that you may like better on contribs.org. If there are other theme offerings we can always have a vote. Or we can all develop a process to make it easier for anyone to theme the distro. This theme is simply a starting point to show it can be done.
- We fixed a few cosmetic bugs in the e-smith code. These will be made public as soon as they are compiled into a single document and the release is ready to go.
To date there are tens of thousands of dollars in hardware, bandwidth and time in the website. Not looking for anything here, just want to make it clear that this has always been a site built out of passion for the software.
Total donations to date are $495.00US. Thank you to anyone who has been kind enough to donate money (or effort) to this project.
There is no inner clique and no one is making decisions for the entire community. What we are doing however, is to get a starting point for discussion online. Anyone who has asked to be involved has been offered the opportunity to do so. We haven't contacted some volunteers yet simply beause we haven't had the structure in place to use their talents.
There has been less than 45 days to get all of this organized and in motion. If we have not been more informative about the process it is an oversight for which I apologize. We are trying to develop process that will make it easier to participate.
We welcome your comments and frankly need your help.
We expect the new site to be up in the next few days and at the latest it will be up next weekend.
I hope this addresses most of the questions posed to this list. If not, polite requests will receive polite answers.
I would also like to politely suggest that we take this discussion to the forums where more of the community has an opportunity to see all of these comments. Then we can leave this list to development issues.
I have posted this exact same information in the DevInfo list.
Thank you,
-jeff coleman
[%sig%]
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I would be happy to help wherever I can. I am NOT an experienced Linux programmer however, I would be pleased to read over documentation and make suggestions. I consider myself a semi-power user, and would love, as I said, to help with documentation efforts.
Sincerely,
Jim Darrough
Springfield, OR
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Hi Jim - Thanks for your interest
From the FAQ
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How can I help?
contribs.org is always looking for volunteers with different talents to help with the development and support of the SME Server.
One of the easiest ways you can help is to be active on the forums and lists and help others out when you have a solution or just a bit of advice.
We are looking for volunteers that can help maintain and develop the applications and services that we use to build SME Server. If you can give us some time and can work in a team, then write us an email at: volunteers@contribs.org
And for those of you who are kind enough to help out with money, we offer a link on our Main Menu called Donations that will take you directly to PayPal.
* * * *
The email is good for documentation work, too!
RonM
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Good point Ron, I'll add documentation to the FAQ.
-jeff