[ooo-dev only]
Masterful reply - now that, IMHO, is how to disagree politely. I
learned something today. Thanks also for trying to accurately reflect
the different views expressed here.
Ross
On 15 April 2012 19:28, drew <d...@baseanswers.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2012-04-13 at 23:15 +0200, Eberhard Moenkeberg wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Fri, 13 Apr 2012, Peter Pöml wrote:
>> > Am 03.04.2012 um 18:17 schrieb Roberto Galoppini:
>>
>> >> We at SourceForge have worked the last ten days to line-up dedicated
>> >> infrastructure (including CDN services) to support the upcoming AOO
>> >> download serving test.
>> >
>> > I can hardly believe reading this!
>>
>> Me too. What an ignorance of proven and waiting mechanisms.
>
> Hello Eberhard,
>
> I see that your email account was not registered with the mailing list,
> as it was moderated through, so will leave all the CC addresses in
> place.
>
> Additionally I will assume you have not followed the exchange which did
> take place on this list since Peter's mail arrived. Though I believe a
> reasonable decision has been reached already within the project during
> the exchange I'll try to recap, without attempt to re-open the decision.
> [of course the ml archive is publicly available, also]
>
> First - thank you for your contributions, from myself and I'm sure other
> individuals whom have benefited from the use of OpenOffice.org.
>
> Secondly, your contributions have been, as you say, over a long period
> of time and it is appropriate to view the decisions required with a long
> term focus. No maxim of time is more true perhaps, then: the only
> constant over time is change.
>
> It appears from my perspective of one person watching the transformation
> here that the folks in the foundation have certainly extended a hand
> towards bringing the mirrorbrain system into the existing
> infrastructure. This point I want to emphasize, the ASF is a very
> capable, well established community and infrastructure. They did indeed
> take on the responsibility for seeing that the functioning of the
> project proceed, best as possible, going forward. There is no guarantees
> in life of course but, given the track record your email highlights and
> that of the ASF, there is every reason to believe 'forward' here will be
> another 20 years.
>
> It also seems to me that from the perspective of anyone wanting to
> assist with the project going requires recognizing that in many basic
> decisions a view towards openoffice alone is now too self centered.
>
> Which is all a long way to get to the fact that IMO, after Peters email
> from a few days back the group did stop and look, with with a direct eye
> to the task at hand, now. The next release candidate is forming now.
>
> To my view the most important email in this thread was Joe's last. I
> hasten to add that there is a mirrors mail list which I'm not,
> correctly, subscribed to. I do though monitor the general infrastructure
> list in addition to the main project lists.
>
> Joe (the ASF infrastructure team in general also) has asked a number of
> times for contact and more direct engagement with regards to the
> mirrorbrain admin functions. Sure seems that way, and I can't say that
> I've seen much of that coming back.
>
> The decision, and one needed to be made, includes that mirrorbrain will
> be used for this coming release. I would suggest that the very first
> task is to stop with that _and_ focus on making that happen with the
> mirrorbrain network, in the context of the new reality that OpenOffice
> is part of larger working community now.
>
> As it stands the decision is also to end using mirrorbrain going forward
> from there, and again I'd say that IMO from following the mailing lsits,
> it seems like the appropriate decision at the moment.
>
> I'd also add by way of hearkening back to my first point - the only
> constant over time is change. mirrorbrain is not defined by openoffice
> distribution alone, nor can anyone say how quickly this project will
> move from 3.4 to 4.0, so who knows what time holds - but what is for
> sure, the best thing for everyone concerned, both today and for
> tomorrow, is for Peter and others I would hope, to engage directly with
> Joe and the other ASF admins to work on the task at hand, now.
>
> Those are my thoughts on this of course at this point, I truly can't see
> what benefit continuing this mail thread would be, but do hope Peter and
> others are quick to be working with the admin's for the benefit of this
> release.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> //drew
>
>>
>> > What's going on? We have an existing (and well working) mirror network,
>> > that handles any required load just fine. It's proven and time-tested.
>> > It has survived all releases with ease. By all calculation, and by
>> > practical experience, the combined upload capacity of the mirrors is
>> > sufficient to satisfy the peak download demand as well as the sustained
>> > demand. By the way, the "peak download demand" doesn't really differ a
>> > lot from the day-to-day download demand, contrary to public belief. The
>> > mirrors are numerous and spread around the world, and the chance of a
>> > client being sent to a close and fast mirror is good - better than with
>> > a handful of mirrors as is the case with the Sourceforge mirror network.
>> > Sourceforge specializes in something different - providing a myriad of
>> > small files by a set of specialized mirrors. "Normal", plain simple
>> > mirrors can't take part in this network as far as I can tell.
>>
>> Yes. I had tried to help with ftp5.gwdg.de - impossible "unconditionally".
>>
>> > Even though the network was considerably extended a few years ago, from
>> > 10 (under 10?) to >20 mirrors, this is still a small number of mirrors.
>> > (Even though these are power-mirrors, but those are part of our existing
>> > mirror network just as well.)
>> >
>> > With our mirror network, mirrors can mirror partial content, so they can
>> > provide what's important in their region, like certain language packs
>> > only. This greatly increases the likelyhood of finding mirrors in remote
>> > areas, that don't have hundreds of gigabytes to spare. It's also
>> > unnecessary that mirrors carry old releases that are infrequently
>> > downloaded. Mirrors can run whatever HTTP software they prefer, not only
>> > Apache httpd, or even FTP servers. Mirrors can decide to offer mirroring
>> > only in their network/autonomous system/country to limit the share of
>> > requests they get, and from where they get it. Many mirrors don't have
>> > good international connectivity, but can be used well with us
>> > nevertheless. We provide cryptohashes, Metalinks, even P2P links, all
>> > fully automatically. That's very important for these unusually large
>> > files. Downloading without error correction is not fun. We select
>> > mirrors by GeoIP, but also by geographical distance as well as network
>> > topology, whatever gives a close match, and we already support IPv6.
>> >
>> > It has taken some years to build all this, and a lot of the features
>> > were triggered directly by the work on the OpenOffice.org redirector.
>> > Built for OpenOffice.org
>> >
>> > The software is the one kind of work that went into it, finding and
>> > collecting mirrors the other thing, building trust and lasting
>> > relationship. A mirror network isn't built overnight.
>> >
>> > I think there is a danger that the Apache mirror network is equated with
>> > the OOo mirror network. This is a mistake in my view. The large files
>> > that we have are a totally different challenge. It's a huge difference
>> > to download 6MB tarballs and 200MB files, both from the users
>> > perspective ("why does my file not work, that I waited so long for!?")
>> > and from the mirrors perspective ("what are these 200 connections from
>> > Chinese IPs on my mirror server!?"). It is important to be able to give
>> > mirrors different weight, because they differ vastly in their
>> > capabilities, which can range from 4GBit bandwidth down brittle to
>> > 50Mbit somewhere else. Even inside an "Internet country" like Germany
>> > you'll have differences of 100 MBit to multiple Gbit, and you want to
>> > utilize the bandwidth well. We have this working well!
>>
>> I can confirm this, I have watched the growing "intelligence" of
>> MirrorBrain from the beginning.
>>
>> > OpenOffice.org used a software called "Bouncer" before switching to
>> > MirrorBrain, which was one of the simpler solutions. I think everybody
>> > (who has been in the project a few years) will agree that we don't want
>> > to go back.
>>
>> Surely. The OpenOffice step from bouncer to mirrorbrain was all over
>> agreed a performance and quality step.
>>
>> BTW, dear Apache people, I am the one that helped StarOffice Hamburg to
>> publish their first opensource release - maintainer of ftp.gwdg.de since
>> 20 years.
>>
>> > So I see that Sourceforge wants to beef up their network by renting a
>> > Content Delivery Network (CDN). Is that needed? yes, because they don't
>> > have enough bandwidth in mirrors. Is that a good idea? I don't think so,
>> > but I'm biased, because 1) I don't like advertisements and 2) I'm
>> > strongly rooted in the mirror community with both legs.
>>
>> Didn't mirrorbrain lately help Novell to save a lot of money they
>> regularly had spended to Akamai before? I guess it was this way.
>>
>> > In the mirror community, there is a kind of self esteem among the more
>> > ambitious mirror admins: they believe that stepping in of commercial
>> > CDNs is not needed to handle even peak download demand of the most
>> > popular Open Source software. And they work hard for it.
>>
>> Yes, we do. All mirror admins love to see their lines full. That is the
>> temporary excitement we are struggling for. Mirrorbrain can give us this
>> picture at the spot moments without frustrating any single user.
>>
>> > Together, we have proven that the help of commercial CDNs is *not*
>> > needed, both with OpenOffice.org and with OpenSUSE.org. Mirrors have
>> > served > 20 GByte per second together. The bandwidth is there! (In the
>> > past, Akamai was used during release peaks with OpenSUSE.org, so I have
>> > been there, and also got interesting insight and numbers there.)
>> >
>> > I tried the currently configured download from
>> > http://www.openoffice.org/download today (from a real crappy end user
>> > box ;). It was slow and didn't start downloading immediately, but showed
>> > a page full of advertisement that didn't have any relation to
>> > OpenOffice.org, wanted to open a popup (MS IE said that and blocked it)
>>
>> Hey, Peter, you and MS IE - what's going on? Are you letting others to
>> drive you crazy?
>>
>> > and when the download started, it came from the Swiss mirror, but I'm in
>> > Germany! What's that? Thrown 3 years back in time? Sub-optimal. (I can
>> > guess who pays for the CDN that is rented to help out: advertising.)
>> >
>> > Do you really want to ditch what we have built? Ditching the system that
>> > improved downloading OpenOffice.org in the farthest corners of the
>> > world? Exchanging it against a handful of Sourceforge mirrors, and 250
>> > Apache mirrors, many of which lack the capability? Some are big, but
>> > many will be far from having the bandwidth to deliver large files.
>> >
>> > Something that Apache's mirror system also can't do is sending me to my
>> > local mirror (my very ISP in my city runs a mirror, and my home IP is in
>> > their netblock). Apache mirror system sends me to *any* mirror in my
>> > country, while our current solution recognizes the network topology and
>> > lets me download from the local mirror. Especially with large files,
>> > that's very nice both for the ISP and for me as user. Sourceforge can
>> > theoretically do this (because they use a part of MirrorBrain for that
>> > purpose!) but don't have enough mirrors to play this out. This is not
>> > only useful with single ISPs, if they have a mirror; it's also useful
>> > with autonomous systems (AS) of networks that share a backbone, like
>> > most German universities in AS680 here in Germany.
>>
>> The german university network (DFN-Verein, some members already are
>> "producing" 10 gbit) was the base infrastucture for the openoffice
>> spreading (and staroffice before, and is now already with libreoffice
>> too).
>>
>> Please don't neglect this chance for the Apache Foundation. It clearly is
>> offered (and - regarding ftp.gwdg.de and many more - since the beginning
>> of Apache practized).
>>
>> > So we will have a *technically inferiour* solution in the future? That's
>> > not the Apache way, is it?
>> >
>> > I have been told more than once, on this list, that "it will be the
>> > Apache mirror system and nothing else". I didn't understand the reasons
>> > (except for policy, no special treatment for individual projects), but
>> > it won't work that way IMO.
>> >
>> > Now it seems to me that the Apache mirror system seeked the help of
>> > Sourceforge.net. If that means that some doubts crept up, then I share
>> > those doubts. But I don't see Sourceforge.net as the solution either, as
>> > explained above. They have their merits, and I like their dedication and
>> > the specialized system they've built (with features that I'm envious
>> > of!), but I think our existing solution is better suited. And not only
>> > that, IMO it is a very important prerequisite of being successful. No
>> > well-working downloads, no luck with distributing FOSS that consists of
>> > large files.
>>
>> Dear Apache Foundation, please listen to Peter's words and use his work.
>> It will be a win for you - incredible that you did not realize that
>> already by yourself. You are a "community product", and so you should help
>> to show that "the community" is autonomous.
>>
>>
>> Viele Gruesse
>> Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoe...@gwdg.de, e...@kki.org)
>>
>
>
--
Ross Gardler (@rgardler)
Programme Leader (Open Development)
OpenDirective http://opendirective.com
