Sorry for the cross reply and post. I'm trying to keep the confusin to a minimum here, which is not easy considering that I'm not 100% sure myself what is going on. As such, I wanted as many people from the community to know about this.
This email is sent in the name of transparancy. I know most of you are not (yet?) members of Hamakor, but as I feel Hamakor is trying to represent you and your interests, I am exposing some of the forces and events that brought us where we are.
Please bear in mind that some of the processes described here have not finished yet, and so I have some beginings without continuations.
Ira Abramov wrote:
These are the things as they stand now (as I understand them).what are we waiting to hear? last time we talked you said beak.hamakor.org.il was set up and installed at Actcom... is there yet a THIRD server coming? from whom? with what hardware configuration?
why do I always feel like I'm the last to know?
Sun has promised, and has given, us (Hamakor) a server. This server is now installed at Actcom's, and is called "beak.hamakor.org.il". The server is installed, and has a running debian mirror (you can temporarily use it at http://beak.hamakor.org.il/pub/mirrors/debian and debian-non-US). The reason this is only temporary will be explained further on.
However, as chance would have it, there were two bodies forming, more or less simultaniously.
One is Hamakor we all know. The other is something forming around the same concept of IJUG (Israeli Java User's Group - http://www.ijug.org.il). This second forum is aimed at having members of both commercial and private users and suppliers, and it is that forum that is behind the "Go-Linux" event (which I am helping to organize - let's hope I don't become too sorry for that). Unlike Hamakor, which is ready for all intent and purposes, this new body is still forming.
As this new forum is governed, among other things, by commercial interests, we (hamakor) will not be uniting with it. We do hope to aid it where mutual interests exist (hence my participation etc.). Sadly, this has contributed to increasing the confusion (I'm afraid that it is no longer clear that Hamakor, or Shachar Shemesh, are not the sole force behind the Go-Linux event, nor even the primary driving force).
This confusion is not only among the IGLU members, but also among other people. One of the parties who got confused was Sun's Motti Sadovsky, who more or less promised the same server to both Hamakor and the new body. We would have shared it, except that some of the members of the new body want to base it on their propritary software (CA, Oracle, IBM). As such, we (Doron and myself attended that meeting) made it clear that our server cannot be based on such a server, be it ours or someone else's.
As the server's new specs are a little low for it's intended use (it only had 36GB of disk space), I decided to swap a server for a promise. I gave them beak, in exchange for a promise from IBM's Yoram Gnat to get us another server from either IBM or HP. He asked for two days to let me know which, and I just got an email from him:
Shachar,
The answer is YES.
IBM will donate for Hamakor an xSeries server.
It will will be a machine with 512MB memory and 140GB disk space (probably xSeries 330).
My expectation is that the machine will be ready for you in about two weeks.
Regards Yoram
Having learned from past experience, until the metal hits my room's floor to be installed, all I can do is quote Simon & Garfunkels "The Boxer" - "Just a pocket full of mumbles, such are promises". I allowed myself to make this exchange because I know we have IGLU to fall back to, and because the single mirror beak did (debian - 27G) all but filled up it's disk. This does mean that further mirrors, such as Shlomif's knoppix clone, will have to wait a little (though I'm hoping we can free some space before the two weeks pass, by better utilizing our existing disk space).
I will stress, however, that Sun's promised server has, in fact, arrived. Noone has taken it away from us - I did an exchange. We are fully equiped to move forward even without ANY server (we will either add 10K of Hamakor site to IGLU, where it is now anyways, or we'll all chip in and buy a fiasco type 1U non-server for ~1000$, or we'll get another donation, etc.).
I will also state that some of the confusion stems from a difference of language. Our language is, really, very different than the language spoken by commercial bodies such as Sun, or even IBM. I am hoping that this does not mean direct confrontation, as there is much more to gain from cooperation. If you want, catch me at the Go-Linux event, and I'll point at CA, Oracle, Sun's, IBM's etc. representatives, and you can go have a word with them in private. It will be a great chance to let them know how you see things.
Shachar
-- Shachar Shemesh Open Source integration consultant Home page & resume - http://www.shemesh.biz/
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