Re: [Server-devel] Does XSCE need a new Home?
On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 06:44:47PM -0500, Samuel Greenfeld wrote: > The following are my personal views, and not that of my previous or > current employers. Same. Disclosure statement: OLPC pays me for work, and OLPC may benefit from XSCE, directly or indirectly. It is in my interest. > 1. At least for the near-term, all laptop.org hosting seems to be > in stasis. It is not likely to go away, but without additional > help it is not likely to be kept up-to-date and/or improved. > > My personal stance is that the items on paid hosting are at a > higher risk of suddenly disappearing than the items hosted by > MIT (dev.laptop.org, mailing lists, git, etc.). Should OLPC-A > decide to go to a new primary webhost then the Wiki, RT, and a > few other things could disappear quickly and possibly without > notice. Agreed. > 2. Given the lack of publicly known resources being provided by > OLPC to maintain Linux software development (besides low-level > bugfixing), all XSCE may be currently getting by using > laptop.org is free hosting and a spot under the domain name. Agreed. And this may benefit both OLPC and XSCE. > It may be worthwhile to have someone contact the business team > at OLPC to see what their long-term plans are for Sugar, XS, and > open source software in general. I disagree. It would be more efficient to let them make the contact when they are needing assistance. > From the outside it looks like almost all of their resources > have been shifted to the proprietary tablet product line. While resources have reduced with the completion of the XO-4 work, I disagree that all resources have shifted. We retain the production capability. I also disagree with the implication that the tablet is any more proprietary than the laptop. The mix of intellectual property is certainly different, but the opportunity for use is also different. Therefore the products shouldn't be compared at an intellectual property licensing level. What is very different is that the laptop was ground-breaking original technology, and the tablet is buy-in technology. This cascades into completely different community involvement models. (I don't yet see how XSCE can benefit a tablet deployment, nobody appears to have enumerated that.) > XSCE may still wish to associate with OLPC. But as best as I > can tell the corporate side of OLPC has already given XSCE and > Sugar the cold shoulder. I disagree. Sugar is still an important part of the laptop, and is a driver for orders and production. > 3. Personally I would prefer to see all non-commercial hosting > consolidated with Sugar Labs. They already have a multi-site > primary infrastructure, download mirrors, and a group of system > administrators who regularly keep things up to date and monitor > things. > > Most importantly, almost all of their hosting is done by third > parties who do not have a financial interest in Sugar or XSCE. > I do not mind if OLPC and/or Activity Central want to help host, > but the community as a whole should not be dependent on either > being present. I agree. If XSCE wants to shift hosting, Sugar Labs is the best place to go, because XSCE is effectively a Sugar server. If you ever remove the support for Sugar clients, that would be a reason for not hosting with Sugar Labs. Organisations and individuals that benefit from Sugar Labs hosting should disclose this where they are mentioned. > 4. We are never going to find hosting that is guaranteed never to > go away. Witness Google's regular discontinuation of products, > and SourceForge's apparent decline in favor of GitHub. > > It therefore may be prudent not to rely on any single host to be > able to provide a role for XSCE, and take an approach similar to > Sugar Labs' dual primary sites. I agree. Keep good backups. Meanwhile, I have no trouble with XSCE using wiki.laptop.org; my earlier mail had to do with fixing user perceptions, especially new users who are unfamiliar with the OLPC and Sugar ecosystem. Communicating with new users is mostly orthogonal to hosting decisions. The content and layout is critical for new users, the ownership of the HTTP IP address is not. In my opinion, it was the content and layout of wiki.laptop.org that the original poster was having trouble with. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Does XSCE need a new Home?
On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 4:14 PM, George Hunt wrote: > Organizationally, I think there's a lot more leverage staying within the > laptop.org fold, as long as it still exists. We don't need to repeat > disconnects, and bad feelings, when there are really no egos involved. We > have few enough people and resources that any dilution is a bad strategy. I agree. Any move should be made because there is enough advantage to outweigh the costs, both socially and financially. For 0.6 and probably 0.7 and 0.8, the quality of the documentation and information on the site is more important than where the site is hosted. I would suggest we looking at this issue again in the middle of 2014 as the fog starts to clear. > I think I over reacted to Samuel Greenfeld's concern about laptop.org > hosting going away. It seems to me that it's in everyone's interest to plan > for an orderly transition from one hosting arangement to another, if that > ever becomes necessary. If during the interim, there needs to be bridge > funding, I'd be glad to spearhead taking up a collection among the people > that follow these things. > > George > > > > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 4:06 PM, David Farning > wrote: >> >> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 7:13 AM, George Hunt >> wrote: >> > This is a more related to Samuel Greenfeld's comments than the XSCE >> > documentation/install thread from which I branch. >> > >> > I think it makes sense to grab off of laptop.org all the essential stuff >> > and >> > put it some new place. We don't know the future, but in the present the >> > prospect of ongoing support and maintenance of wiki.laptop.org seems >> > more >> > shaky to me. >> > >> > When I was first exploring the process of building something on top of >> > schoolserver 0.7, I found ancestry of different components (documented >> > at >> > http://schoolserver.wordpress.com/xs-installation/rpm-heritage/). I >> > think we >> > should contact the most recent contributors to these ancestral repos, >> > and >> > with their cooperation/approval, move them to github.com. >> > >> > How to pay for a server somewhere? Three candidates come to me. >> > Sugarlabs, >> > activitycentral, and unleash kids. Of these, activitycentral is the >> > only >> > for profit organization, I'd vote for the synergy that needs to exist >> > between a for profit open source shop, and the ecosystem which it needs >> > to >> > remain legitimately part off a larger open source community. >> >> >> The question in my mind is what would be best for XSCE. While I am >> personally investing in XSCE. I am also financially invested as XSCE >> is the community upstream to Dextrose Server. The better and more >> popular XSCE becomes, the more opportunities there are for AC to sell >> services. >> >> There seem to be three general options of XSCE. Stick with OLPC, go it >> alone, or partner with someone else in the ecosystem. >> >> So far we have chose to stick with OLPC. The benefits of building on >> the OLPC brand have been greater than the costs. The benefit is that >> the laptop.org site is still a 'hub' of the ecosystem. The cost is >> XSCE appears to be an unapproved and undesirable server clone piggy >> backing on the Association's message and brand. The question becomes, >> will the Association endorse XSCE as a successor or upstream to >> OLPC-XS or will it continue to live in the bowels of the wiki. >> >> Going it alone. This would be pretty straight forward. Getting a cheap >> VM somewhere or piggybacking on a larger project is possiable. >> Although it can be a lot of work and mean jumping though hops. The >> questions becomes, do XSCE have the ability to thrive on it's own. >> There are about a dozen similar projects floating around in various >> states of completaion. >> >> Finally, there is partnering with someone with aligned goals such as >> Sugar Labs, unleash kids, or Activity Central. >> >> Whenever I think of the relationship between XSCE and AC, I think of a >> conversation I had years ago with Greg DeKoenigsberg ( >> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Gdk/Experience ) about the relationship >> between Fedora and Redhat. He considered Fedora's relationship to >> Redhat it's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The financial >> support and developer resources were valuable... but there were >> strings attached. >> >> We would be happy to host XSCE site on the AC infrastructure. We could >> handle it the same way we do the XSCE build VM. >> http://xsce.activitycentral.com/ is an independent VM with root access >> granted to community Sysadmins. DavidR, our web and communications guy >> could assist in setting up and migrating the site. >> >> >> > George >> > >> > >> > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Samuel Greenfeld >> > wrote: >> >> >> >> I think you need to be careful how you phrase that -- you just half >> >> implied that all laptop.org hosting is going away. There has been a >> >> fair >> >> amount of fear that resources may suddenly disappear, and I have b
Re: [Server-devel] Does XSCE need a new Home?
The following are my personal views, and not that of my previous or current employers. 1. At least for the near-term, all laptop.org hosting seems to be in stasis. It is not likely to go away, but without additional help it is not likely to be kept up-to-date and/or improved. My personal stance is that the items on paid hosting are at a higher risk of suddenly disappearing than the items hosted by MIT ( dev.laptop.org, mailing lists, git, etc.). Should OLPC-A decide to go to a new primary webhost then the Wiki, RT, and a few other things could disappear quickly and possibly without notice. 2. Given the lack of publicly known resources being provided by OLPC to maintain Linux software development (besides low-level bugfixing), all XSCE may be currently getting by using laptop.org is free hosting and a spot under the domain name. It may be worthwhile to have someone contact the business team at OLPC to see what their long-term plans are for Sugar, XS, and open source software in general. From the outside it looks like almost all of their resources have been shifted to the proprietary tablet product line. XSCE may still wish to associate with OLPC. But as best as I can tell the corporate side of OLPC has already given XSCE and Sugar the cold shoulder. 3. Personally I would prefer to see all non-commercial hosting consolidated with Sugar Labs. They already have a multi-site primary infrastructure, download mirrors, and a group of system administrators who regularly keep things up to date and monitor things. Most importantly, almost all of their hosting is done by third parties who do not have a financial interest in Sugar or XSCE. I do not mind if OLPC and/or Activity Central want to help host, but the community as a whole should not be dependent on either being present. 4. We are never going to find hosting that is guaranteed never to go away. Witness Google's regular discontinuation of products, and SourceForge's apparent decline in favor of GitHub. It therefore may be prudent not to rely on any single host to be able to provide a role for XSCE, and take an approach similar to Sugar Labs' dual primary sites. On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 5:14 PM, George Hunt wrote: > Organizationally, I think there's a lot more leverage staying within the > laptop.org fold, as long as it still exists. We don't need to repeat > disconnects, and bad feelings, when there are really no egos involved. We > have few enough people and resources that any dilution is a bad strategy. > > I think I over reacted to Samuel Greenfeld's concern about laptop.orghosting > going away. It seems to me that it's in everyone's interest to plan > for an orderly transition from one hosting arangement to another, if that > ever becomes necessary. If during the interim, there needs to be bridge > funding, I'd be glad to spearhead taking up a collection among the people > that follow these things. > > George > > > > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 4:06 PM, David Farning < > dfarn...@activitycentral.com> wrote: > >> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 7:13 AM, George Hunt >> wrote: >> > This is a more related to Samuel Greenfeld's comments than the XSCE >> > documentation/install thread from which I branch. >> > >> > I think it makes sense to grab off of laptop.org all the essential >> stuff and >> > put it some new place. We don't know the future, but in the present the >> > prospect of ongoing support and maintenance of wiki.laptop.org seems >> more >> > shaky to me. >> > >> > When I was first exploring the process of building something on top of >> > schoolserver 0.7, I found ancestry of different components (documented >> at >> > http://schoolserver.wordpress.com/xs-installation/rpm-heritage/). I >> think we >> > should contact the most recent contributors to these ancestral repos, >> and >> > with their cooperation/approval, move them to github.com. >> > >> > How to pay for a server somewhere? Three candidates come to me. >> Sugarlabs, >> > activitycentral, and unleash kids. Of these, activitycentral is the >> only >> > for profit organization, I'd vote for the synergy that needs to exist >> > between a for profit open source shop, and the ecosystem which it needs >> to >> > remain legitimately part off a larger open source community. >> >> >> The question in my mind is what would be best for XSCE. While I am >> personally investing in XSCE. I am also financially invested as XSCE >> is the community upstream to Dextrose Server. The better and more >> popular XSCE becomes, the more opportunities there are for AC to sell >> services. >> >> There seem to be three general options of XSCE. Stick with OLPC, go it >> alone, or partner with someone else in the ecosystem. >> >> So far we have chose to stick with OLPC. The benefits of building on >> the OLPC brand have been greater than the costs. The benefit is that >> the laptop.org site is still a 'hub'
Re: [Server-devel] Does XSCE need a new Home?
Organizationally, I think there's a lot more leverage staying within the laptop.org fold, as long as it still exists. We don't need to repeat disconnects, and bad feelings, when there are really no egos involved. We have few enough people and resources that any dilution is a bad strategy. I think I over reacted to Samuel Greenfeld's concern about laptop.orghosting going away. It seems to me that it's in everyone's interest to plan for an orderly transition from one hosting arangement to another, if that ever becomes necessary. If during the interim, there needs to be bridge funding, I'd be glad to spearhead taking up a collection among the people that follow these things. George On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 4:06 PM, David Farning wrote: > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 7:13 AM, George Hunt > wrote: > > This is a more related to Samuel Greenfeld's comments than the XSCE > > documentation/install thread from which I branch. > > > > I think it makes sense to grab off of laptop.org all the essential > stuff and > > put it some new place. We don't know the future, but in the present the > > prospect of ongoing support and maintenance of wiki.laptop.org seems > more > > shaky to me. > > > > When I was first exploring the process of building something on top of > > schoolserver 0.7, I found ancestry of different components (documented at > > http://schoolserver.wordpress.com/xs-installation/rpm-heritage/). I > think we > > should contact the most recent contributors to these ancestral repos, and > > with their cooperation/approval, move them to github.com. > > > > How to pay for a server somewhere? Three candidates come to me. > Sugarlabs, > > activitycentral, and unleash kids. Of these, activitycentral is the only > > for profit organization, I'd vote for the synergy that needs to exist > > between a for profit open source shop, and the ecosystem which it needs > to > > remain legitimately part off a larger open source community. > > > The question in my mind is what would be best for XSCE. While I am > personally investing in XSCE. I am also financially invested as XSCE > is the community upstream to Dextrose Server. The better and more > popular XSCE becomes, the more opportunities there are for AC to sell > services. > > There seem to be three general options of XSCE. Stick with OLPC, go it > alone, or partner with someone else in the ecosystem. > > So far we have chose to stick with OLPC. The benefits of building on > the OLPC brand have been greater than the costs. The benefit is that > the laptop.org site is still a 'hub' of the ecosystem. The cost is > XSCE appears to be an unapproved and undesirable server clone piggy > backing on the Association's message and brand. The question becomes, > will the Association endorse XSCE as a successor or upstream to > OLPC-XS or will it continue to live in the bowels of the wiki. > > Going it alone. This would be pretty straight forward. Getting a cheap > VM somewhere or piggybacking on a larger project is possiable. > Although it can be a lot of work and mean jumping though hops. The > questions becomes, do XSCE have the ability to thrive on it's own. > There are about a dozen similar projects floating around in various > states of completaion. > > Finally, there is partnering with someone with aligned goals such as > Sugar Labs, unleash kids, or Activity Central. > > Whenever I think of the relationship between XSCE and AC, I think of a > conversation I had years ago with Greg DeKoenigsberg ( > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Gdk/Experience ) about the relationship > between Fedora and Redhat. He considered Fedora's relationship to > Redhat it's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The financial > support and developer resources were valuable... but there were > strings attached. > > We would be happy to host XSCE site on the AC infrastructure. We could > handle it the same way we do the XSCE build VM. > http://xsce.activitycentral.com/ is an independent VM with root access > granted to community Sysadmins. DavidR, our web and communications guy > could assist in setting up and migrating the site. > > > > George > > > > > > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Samuel Greenfeld > > wrote: > >> > >> I think you need to be careful how you phrase that -- you just half > >> implied that all laptop.org hosting is going away. There has been a > fair > >> amount of fear that resources may suddenly disappear, and I have been > >> concerned about fragmentation where hosting of resources ends up all > over > >> the place. > >> > >> If there is a perceived need to migrate resources then that should be > made > >> clear, as others have already offered potential alternative hosting. > But > >> there needs to be coordination. > >> > >> > >> Focusing on the Deployment side, I would tend to agree with John's > >> comments as well. > >> > >> Both Sugar and the Schoolserver have been historically focused on being > >> their own ecosystem. This has never changed, yet Sugar and
Re: [Server-devel] Feedback: Problems with XSCE
Funny you just described the situation that I was dealing with in Australia, very centralized administration with some of the lower level IT people having no clue on the design of there infrastructure. Let's not forget the need to function with proxies that my require userid/passwords. Avahi addresses the need to have control over the DNS when you have a server local to the LAN that it serves. Anything is possible when you have cooperation with the IT staff where need to have the DNS work correctly, that is few and far between. Yes one could run a custom image with the schoolserver's info imbedded in the image, don't think that would scale to well with potentially a different image per school. Now one could alter an image to embed this info using the xo-custom routine of mktinycore, that would save generating new images per school given that you're only changing small bits of info, think that would be the preferred method. I await your proposals, I'm all for cleaning up the mess to make sugar easier to deploy on a existing network. I'm sure with enough brain storming a workable solution can be found to cover most of the deployment situations if upstream sugar is receptive to the idea that doesn't come from the select few. Good luck, Jerry - Original Message - From: "Samuel Greenfeld" To: "Jerry Vonau" Cc: "server-devel" Sent: Friday, 29 November, 2013 1:40:16 PM Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Feedback: Problems with XSCE Apart from on a flat network, we are not going to solve the problem of working on "corporate-style" school networks using Avahi. That presumes you can get multicast support working across the desired region. The equivalent for larger networks would be DNS service records, presuming you can get permission to create them. Without going into whom is doing what, I personally know that Sugar is being used: * On networks where DHCP is controlled by centralized IT. * Where the schoolserver's DNS name has to match an existing naming scheme. * Where there is no DNS hierarchy, so computers at every school are named like computer-xyz.example.edu * Where various forms of wireless authentication (PSK, 802.11x, etc.) are required for wireless access, and the students are not supposed to know the password. * Where the schoolserver is required to be in the School District's central datacenter. * Where a single schoolserver has to support more than one school. * Where a single network IP address range is used by multiple schools spaced several miles apart. Some might think that these are insane network setups. But when you get into larger organizations things like this become the norm. Teaching Sugar to use these sorts of resources instead of a hardcoded name should not be that hard. The catch is there are a lot of historical places which independently have hardcoded this name. I may toss out some design proposals on Sugar-devel later this weekend to address some of these. I think the basics should be simple enough to be GCI tasks. On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 7:48 AM, Jerry Vonau < jvo...@shaw.ca > wrote: I agree that deployment on preexisting networks has not really been given any attention given the long standing issues that have been ticketed in the past[1][2]. I like the idea of using avahi to advertise the "schoolserver's" services offered, just need to address the sugar side[3][4]. The changes would entail both a change to the server side and the sugar client side, that is outside of the scope of just "schoolserver" and is part of "sugar"-land. I don't think the documentation of the XSCE is any better or worse than what is provided for the XS-0.7 but there is always room for improvement. Jerry 1. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/11775 2. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/12156 3. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8499 4. http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1976 - Original Message - From: "Samuel Greenfeld" < sam...@greenfeld.org > To: "James Cameron" < qu...@laptop.org >, "Anish Mangal" < an...@activitycentral.com >, "server-devel" < server-devel@lists.laptop.org > Sent: Friday, 29 November, 2013 4:10:03 AM Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Feedback: Problems with XSCE I think you need to be careful how you phrase that -- you just half implied that all laptop.org hosting is going away. There has been a fair amount of fear that resources may suddenly disappear, and I have been concerned about fragmentation where hosting of resources ends up all over the place. If there is a perceived need to migrate resources then that should be made clear, as others have already offered potential alternative hosting. But there needs to be coordination. Focusing on the Deployment side, I would tend to agree with John's comments as well. Both Sugar and the Schoolserver have been historically focused on being their own ecosystem. This has never changed, yet Sugar and the XS are often of
Re: [Server-devel] Does XSCE need a new Home?
On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 7:13 AM, George Hunt wrote: > This is a more related to Samuel Greenfeld's comments than the XSCE > documentation/install thread from which I branch. > > I think it makes sense to grab off of laptop.org all the essential stuff and > put it some new place. We don't know the future, but in the present the > prospect of ongoing support and maintenance of wiki.laptop.org seems more > shaky to me. > > When I was first exploring the process of building something on top of > schoolserver 0.7, I found ancestry of different components (documented at > http://schoolserver.wordpress.com/xs-installation/rpm-heritage/). I think we > should contact the most recent contributors to these ancestral repos, and > with their cooperation/approval, move them to github.com. > > How to pay for a server somewhere? Three candidates come to me. Sugarlabs, > activitycentral, and unleash kids. Of these, activitycentral is the only > for profit organization, I'd vote for the synergy that needs to exist > between a for profit open source shop, and the ecosystem which it needs to > remain legitimately part off a larger open source community. The question in my mind is what would be best for XSCE. While I am personally investing in XSCE. I am also financially invested as XSCE is the community upstream to Dextrose Server. The better and more popular XSCE becomes, the more opportunities there are for AC to sell services. There seem to be three general options of XSCE. Stick with OLPC, go it alone, or partner with someone else in the ecosystem. So far we have chose to stick with OLPC. The benefits of building on the OLPC brand have been greater than the costs. The benefit is that the laptop.org site is still a 'hub' of the ecosystem. The cost is XSCE appears to be an unapproved and undesirable server clone piggy backing on the Association's message and brand. The question becomes, will the Association endorse XSCE as a successor or upstream to OLPC-XS or will it continue to live in the bowels of the wiki. Going it alone. This would be pretty straight forward. Getting a cheap VM somewhere or piggybacking on a larger project is possiable. Although it can be a lot of work and mean jumping though hops. The questions becomes, do XSCE have the ability to thrive on it's own. There are about a dozen similar projects floating around in various states of completaion. Finally, there is partnering with someone with aligned goals such as Sugar Labs, unleash kids, or Activity Central. Whenever I think of the relationship between XSCE and AC, I think of a conversation I had years ago with Greg DeKoenigsberg ( https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Gdk/Experience ) about the relationship between Fedora and Redhat. He considered Fedora's relationship to Redhat it's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The financial support and developer resources were valuable... but there were strings attached. We would be happy to host XSCE site on the AC infrastructure. We could handle it the same way we do the XSCE build VM. http://xsce.activitycentral.com/ is an independent VM with root access granted to community Sysadmins. DavidR, our web and communications guy could assist in setting up and migrating the site. > George > > > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Samuel Greenfeld > wrote: >> >> I think you need to be careful how you phrase that -- you just half >> implied that all laptop.org hosting is going away. There has been a fair >> amount of fear that resources may suddenly disappear, and I have been >> concerned about fragmentation where hosting of resources ends up all over >> the place. >> >> If there is a perceived need to migrate resources then that should be made >> clear, as others have already offered potential alternative hosting. But >> there needs to be coordination. >> >> >> Focusing on the Deployment side, I would tend to agree with John's >> comments as well. >> >> Both Sugar and the Schoolserver have been historically focused on being >> their own ecosystem. This has never changed, yet Sugar and the XS are often >> offered for use where existing DHCP, DNS, and other services already exist. >> >> Due to local policies, you may not be allowed to name your schoolserver >> "schoolserver". You may have to support 802.11x network authentication, >> etc. It is possible to kludge these but the solutions are not elegant. >> >> If the Sugar and XSCE communities feel that the "enterprise"/first-world >> use case is a desired scenario where Sugar, IIAB, and/or Moodle may only be >> a part of a school's network instead of the primary role, then this >> specifically needs to be targeted. >> >> --- >> SJG >> >> >> >> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 3:33 AM, James Cameron wrote: >>> >>> I agree with John. Every point in his documentation section should be >>> handled. Especially the point about wiki.laptop.org, which has so >>> many distracting links on the navigation bar that we are all used to, >>> but which new people become
Re: [Server-devel] Feedback: Problems with XSCE
Apart from on a flat network, we are not going to solve the problem of working on "corporate-style" school networks using Avahi. That presumes you can get multicast support working across the desired region. The equivalent for larger networks would be DNS service records, presuming you can get permission to create them. Without going into whom is doing what, I personally know that Sugar is being used: - On networks where DHCP is controlled by centralized IT. - Where the schoolserver's DNS name has to match an existing naming scheme. - Where there is no DNS hierarchy, so computers at every school are named like computer-xyz.example.edu - Where various forms of wireless authentication (PSK, 802.11x, etc.) are required for wireless access, and the students are not supposed to know the password. - Where the schoolserver is required to be in the School District's central datacenter. - Where a single schoolserver has to support more than one school. - Where a single network IP address range is used by multiple schools spaced several miles apart. Some might think that these are insane network setups. But when you get into larger organizations things like this become the norm. Teaching Sugar to use these sorts of resources instead of a hardcoded name should not be that hard. The catch is there are a lot of historical places which independently have hardcoded this name. I may toss out some design proposals on Sugar-devel later this weekend to address some of these. I think the basics should be simple enough to be GCI tasks. On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 7:48 AM, Jerry Vonau wrote: > I agree that deployment on preexisting networks has not really been given > any attention given the long standing issues that have been ticketed in the > past[1][2]. I like the idea of using avahi to advertise the > "schoolserver's" services offered, just need to address the sugar > side[3][4]. The changes would entail both a change to the server side and > the sugar client side, that is outside of the scope of just "schoolserver" > and is part of "sugar"-land. > > I don't think the documentation of the XSCE is any better or worse than > what is provided for the XS-0.7 but there is always room for improvement. > > Jerry > > > 1. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/11775 > 2. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/12156 > 3. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8499 > 4. http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1976 > > - Original Message - > From: "Samuel Greenfeld" > To: "James Cameron" , "Anish Mangal" < > an...@activitycentral.com>, "server-devel" > Sent: Friday, 29 November, 2013 4:10:03 AM > Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Feedback: Problems with XSCE > > > > > > > I think you need to be careful how you phrase that -- you just half > implied that all laptop.org hosting is going away. There has been a fair > amount of fear that resources may suddenly disappear, and I have been > concerned about fragmentation where hosting of resources ends up all over > the place. > > > If there is a perceived need to migrate resources then that should be made > clear, as others have already offered potential alternative hosting. But > there needs to be coordination. > > > Focusing on the Deployment side, I would tend to agree with John's > comments as well. > > Both Sugar and the Schoolserver have been historically focused on being > their own ecosystem. This has never changed, yet Sugar and the XS are often > offered for use where existing DHCP, DNS, and other services already exist. > > > Due to local policies, you may not be allowed to name your schoolserver > "schoolserver". You may have to support 802.11x network authentication, > etc. It is possible to kludge these but the solutions are not elegant. > > > If the Sugar and XSCE communities feel that the "enterprise"/first-world > use case is a desired scenario where Sugar, IIAB, and/or Moodle may only be > a part of a school's network instead of the primary role, then this > specifically needs to be targeted. > > --- > > SJG > > > > > > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 3:33 AM, James Cameron < qu...@laptop.org > wrote: > > > I agree with John. Every point in his documentation section should be > handled. Especially the point about wiki.laptop.org , which has so > many distracting links on the navigation bar that we are all used to, > but which new people become lost in. > > With regard to forums, the type that Google Groups has where they can > also be received in mail may suffice. > > > > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 11:44:33AM +0530, Anish Mangal wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I would like to share this blog post from John Ellis with the XSCE > community: > > John is a high school student who is trying to setup XSCE in his > class/school > > under the supervision of his teacher Jeff Elkner. > > > > http://johnmichaelffs.blogspot.in/2013/11/problems-with-xsce.html > > > > Some of the stuff he points out certainly makes a lot of sense to me, I > think > > the core underling message is to make X
Re: [Server-devel] [crazy idea] Supporting basic mobile phones
After a quick glance, this doesn't look like an infrastructure device, but a client one. i.e. you could use it to connect your XSCE to internet through GSM. This can already be accomplished by widely available GSM modems that come with standard serial interfaces. I guess the reason this particular one is on the arduino website is because of its compatibility (physical dimensions, existing libraries ... just a guess). On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 9:09 PM, Tim Moody wrote: > This was in the morning mail. > > http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoGSMShield. I guess there are a few > others as well. > > Tim > > > ___ > Server-devel mailing list > Server-devel@lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel > ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [crazy idea] Supporting basic mobile phones
This was in the morning mail. http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoGSMShield. I guess there are a few others as well. Tim ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
[Server-devel] Does XSCE need a new Home?
This is a more related to Samuel Greenfeld's comments than the XSCE documentation/install thread from which I branch. I think it makes sense to grab off of laptop.org all the essential stuff and put it some new place. We don't know the future, but in the present the prospect of ongoing support and maintenance of wiki.laptop.org seems more shaky to me. When I was first exploring the process of building something on top of schoolserver 0.7, I found ancestry of different components (documented at http://schoolserver.wordpress.com/xs-installation/rpm-heritage/). I think we should contact the most recent contributors to these ancestral repos, and with their cooperation/approval, move them to github.com. How to pay for a server somewhere? Three candidates come to me. Sugarlabs, activitycentral, and unleash kids. Of these, activitycentral is the only for profit organization, I'd vote for the synergy that needs to exist between a for profit open source shop, and the ecosystem which it needs to remain legitimately part off a larger open source community. George On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 5:10 AM, Samuel Greenfeld wrote: > I think you need to be careful how you phrase that -- you just half > implied that all laptop.org hosting is going away. There has been a fair > amount of fear that resources may suddenly disappear, and I have been > concerned about fragmentation where hosting of resources ends up all over > the place. > > If there is a perceived need to migrate resources then that should be made > clear, as others have already offered potential alternative hosting. But > there needs to be coordination. > > > Focusing on the Deployment side, I would tend to agree with John's > comments as well. > > Both Sugar and the Schoolserver have been historically focused on being > their own ecosystem. This has never changed, yet Sugar and the XS are > often offered for use where existing DHCP, DNS, and other services already > exist. > > Due to local policies, you may not be allowed to name your schoolserver > "schoolserver". You may have to support 802.11x network authentication, > etc. It is possible to kludge these but the solutions are not elegant. > > If the Sugar and XSCE communities feel that the "enterprise"/first-world > use case is a desired scenario where Sugar, IIAB, and/or Moodle may only be > a part of a school's network instead of the primary role, then this > specifically needs to be targeted. > > --- > SJG > > > > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 3:33 AM, James Cameron wrote: > >> I agree with John. Every point in his documentation section should be >> handled. Especially the point about wiki.laptop.org, which has so >> many distracting links on the navigation bar that we are all used to, >> but which new people become lost in. >> >> With regard to forums, the type that Google Groups has where they can >> also be received in mail may suffice. >> >> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 11:44:33AM +0530, Anish Mangal wrote: >> > Hi, >> > >> > I would like to share this blog post from John Ellis with the XSCE >> community: >> > John is a high school student who is trying to setup XSCE in his >> class/school >> > under the supervision of his teacher Jeff Elkner. >> > >> > http://johnmichaelffs.blogspot.in/2013/11/problems-with-xsce.html >> > >> > Some of the stuff he points out certainly makes a lot of sense to me, I >> think >> > the core underling message is to make XSCE more approachable to the end >> user >> > and the advanced end-user/deployer. He has gone to some lengths to >> point out >> > specific aspects which could be improved. >> > >> > As we think about the possibilities for XSCE-0.6, I would like to >> further the >> > discussion along these topics here and/or on IRC. I think the project >> could do >> > well listening to end users' needs for the 0.6 cycle, especially that >> we now >> > seem to have our house in order codewise thanks to the terrific work by >> all the >> > software hackers here :-) >> > >> > Thoughts? >> > >> > Cheers, >> > Anish >> > >> > >> > >> >> > ___ >> > Server-devel mailing list >> > Server-devel@lists.laptop.org >> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel >> >> >> -- >> James Cameron >> http://quozl.linux.org.au/ >> ___ >> Server-devel mailing list >> Server-devel@lists.laptop.org >> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel >> > > > ___ > Server-devel mailing list > Server-devel@lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel > > ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Feedback: Problems with XSCE
I agree that deployment on preexisting networks has not really been given any attention given the long standing issues that have been ticketed in the past[1][2]. I like the idea of using avahi to advertise the "schoolserver's" services offered, just need to address the sugar side[3][4]. The changes would entail both a change to the server side and the sugar client side, that is outside of the scope of just "schoolserver" and is part of "sugar"-land. I don't think the documentation of the XSCE is any better or worse than what is provided for the XS-0.7 but there is always room for improvement. Jerry 1. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/11775 2. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/12156 3. http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/8499 4. http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/1976 - Original Message - From: "Samuel Greenfeld" To: "James Cameron" , "Anish Mangal" , "server-devel" Sent: Friday, 29 November, 2013 4:10:03 AM Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Feedback: Problems with XSCE I think you need to be careful how you phrase that -- you just half implied that all laptop.org hosting is going away. There has been a fair amount of fear that resources may suddenly disappear, and I have been concerned about fragmentation where hosting of resources ends up all over the place. If there is a perceived need to migrate resources then that should be made clear, as others have already offered potential alternative hosting. But there needs to be coordination. Focusing on the Deployment side, I would tend to agree with John's comments as well. Both Sugar and the Schoolserver have been historically focused on being their own ecosystem. This has never changed, yet Sugar and the XS are often offered for use where existing DHCP, DNS, and other services already exist. Due to local policies, you may not be allowed to name your schoolserver "schoolserver". You may have to support 802.11x network authentication, etc. It is possible to kludge these but the solutions are not elegant. If the Sugar and XSCE communities feel that the "enterprise"/first-world use case is a desired scenario where Sugar, IIAB, and/or Moodle may only be a part of a school's network instead of the primary role, then this specifically needs to be targeted. --- SJG On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 3:33 AM, James Cameron < qu...@laptop.org > wrote: I agree with John. Every point in his documentation section should be handled. Especially the point about wiki.laptop.org , which has so many distracting links on the navigation bar that we are all used to, but which new people become lost in. With regard to forums, the type that Google Groups has where they can also be received in mail may suffice. On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 11:44:33AM +0530, Anish Mangal wrote: > Hi, > > I would like to share this blog post from John Ellis with the XSCE community: > John is a high school student who is trying to setup XSCE in his class/school > under the supervision of his teacher Jeff Elkner. > > http://johnmichaelffs.blogspot.in/2013/11/problems-with-xsce.html > > Some of the stuff he points out certainly makes a lot of sense to me, I think > the core underling message is to make XSCE more approachable to the end user > and the advanced end-user/deployer. He has gone to some lengths to point out > specific aspects which could be improved. > > As we think about the possibilities for XSCE-0.6, I would like to further the > discussion along these topics here and/or on IRC. I think the project could > do > well listening to end users' needs for the 0.6 cycle, especially that we now > seem to have our house in order codewise thanks to the terrific work by all > the > software hackers here :-) > > Thoughts? > > Cheers, > Anish > > > > ___ > Server-devel mailing list > Server-devel@lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Feedback: Problems with XSCE
I think you need to be careful how you phrase that -- you just half implied that all laptop.org hosting is going away. There has been a fair amount of fear that resources may suddenly disappear, and I have been concerned about fragmentation where hosting of resources ends up all over the place. If there is a perceived need to migrate resources then that should be made clear, as others have already offered potential alternative hosting. But there needs to be coordination. Focusing on the Deployment side, I would tend to agree with John's comments as well. Both Sugar and the Schoolserver have been historically focused on being their own ecosystem. This has never changed, yet Sugar and the XS are often offered for use where existing DHCP, DNS, and other services already exist. Due to local policies, you may not be allowed to name your schoolserver "schoolserver". You may have to support 802.11x network authentication, etc. It is possible to kludge these but the solutions are not elegant. If the Sugar and XSCE communities feel that the "enterprise"/first-world use case is a desired scenario where Sugar, IIAB, and/or Moodle may only be a part of a school's network instead of the primary role, then this specifically needs to be targeted. --- SJG On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 3:33 AM, James Cameron wrote: > I agree with John. Every point in his documentation section should be > handled. Especially the point about wiki.laptop.org, which has so > many distracting links on the navigation bar that we are all used to, > but which new people become lost in. > > With regard to forums, the type that Google Groups has where they can > also be received in mail may suffice. > > On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 11:44:33AM +0530, Anish Mangal wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I would like to share this blog post from John Ellis with the XSCE > community: > > John is a high school student who is trying to setup XSCE in his > class/school > > under the supervision of his teacher Jeff Elkner. > > > > http://johnmichaelffs.blogspot.in/2013/11/problems-with-xsce.html > > > > Some of the stuff he points out certainly makes a lot of sense to me, I > think > > the core underling message is to make XSCE more approachable to the end > user > > and the advanced end-user/deployer. He has gone to some lengths to point > out > > specific aspects which could be improved. > > > > As we think about the possibilities for XSCE-0.6, I would like to > further the > > discussion along these topics here and/or on IRC. I think the project > could do > > well listening to end users' needs for the 0.6 cycle, especially that we > now > > seem to have our house in order codewise thanks to the terrific work by > all the > > software hackers here :-) > > > > Thoughts? > > > > Cheers, > > Anish > > > > > > > > > ___ > > Server-devel mailing list > > Server-devel@lists.laptop.org > > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel > > > -- > James Cameron > http://quozl.linux.org.au/ > ___ > Server-devel mailing list > Server-devel@lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel > ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] Feedback: Problems with XSCE
I agree with John. Every point in his documentation section should be handled. Especially the point about wiki.laptop.org, which has so many distracting links on the navigation bar that we are all used to, but which new people become lost in. With regard to forums, the type that Google Groups has where they can also be received in mail may suffice. On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 11:44:33AM +0530, Anish Mangal wrote: > Hi, > > I would like to share this blog post from John Ellis with the XSCE community: > John is a high school student who is trying to setup XSCE in his class/school > under the supervision of his teacher Jeff Elkner. > > http://johnmichaelffs.blogspot.in/2013/11/problems-with-xsce.html > > Some of the stuff he points out certainly makes a lot of sense to me, I think > the core underling message is to make XSCE more approachable to the end user > and the advanced end-user/deployer. He has gone to some lengths to point out > specific aspects which could be improved. > > As we think about the possibilities for XSCE-0.6, I would like to further the > discussion along these topics here and/or on IRC. I think the project could do > well listening to end users' needs for the 0.6 cycle, especially that we now > seem to have our house in order codewise thanks to the terrific work by all > the > software hackers here :-) > > Thoughts? > > Cheers, > Anish > > > > ___ > Server-devel mailing list > Server-devel@lists.laptop.org > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
