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pcplantdb - Re: [pcplantdb] [synthesis][11][8.18.04]

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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>
  • To: pcplantdb@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [pcplantdb] [synthesis][11][8.18.04]
  • Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 11:47:23 -0700

Stephanie Gerson wrote:

To help resolve the platform issue, let’s all consider what our
* * *ideal*scenario* * *

Like you, not being a programmer, I've been learning as we progress. I have
made suggestions based on that and a lot of those represent changes in
hosting,
software, etc.

would be. I previously assumed that our ideal scenario was ZOPE on Ibilbio – am I correct? Because if so, let’s manifest it! No stopping

No at all. Opinion is divided with more favoring ibiblio and their currently
offered software,
not Zope.

Bad ideas:
1) buying a Zope machine
2) paying for commercial hosting anywhere

Good ideas:
1) hosting on ibiblio and using software other than Zope
2) doing 1) and waiting for ibiblio to offer a Zope machine (personally I
think they will eventually do this
but if we raise extra funding and have enough after paying the programmers we
could buy one for them)

short of the dreams, folks, go for the gold! (hey, it’s the Olympics ok?) And in order to do so, we could employ the suggestions that Lawrence (thank you) mentioned above, and I welcome more. (Lawrence, can you please be more explicit? What are SARE grants and tobacco settlement money?)

Go to sare.org and call the State of North Carolina for info on accessing
tobacco settlement money
(for something very useful to: Farmers who used to grow tobacco who are
encouraged and financially assisted in exploring and trying
alternative farming enterprises.

If we do choose to pursue this scenario, and buy a dedicated server for Ibiblio, I see 3 main categories of fund-seeking strategies:
a) Dedicate the, or a portion of the, Threshold grant towards this end – This is up to everyone, because it would be coming out of our wages. I am fine with that, but I understand dissatisfaction with this strategy, and we must discuss.

_That_ is up to the programmers, whether they will forgo wages in order to
have a Zope machine on ibiblio.
Most who have responded to this idea think it is a waste of money, at least
at this time, considering the funding we have at present
which should be used exclusively for software production.

b) Dedicate new grant proposals towards this end – This would be fine, but the money wouldn’t come in for a .w.h.i.l.e. So as I see it, this ain’t much of an option, considering we want to start now.

Good idea.

c) Seek alternative sources of funding to allocate towards this end – This might be our best bet. We can ask for donations on PC lists (which might be difficult if we have nothing to show at this point…!) or pursue some of the suggestions Lawrence raised. And what if we make our use of ZOPE contingent on the success of this strategy? If we raise enough money to donate a server to Ibiblio, we’ll go with ZOPE and Ibiblio. And otherwise? Um…don’t wanna think about that right now ;)

Go with ibiblio now, without Zope, and wait for 1) ibiblio to provide a Zope
machine later or 2) we raise the money to buy one.
Get a loan from the permaculture Credit Union for that machine and I will guarantee $2200 worth of payments over two years - someone else can provide the rest. The computer may cost as much as $8K or as little as $6K.

Entonces, I am assuming that ZOPE on Ibiblio is our ideal. Perhaps I am

Not necessarily. Only 50% of this group think so.

assuming incorrectly. So I encourage everybody to dream up their ideal platform + hosting scenario and respond with it. Forget feasibility for now – let’s first establish a common goal in this regard, and then we’ll

consider feasibility. I don’t know if this is the most effective way to approach this impasse, but envisioning the ideal always helps me make tough decisions…

Here are some considerations:
‡ Rich pointed out that “one advantage of sticking to MySQL for the plant database” is “that basically every language can communicate relatively painlessly with it.” However, Chad responded that “Zope can integrate

I am with Rich on this and think this is the direction we should go in
and on ibiblio. Add Zope later when $ or a free machine is available.

with every one of 'Apache, MySQL, PHP, HTML, XML, Javascript, Perl, PHP', it runs on Linux and fills the role of a CGI script. I don't think that the tools provided by the Zope platform are limiting in anyway.” If ZOPE does communicate relatively painlessly as every language MySQL can, then this would not be one advantage of using MySQL.

‡ Chad wrote, “I'm not super confident that unlimited funding will shower
us from now on. I was totally surprised that we got the funding we did. In my head this may be all we get ever and I want to make the most of it. I also think we can generate something with this funding that will turn
heads and generate more funding. I think that using Zope adds a lot to the possibility of creating something meaningful with this money.”

Si. Claro. I completely agree with you. But your last sentence definitely implicates this discussion – why would ZOPE add to the possibility of creating something meaningful? Would using ZOPE help us get more grants (because we are doing something innovative, and hg might become a model for similar projects)?

I don't see whay we couldn't get just as much grant funding with Rich's plan
which may enable us to offer a better product, more useful in the long run
and as impressive cosmetically.
Touchgraph can be integrated using Rich's software preferences.

‡ Richard wrote that to be “convinced of Zope,” he “would need a few things
1) A hello world with objects
2) Some idea of the class hierarchy”
And Chad responded, “For 1) what did you think of the Boring product link I posted? For 2) do you mean you want to see a design first? Why?” Rich – perhaps you ought to ask Chad specific questions, he might be able to “convince” you…

‡ Finally, Lawrence asked a fantastic question (so fantastic, in fact, that I can’t believe I hadn’t asked it myself): “Curious about the pc relationships/connections between objects graphical mapping idea discussed in some depth before that is important to Stephanie and to satisfying the terms of the grant. Can building HG (the software) with this feature be done easier or faster or better with Zope rather than MySQL/Eden/etc?”
And Chad responded, “There really isn't a way to display dynamic graphics in a web browser short of using Java as in TouchGraph. One of the big time saving issues with using Zope is that we don't have to fully normalize our database schema. The object model is so different that this sort of process isn't necessary. My first thought when I started to seriously consider the possibility of using an RDBMS (MySQL) instead of Zope is that wow, we are going to need 200-300 tables here.” Huh?
So, what I would Love to know is, which platform is more conducive to representing maps of relationships – or, Permaculture information webs? I deem this a highly critical factor in determining our ideal…

Let's try to reach an agreement that we are all satisfied with.


-NAME – A decision I had thought that we had made. Darn. Well, we’re almost there. So now the vote is between Permaculture Information Web and Open Permaculture Project. Please vote. Might as well - it’s less stressful than the whole Ibiblio/ZOPE thang and it’ll make you feel accomplished.

I thought we had already decided on Open Permaculture Project; that's my
choice, anyway.

-THRESHOLD AND BUDGET– Rich, I am responding to your post but this is for everyone:

“Just wondering if there has been any further news from Threshold Foundation. Do we know when the money is coming in, are there any pre-
contitions before we get the loot. etc...”
I contacted them by phone a few weeks ago, but never heard back. I will contact them again. Scott, did you ever speak with them?

“As to the 10-20% overheads, I've little idea as to how we are going to spend the other 80% we don't really need that much else.”
I have cut and pasted the budget from the grant proposal below so you can review how we proposed to allocate our funds.

“The one thing I do really think we could do with is money for a meeting. Some admin costs, some books, maybe some consulting fees (getting someone who knows about guilds would be cool).”
We included these sorts of costs in the proposal, and I agree that a meeting would certainly help! Once again, check the budget below.

Mainly all that monet should be used to pay the programmers and nothing else.
Waste of money:
1) a meeting
2) consulting fees
a) we will get this for free when the system goes online
b) when we get more funding we can spend it on consulting, datasets and
photographs

“In the UK we have a difference between capital projects (where the money goes on buying a bunch of tools/buildings etc) and revenue projects (money for wages). Different funders specialise in different aspects.”
Can you please recommend any funders which specialize in purely revenue projects? That would be fantastic.

“Personal feeling is that Jim will realise that we are mainly in the revenue domain.”
It’s not about Jim realizing anything – we submitted a budget along with our proposal and we are supposed to stick to it. He doesn’t monitor how projects allocate their funds anyway, he is on the panel which reviews grant proposals and assesses their merit.

“BTW has their been any recent communication from Jim (I might easily have missed something).”
No, but now that I am back in the bay area, I do plan on meeting with him in person. He sounds like a fascinating person!

Related, Lawrence wrote “Stephanie's statement that our grant (future ones too?) allows only a small percentage to be used for wages. This needs to be changed early on or HG will go nowhere.” Hey hey now, this isn’t up to me! As I already said, it is the foundations themselves that usually only allow 10-20% of funding to be allocated towards wages.

Well, what exactly does our grant allow forwages then? This should have been
made clear long time ago to
avoid much unnecesary debate. If only 20% of the grant can be used for wages
then how did you plan to get any software created
and I'm assuming the software was your primary objective, no? Is our grant a
capital or a revenue one?

IF this 20% is true then we have some real issues to deal with or, that is,
the programmers will.
If only 20% then go ahead and buy the Zope machine for ibiblio (maybe this
will be adequate incentive for Chad).
For my part, if additional funding does not arrive within the desired
timeframe, I will offer $2200 through the PI to be paid
fo programming over a two year period, maybe more, and max $250 per quarter,
maybe more. Use my donation to get matching funding.

The only way this can “be changed,” as you put it, is if we seek funding from foundations which specialize in revenue projects (as Rich described) or ask for an exception because this project primarily involves intellectual property (as Chad described), at least in future grant proposals. Ok?

Why don't you ask Threshold for an exception since it is obvious that nearly
all the money needs to be paid for wages
and that a software product is virtually the sum total of our existence.

PROJECT PLAN – I spent so long responding to this post, that I never got
‘round to updating the project plan. Apologies. Will do so soon, but our first priority is definitely resolving this platform issue. And will also read the Haystack article (thanks, Chad).

-MISCELLANEOUS – ‡ Lawrence asked if he could create a public forum on Ibiblio. What will the public forum be for? And if you wanted me to wait to send a post to the PC lists, why are we creating a public forum? (Or am I confused about its function?)

The new list, permacultureinfo is in the works. It is the non tech list for
the gneral public to use to discuss
our project and for use to use as a place for all announcements (major ones
would be forwarded to other lists)
and requests for ideas and feedback.

I'd say, as soon as we decide on where well be hosted as permaculture.info, and not before, go ahead and announce the project to the PC list and anywhere else appropriate (maybe get more funding sooner) as permaculture.info and what we are about.

As I said before, if we do not host with ibiblio, regardless of software
used, I will no longer continue to be involved with this project.

Repeat for emphasis: If only 20% or so of our grant can be used for wages then buy the Zope machine for ibiblio, start work there immediately and look for additional funding to cover wages (I will chip in my $2200 to this).

‡ Chad brought up a great point, “In a less focused way, I hope HG will both accommodate and encourage a lot of brainstorming.” Actually, this is something Jim and I discussed extensively – the potential for this project to create truly effective mechanisms for online collaboration and information exchange. And, this is something which Jim’s own organization, Planetwork (http://www.planetwork.net/index.html), is heavily involved with – and probably contributed to his interest in hg. So yes, I agree that we are part of a larger effort to develop mechanisms for e-brainstorming (akk, awful combination of words but you know what I mean), and perhaps serve a model for other virtual communities seeking to do the same. I also included this intention in our grant proposals.

Amen!! This sums up why I am so interested in HG. Lets resolve all the loose
ends issues and get
started, while the creative juices are flowing.

‡ Lawrence asked, “what proportion of the total body of information made available by HG would be non-HG proprietary resources gleaned from outside sources?” Hmmm, good question. I would like hg to be rich information-wise, without becoming monstrous, un-navigable, and without re-inventing the wheel. I assume we will become more systematic and deliberate in deciding when to include the actual information and when to offer links to “outside resources” as we build hg, but I would rather integrate ourselves within the existing informational infrastructure than try to make hg the wal-mart of Permaculture knowledge. Whoa. You get

A pc walmart is inevitable. Look around, I'll bet you'll find, out of all the
pc websites (list archives are another matter so Rich's idea to index them is
good)
there really isn't that much original text based information available.

the idea. (Sorry, it’s getting late and I’m becoming less articulate. Although that was a rhyme…kind of.)

‡ Ok, I am super embarrassed to be asking this question so late in the game…but can someone please teach me (in plain English, o espanol) how to respond directly to threads instead of always creating my own subject –

Cannot be done w/o massaging the subject header.

here’s the catch – from the archives? Because I stopped receiving pcplantdb posts in emails, and simply read and respond through the

You absolutely need to resume receiving the list in email. That's the best
way to keep up with what's
happening.

archives, but I can find no way of responding directly to posts/threads. Is there a way to do this on the archives, or is it only possible if I
No.
receive emails and then respond directly to them?
Yes.

LL
--
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech




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