Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Jason Flatt <jason AT flattfamily.com>]

OK, I'm opening a can of worms here, but I want to get this out in the open 
and see what others think.

Most of Source Mage's Internet services (exceptions are IRC, CVS and 
Perforce) 
are currently being hosted by Ibiblio.  While Ibiblio offers their services 
free of charge, there have been some increasing disturbances with their 
services.

First, we do not have 100% control of everything we do.  The biggest example 
of this is the e-mail.  We must send e-mails to them requesting they modify 
most aspects in order to get anything done.  Mail lists fall under this 
category, and apparently, are even more difficult to get changed.  The second 
and third examples are database access and backups.  While they have them and 
we use them, we have no real control over them.

Second, the turn around time to get things done has grown to between 2 and 3 
weeks.  I have spent the last 3-4 months trying to get the Web stats working 
correctly, and most of that time has been in waiting for replies or action 
from Ibiblio.  Who knows what would happen if anything serious were to break.

Because of the previous two items combined, I have held off on updating 
Bugzilla.  If I made a mistake and hosed the database, we might not have bug 
reporting for a very long time.  I can't even make a hot backup of the 
database as a safety net.  I doubt I would be able to restore it if I could.

Third, the software that is being run on their servers is pretty much out of 
our control.  This item is not nearly as critical as the first two, but I 
feel it is important.  Forget about the idea of even using our own product 
(Source Mage) on their server.  If we even wanted to run a system that 
depended on some other software system, Zope for example, we would be unable 
to do so, because it is not installed on their servers and would be unlikely 
to be installed.

So, I present to the Source Mage community the problem for review and 
discussion.  I believe the ideal situation would be for us to have our own 
server that was located at some co-location service.  While I think that 
solution is doable, Source Mage is poor and would require donations of time, 
hardware and/or money to make that happen, and there may be other potentially 
better options.

What does everyone (and I do mean /everyone/) think?

-- 
Jason Flatt (jason @ flattfamily . com)
Father of five (http://www.flattfamily.com/)
Linux user (http://www.sourcemage.org/)
IRC Nick: Oadae  Channels: #sourcemage, #lvlug  Server: irc.freenode.net

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GCS/IT d(-) s+:- a>++++ C++$(+++) UL++++ P(+) L+++ E- W++ N+@ o? K? w-- O? 
M-- V PS- PE+ Y+ PGP@ t 5+ X R tv--() b+@ DI+@ D+++ G e h---- r+++ y++++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------