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Re: [RFR] Press release about Debian on public clouds



Hi Charles, thanks for your useful feedback,

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 07:32:55AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> as discussed earlier, I strongly object the recommendation to our users "to run
> their own private clouds whenever possible".
> 
> First, before making such recommendations, I think that it would be important
> to check that they reflect our project's consensus.  Otherwise, who is "we"
> should be clarified.

Objection noted. I still maintain that is an important point in project
vision and I'll be happy to take responsibility for that position.
Either as a general position, as we did in past press releases, or as a
personal DPL quote (that part of the press release can easily be turned
that way). But I think we have a easier way out than going bureaucratic
about who has the authority to say what, read on.

> Second, I think that this recommendation is not promoting software
> freedom.  We have Eucalyptus, Openstack and other solutions in Debian,
> so it is possible to set up a commercial cloud running Debian, and
> access it from a custommer machine running Debian.  From the
> perspective of software freedom, it does not matter if the cloud is
> not set up and operated by the user.
>
> The big problem with this recommendation is that it puts personnal autonony
> above other factors such as global reduction of energy consumption.

I actually agree with this. So, let's see what's the main software
freedom point here: it is encouraging having control over your computing
infrastructure. And there are various degree of control. From the
minimum (you trust a commercial vendor and you've no way to know what's
being done with your software and data) to the maximum (you run
everything yourself). There are infinite solutions in between, such as
shared hosting with friends you trust to run a common cloud
infrastructure and pools of companies sharing resources in mutual trust
agreements.

Considering all that, how about you propose a more nuanced wording,
where we encourage our users to retain how much control as it is
feasible for them (possibly running "their" clouds using Debian packaged
solutions)? I think it would be much more producing than simply
objecting the control principle all together.

> Apart from this, thank you for the advertisement of the images.  Maybe the
> press release could include a word of thanks to the companie(s) that give us
> access to their clouds free of charge for the purpose of making the images ?

In the future (and as a general rule) , I suggest to first start
feedback mail with some positive feedback about the work done and have
criticism later, I think it helps dialogue :)

Cheers.
-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli  . . . . . . .  zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

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