Re: A Small Organisation Server as a Debian Pure Blend
On Tue, 2020-11-17 at 02:07 +0000, Wookey wrote:
> On 2020-11-16 19:20 +0000, John Lines wrote:
>
> > ...
> > I have written
> > at
> > https://wordpress.debian.social/jlines/2020/11/07/the-ambridge-garden-club/
> > about
> > a such a group, as I am interested to know if others feel this
> > is also a
> > problem, and a one worth trying to solve.
>
> Definitely. I have been frustrated that our local charity has to pay
> zoom several hundred pounds to hold our AGM virtually because they
> want some of the advanced features which cost money (broadcasting
> with
> central control of audio and attendees not visible). They have no
> idea
> that things like Big Blue Button exist (which I suspect, but don't
> know) also has these features. And even if they did know they have no
> technical expertise/bandwidth to set it up.
I think Big Blue Button is beyond the scope of the type of organisation
I have in mind, in terms of requirements, though it would be good to
have them more widely known.
I find the mind share that Zoom has a bit alarming, and I seem to be
spending over 8 hours a week in Zoom meetings - I do not thing it is
good that any single product becomes synonymous with a type of service.
>
> Similarly it would be great if _everything_ wasn't only on twitter
> and
> facebook and somethings made it to matrix, disapora and mastodon. But
> the network effect is really powerful here, and groups might discover
> these things if they had their own service for some other reason
> (such
> as wanting jitsi/wordpress/BBB services they controlled).
>
> > My proposed solution is a Debian Pure Blend for a Small
> > Organisation
> > Server (sos) designed to be installed at a hosting provider, and
> > accessed
> > and administered through a web interface. It shares quite a lot
> > of
> > similarity, and should probably, have as much as possible in
> > common with
> > the FreedomBox project - for example probably plinth.
>
> Another relevant model is framasoft, who provide these services (as a
> collective service, rather than a per-organisation server), but would
> like many more organsations to do this. I don't know how easily
> reproducible their setup is.
I like Framasofts software and philosophy. I suppose some of the
motivation for the Small Organisation Server comes down to economics. I
appreciate they way they, as well as the many ethically motivated
groups, provide free services for anybody, but I do not think that
scales to the selfish wider world.
The Ambrige Garden Club - my sample small organisation is funded by its
members subscriptions (hypothetically - actually by me), and has
control of the resources consumed by its members, thus if somebody uses
excessive disk space on the subject, say of steam trains, it is up to
them to suggest that member put those pictures etc somewhere else.
>
> > It is differentiated from FreedomBox at at technical level by,
> > for
> > example, not using avahi - the Small Organisation Sever would
> > share a
> > local network at an ISP with other completely unrelated servers,
> > neither
> > would should it depend on netcat-openbsd, ppp, pppoe etc, which
> > are
> > targetted at a different situation.
>
> Does it need to be a new blend to work, or can it be a config option
> on freedombox? The targets are so similar it seems like we ought to
> be
> able to use the same codebase? I have not followed the project
> closely
> after the first year or two so don't actually know exactly how it is
> now.
>
> > I think it would be good to be able to provide the facilities
> > available
> > via https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianSocial to other
> > organisations, and
> > wonder it you agree ?
>
> I think this is a worthy technical goal. Given the decade it has
> taken for Fredombox to get this far I suspect the pandemic will be
> over before we get something working at a reasonably numpty-proof
> level, unless an impressive level of enthusiasm is collected and
> applied.
>
I am really keen for the pandemic to be over, and in the mean time am
seeing how far this will get. I want to avoid re-inventing the wheel as
much as possible, hoping to work with Freedombox people on common
ground.
> I have just set up a small server yesterday in order to experiment
> with this stuff (setting up matrix-synapse initially, but jangouts
> and BBB are also of interest, although neither are packaged).
>
> So yes, knock something up and I will be happy to at least test it.
I will let you know when there is something at the testable level.
I am putting bits up at https://wordpress.debian.social/jlines/ though
that often lags where I am.
>
> Wookey
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