On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 02:51:59PM +0100, Enrico Zini wrote: > I'll be quick: > > - Many of us work on internet servers for Civil Society (riseup.net, > comodino.org and so many others) > - Many of these projects share lots of common problems (LDAP user > database, mailing list software, user management...) > > I propose to also work on a "Debian Non-Profit Server" distribution, > to be used in building internet servers for Civil Society. Great! Having a server version is something that was discussed at the first IRC meeting for Debian-NP. There was lots of support for the idea at the time and it's *clearly* something that would be used (probably more than a Desktop version initially). It's a fantastic idea. It's just not one that was actively followed up on (yet!). > The opportunities are endless, like: > - joining forces for common maintenance and administration tasks > - creating software and protocols to exchange contents between > different servers promoting networking among projects > - creating stuff like distributed backups, so that if a server is > brought down the contents are still around There are also a growing list of software (much of it discussed on this list already) that are hugely useful programs for non-profits that with dependencies on a relational database and apache. I'm just not particularly comfortable putting these on every workstation/low-powered workstation so having a server only version would be a fantastic way to provide this software as part of a Debian-NP "package" without having to deal with this problem. :) > For now I just want the idea to be in the air: Brazil is not far to > hack on this in person... I think that's what needed technically is not far away. Thanks to Skolelinux and the work by the new CDD workgroup, we have what is turning out to be an infrastructure for common package selection and the creation of custom CDDs. This is something a couple of us have hacked on already a bit. Skolelinux/Debian-Edu has 3-4 different "versions" (workstation and server are just two of them) so dropping in our own lists of overlapping selection is clearly within the realm of possibility. I think the place we need to focus on now (for both server and desktop distros) is refining our lists of packages and defining the nature of the customized configuration for new and existing packages and then working on getting these into Debian proper through the addition of wishlist bugs or, where necessary, in the form of lightly forked debs in our repository own repository (which I will volunteer to set up on alioth). Regards, Mako -- Benjamin Mako Hill mako@debian.org http://mako.yukidoke.org/
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