Debian.net Team
Hi Debianites
I'd like to talk about an idea that needs some more thought, but that
has been floating in my head for a while and I think it could benefit
from some further discussion. Ideally we could've had a BoF about it
during DebConf, but my plate was full already.
We have a bunch of services currently hosted on the debian.net domain.
There's a list of these domains at:
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianNetDomains
The services ran under the debian.net domain are typically run by
individual Debian Developers or small teams, and range from a toy
service to something that's short lived or even a service that's even
considered important and used daily by people in the project.
Some people have argued that some of these services should move to DSA,
but, even if we feel that a service is important, it's still not the
responsibility of DSA. DSA takes ownership of the core Debian
infrastructure, which is already a huge undertaking. For interest, you
can get a list of DSA managed machines here:
https://db.debian.org/machines.cgi
While the current structure for debian.net services allow a lot of
flexibility and very little admin to get something set up (you basically
just send one email to set up DNS), I do think that the project can
benefit if we formalize things a bit more.
At the same time, a regular theme in my DPL work is that someone is
looking to find hosting for a project and not having much luck. Last
night I learned of a DD who's been paying more than $200 a year for
hosting on their own account. While this is a manageable amount for
Debian to pay in a year, it can be quite a lot for an individual, and
I'd rather have us have a better story for that.
We have some lists of hosting providers for projects like those listed on:
https://wiki.debian.org/ServicesHosting#Outside_the_Debian_infrastructure
But what I've found is that people find it cumbersome to figure out who
to contact, how to contact them and whether the details listed there is
even still valid (there are also services like fosshost.org that are
Debian friendly that should probably be added to that list).
So, what I'm considering is something along the lines of:
1. Let things continue to work the way they're working now for the most
part (no need for any disruptive changes in this proposal)
2. Create a new team to organise some aspects of everything under
debian.net, which would include:
* Keeping the domain list on the above mentioned
DebianNet page maintained on a regular basis
* Maintain external contacts/relationships with
people and providers who we have special arrangements
with
* Help maintain the list of hosting providers listed
on the wiki page above
* Have accounts with the major hosting providers so that
they can also create new instances whenever there's a
new request from a developer
There's more ideas that could follow too, but aren't essential right
now. For example, hosting some backup service for all these services (we
really have no idea if the people running them keep backups, or where
they keep them) and maybe assigning some emergency contacts who have
login credentials for at least important (debian.net) services seem like
a good idea.
That's it in a nutshell for now. Any thoughts... or volunteers?
-Jonathan
--
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋ https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ Debian, the universal operating system.
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