On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 01:11:42AM +0100, Michael Banck wrote:
> > Re-roll-out? Whatever. You don't have to rewrite it, but you do have
> > to get new machines,
> Well, let's have a look at this first. Do you really think they'd need
> more than one machine?
Depends what's convenient; sorry, I wasn't trying to be particularly
precise there. If you're doing buildd stuff (which I think you should),
you obviously need multiple machines, though. Needing a main mirror
(static IP, reasonable bandwidth) and a development machine (root access,
etc) might imply you want separate machines too.
> I'll try to get some figures about
> download volumes from a mirror admin, too, though, if nobody beats me to
> it.
I wouldn't expect that to be significant enough to worry about.
> > and set it all up, and maintain it, and patch the systems, and track
> > upstream and all that other stuff. There's a lot of effort there, and
> > it's pretty boring, and given it's just for non-free stuff, it's
> > pretty low value -- certainly compared to doing the same work for the
> > main archive.
> True. That said, I'd like to stress the point again that neither I nor
> anybody else expects the current Debian infrastructure maintainers to
> step forward and setup/maintain nonfree.org. But a bit of advice to
> whoever might do it would be very welcome I guess.
Sure, the problem is there's no one who's going to do it afaics, so who is
there to advise?
> > I'm not really convinced. If you're going to have it work as well
> > as Debian, you need to have an archive and a bug tracking system and
> > probably some mailing lists.
> Let's break this down:
> 1. Mailing Lists
> I guess setting up mailing-lists is fairly easy these days, plus I don't
> think a lot would be needed.
You'd think so, but getting the spam policies working okay and whatever else
can be a nuisance.
> 2. Bug Tracking System
> The BTS is a different story. It would be gratis if a gforge-like
> service would be used, but I guess gforge is not really suited for this
> kind of downstream stuff (haven't talked to the alioth admins about this
> yet, though). So the question is: How much work would setting up debbugs
> for an independent archive be? I'd say it would be quite a bit of work,
> but I think nothing unsurmountable.
No, nothing here's unsurmountable. The question is how much work is it,
and if the people who end up doing that work would otherwise have been
spending their time on free software, how is this possibly a sensible
thing to do?
It'd be really good if it _were_ simple to, essentially, fork Debian.
I just don't think it is.
> I agree that signed uploads are a requirement for this, as is a verfied
> developer base. The policy of who will be in the nonfree.org keyring is
> of course left to its maintainer, but I guess DDs and perhaps people
> which passed the identification test in n-m are alright.
That doesn't work for people who just want to maintain some non-free
package though -- there's no way they'll get into Debian because they
won't be doing anything for Debian. Depending on another project for
core tasks is pretty painful too.
> Furthermore, I believe that dak is overkill for nonfree's size. If
> somebody steps forward to set it up and maintain it on nonfree.org, that
> would be cool of course, but in the absence of an volunteer, I don't
> think it's really required to have katie for that.
Well, we were trying to avoid reimplementing things, weren't we? There
are other tools out there, but I don't think any are really suitable
for the sort of archive that nonfree.org is meant to be.
> That's it so far.
Seriously, if you think it's easy enough that the time wasted in setting
it up and maintaining it isn't worth considering, just do it. If you're
right, that'll dismiss this whole line of argument.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
Linux.conf.au 2004 -- Because we can.
http://conf.linux.org.au/ -- Jan 12-17, 2004
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature