Sourceware 2024 - The Plan

[Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org>]

The Sourceware Project Leadership Committee in discussion with the
Software Freedom Conservancy staff came up with the Sourceware 2024
plan and is looking at longer term projects that would be needed to
keep your infrastructure running smoothly and securely for the next
couple of years. We are currently discussing how to distribute these
tasks over paid staff, overseers, project admin volunteers and
contractors.

We realize that our plans may not be your plans, so really like to get
feedback. It is our goal to offer a worry-free, friendly home for Free
Software core toolchain and developer tools projects. So please do
reach out and share your ideas on the overseers mailinglist, file
infrastructure bugs, join our channel #overseers on irc or join one of
the monthly open office hours:
https://sourceware.org/mission.html#organization

For 2024 we want to concentrate on isolating and scaling the
services. In the last two years we doubled the number of machines (and
more are on the way!) that we run the services on. And some of the new
services are already setup in containers or on isolated VMs. But most
of the services are still isolated through traditional unix
mechanisms.  Moving those into their own container or VM will help
scaling by making it easy to move between separate physical
machines. It will also provide security in depth.

It is our preference to run distro packaged software (e.g. mailman,
postfix, public-inbox, etc.). That way we have easy security updates.
But for some services we track an upstream stable branch (e.g.
buildbot, patchwork and bugzilla). While isolating/containerizing
these services we will also publish the internal git repos (if they
contain any local adjustments), so we can easier share patches with
other organizations. Ideally we'll also publish ansible playbooks.
That way, over time, we will provide services that anybody can
replicate and setup themselves.

Longer term we identified a couple of thing, mainly around isolation
(the theme of 2024), email, spam, mailinglists, search, AI bots and
services upgrades that we believe are important to prepare for.

Concretely we are looking at:

- mailman2 upgrade/replacement
  https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=31545

- bugzilla upgrade
  https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=31547

- (local) search and AI bot/spiders, sitemaps, ...
  https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=31551
  https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=31548
  https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=30610
  https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=31549

- Distributed spam fighting
  https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=31550

- buildbot email templates, pre-commit testing, buildbot-travis, ...
  https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=31552

More items can be found in the Sourceware infrastructure bugzilla
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?component=Infrastructure&product=sourceware&resolution=---

If you read this far we really like your feedback, even if it is a
simple "OK!", Reply-To: overseers@sourceware.org Or add you comments
to the bugzilla items above. And take a look at other ways to
participate https://sourceware.org/mission.html#organization

You can also help by becoming a Conservancy Sustainer
https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/ or donating directly to
Sourceware https://sourceware.org/donate.html

Thanks,

  Frank Ch. Eigler, Christopher Faylor, Ian Kelling, Ian Lance Taylor,
  Tom Tromey, Jon Turney, Mark J. Wielaard, Elena Zannoni