Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Per Bothner]

Alexandre Petit-Bianco <apbianco@cygnus.com> writes:

> Cygnus business -- infrastructure pieces as we used to call them. The
> only thing that doesn't belong to that category is Xconq.

Kawa is one.  It isn't directly tied to Cygnus business, though there
are some historical and indirect tries.  Also, Kawa mainly uses
sourceware for the cvs archive and the mailing list; the home page and
ftp site are at the FSF.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/~per/

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jason Molenda]

On Fri, Feb 04, 2000 at 03:10:06PM -0800, Tom Tromey wrote:
> Alex> SourceForge is Sourceware with a /. spin to it.
> 
> Good call.  And that chatty feeling is going to make it popular with
> the ever-growing /. crowd.  It wouldn't be bad for us to emulate
> this.


Good idea.  I'll start ending web pages with

  This page last modified with loving care on 2000-02-02 by
  jsm@cygnus.com... what do you think?

Or maybe "... do you agree?" occasionally for some variation.

J // slashdotter-wannabe

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jim Blandy]

It seems to me that Cygnus has been hands-off about sourceware for two
reasons:

- Jason wanted it this way.  Not because he didn't wish he had the
  help and support of management, sales, and marketing, but because he
  thought it would do more harm than good.  Because...

- Cygnus has, until recently, had a most cowardly and retrograde
  attitude about Free software.  Looking at the decisions made (as
  opposed to the rhetoric), Cygnus upper management saw Cygnus as a
  normal software company which, for some inexplicable reason, had a
  pretty good concentration of hard-core techies.  Oh, and there's
  this Open Source thing which we should get some PR mileage out of.

For cripes' sake, we hired a CEO who didn't get Free software.  How
the hell did that happen?  Did somebody forget to mention it?

Certain pieces of GDB just got freed.  The GDB team was very cautious
about releasing the code, because they wanted to synchronize with the
marketing department to get the most PR value out of it.  That's the
way Cygnus has done it.  Jim Kingdon was suprised at the hesitation
--- he said he'd get reamed at the conference for not releasing
everything immediately.

The dichotomy here is that Cygnus sees Free software as a PR gimmick.
You release it to look good to the outside world.  Red Hat sees Free
software as the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of their
brand, which is their whole business.  They don't expect the rest of
the world to be proud of them for freeing stuff --- they expect to
lose credibility by *not* freeing stuff.

Which is why it sucks that Jason is leaving.  I think there's a
better-than-even chance that we just acquired the management that
would actually be able to take sourceware where it should go.
What a useless trade.

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jim Kingdon]

* Regarding who is running sourceware post-Jason (especially in the
short run), as far as I know the plan (insofar as there is one) is
that Jeff Law and I will do it.  We probably need to get with Jason
about various details such as physical hosting of the machine, though.
Stan, Per, &c, I don't think you need to worry about any decrease in
services for the projects on sourceware - the rumblings and everything
are about whether it will increase, rather than whether it will be
kept level.

* Regarding T3's and greatly expanded sites and everything, I wouldn't
make a lot of assumptions one way or the other.  There have been lots
of ideas, lots of people who want to see it (including management),
but also a lack of clarity of exactly what we want to do and who will
run it and so on.  Whether this process will converge in a reasonable
time, I don't know.

This also applies to the question of expanding what projects we host
(beyond current policies) - it is largely a function of network
bandwidth, hardware, and to a certain extent staff time.  Well, and
defining our goals of course.

* Regarding gnome.org, I haven't heard anything about it nor talked
with any of the GNOME folks.  Nor do I know the requirements in terms
of bandwidth and so on.  Probably a good idea to track this down, and
I'm the obvious victim to do it.

* Jason writes a lot about whether to try to keep doing this "under
the radar" and avoid attention.  My feeling is that the time for that
tactic has passed (for one thing, the world is changing to the point
that our customers and the public are starting to expect that Red
Hat's software development be done out in the open, on a sourceware
like site).  He is absolutely right, of course, about needing to avoid
the suit/Sun/clueless/Dilbert PHB/&c phenomenon - but at the risk of
overestimating the extent to which people have acquired a clue, I
think the process of solving that problem is well underway.

* With regard to promoting Red Hat in the open source community,
getting the word out is primarily the function of marketing (Emily
Forster in particular, who is in North Carolina).  The web team have
diverse functions, summarized as bringing in revenue via web ads and
maintaining the mechanics of the web site.  As for whether running a
sourceware-like site would best live within the web team, maybe some
day, but not with the current skills of the web team - they are not
particularly technical or Linux-savvy and things like setting up email
list archives via them have taken a long time.

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Bart Veer]

>>>>> "Chris" == Chris Faylor <cgf@cygnus.com> writes:

    Chris> On Sat, Feb 05, 2000 at 09:47:48AM -0500, Jim Blandy wrote:
    >> For cripes' sake, we hired a CEO who didn't get Free software.  How
    >> the hell did that happen?  Did somebody forget to mention it?

    Chris> I think you're mistaken, Jim. Alex Daly was a "free
    Chris> software advocate". He said so, many times.

That is now how I remember it. He became a "free software advocate"
only after joining, in a road to Damascus conversion orchestrated by
Michael Tiemann. He talked about this during a speech at the one
engineering meeting held under his reign.

    <snip>

    Chris> I have to say that when I started at Cygnus I was sort of
    Chris> surprised to see the large amount of caution that
    Chris> surrounded the free software concept. It seemed, and still
    Chris> does seem, that all of the free software stuff that was
    Chris> going on was done by individuals who believed in it. From
    Chris> management, there was never anything but corporate lip
    Chris> service to the concept.

I think management felt the company was primarily about making money
out of the embedded marketplace, whether by contract work or by other
means. Free software gave us a foothold in that marketplace, and was
fine as long as it did not interfere with the core business of making
money.

Perhaps the difference in attitude can be summarised by:

Cygnus: we want to maximise revenue. How can we use free software to
        achieve this?

Red Hat: we are a free software company. Given this starting point,
        how do we maximise revenue?

From my perspective in the eCos team, truly wonderful things are
happening now that Red Hat is running things.

Finally, I just want to thank Jason for all the amazing work he has
done on sourceware. My big regret is that I have not been to Sunnyvale
in over a year, so I have not been able to buy him the thank-you meal
and the few dozen drinks he deserves for all the help he has given me
and the eCos team. Maybe I'll get a chance this year.

Bart

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Stan Shebs]

Anthony Green wrote:
> 
> Jason wrote:
> > Hey, I'm impressed.  I don't intend to sound too cynical, but again you
> > can see Cygnus getting beat at its own free software game by snoozing.
> 
> I don't understand this.  I thought you always only intended to host
> Cygnus sponsored/owned projects on the site.

It occurs to me that with me gone and Jason departing, I need to know who
will be in charge of sourceware, and if Xconq will still be able to live
there.  If not, sourceforge will acquire another project...

Stan

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Anthony Green]

Jason wrote:
> Hey, I'm impressed.  I don't intend to sound too cynical, but again you
> can see Cygnus getting beat at its own free software game by snoozing.

I don't understand this.  I thought you always only intended to host
Cygnus sponsored/owned projects on the site.

AG

-- 
Anthony Green                                                        Red Hat
                                                       Sunnyvale, California

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jason Molenda]

On Fri, Feb 04, 2000 at 02:17:01PM -0800, Anthony Green wrote:
> 
> Jason wrote:
> > Hey, I'm impressed.  I don't intend to sound too cynical, but again you
> > can see Cygnus getting beat at its own free software game by snoozing.
> 
> I don't understand this.  I thought you always only intended to host
> Cygnus sponsored/owned projects on the site.

Yes, I did that mostly to make the problem tractable. :-)  It would have
been impossible to consider a Sourceforge like system in August 1998.
Sourceware was set up by stealing resources on the EGCS box (a humble
box never intended for this) and stealing net bandwidth on the Cygnus T1.

You can safely bet that any follow-on system to sourceware will at the
very least match what Sourceforge is doing.

Tom wrote:

> I'm confused, too, because I thought Jason always wanted to keep
> marketing and/or Cygnus management out of the picture.  Jason, isn't
> this the case?

Yes, I feared our marketers, sales people, and many of our managers.
Most of them have no feel for the free software world, developers,
or market.  Their entire mindset is wrong for working with the free
software world; I am constantly getting sales/marketing people asking
me to dilvuge random bits of information collected in sourceware logs.
(One of my favorites:  One salesperson wanted to know the hosts that
people were ftp'ing from so they could cold-call those companies.)
When they asked me to help out with the Elix web pages, much of my time
was spent un-bogo-ify the text and materials so they didn't sound like
they were generated by Sun's marketing department.  Oh, and correcting
all those wonderful 8-bit characters that MS Word leaves in its HTML.
That looks so classy when a free software company puts up HTML that only
renders correctly under Internet Explorer.

If marketing/sales/management had been involved in Sourceware in 1998,
it would have been a complete failure.  Even in 1999.  Maybe even today.

But VA has shown that it is possible to create a system with marketers
and managers who seem to understand their market and how to appeal to it.
They're showing that with the engineers and business people working
together, they can turn this resource into a real business advantage.

(I say "seem to understand" because for all I know VA is constantly
embroiled internally in conflicts like the one I outlined for Elix,
and the developers are scurrying around trying to keep lamely worded
press releases from being released.)



I guess you could say that Sourceware is what can be done by a couple
of lone hackers living in their shells.  It's a great accomplishment.
Sourceforge is what can be done when you have a whole company working
together on the same goal.  

Maybe I should hold myself at fault for not trying to pull marketing
and our exec managers in to the sourceware style vision.  I thought,
and still think, that it would have been counter-productive to do
so given the atmosphere here, though.


As for the Sourceforge aesthetics, I agree that it's kind of ugly.
It has that PHP-cookie-cutter look to it.  It's not something that will
make or break them, though.


Jason

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Bob Manson]

In message < 200002042310.PAA05287@ferrule.cygnus.com >, Tom Tromey writes:
>the ever-growing /. crowd.  It wouldn't be bad for us to emulate
>this.

And/or work with together them in some fashion...  just a random idea
that floats into my brain.
						Bob

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jason Molenda]

On Sat, Feb 05, 2000 at 06:53:40PM +1100, Andrew Cagney wrote:

> > Of course, this reduces brand recognition, and so it has to depend on
> > your overall goal.  Asking such projects to have a "hosted by
> > sourceware" graphic on their web page might be an ok tradeoff; it
> > depends.
> 
> For GDB, i think there should be:
> 
> 	gdb.fsf.org
> and	fsf.org/gdb
> 
> which to this weeks ftp/http/cvs site.  


The trade-off here is obvious, Tom points it out in his message.
If everyone has "sourceware.cygnus.com/project-name" as their URL,
CVSROOT, ftp site, mailing list, etc., that's reinforcing the idea that
Cygnus is the one hosting this.

I talked with Per last week, he has a new project that he's hosting
on Sourceforge (the bastard! :).  If I understand correctly, they'll
support a hostname like "jemacs.sourceforge.net" and they stick some
little graphic ad for Sourceforge on the home page (or maybe he meant
that they would allow him to do "www.jemacs.org").

For the projects on sourceware, I had enough dictatorial control :-) that
I could get everyone to make their projects clearly hosted at the site.
Several people have bemoaned my inflexibility (and paid dearly for their
insolence, I assure you!) on this matter -- if the site is to be grown,
more flexibility will undoubtedly be required.  The projects actually
run by Cygnus people on Cygnus time are stuck on sourceware, but the
other projects could just as easily flit away to sourceforge or gnu.org
or whoever happens to be offering the best services that week.


Jason

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Mark Galassi]

Jason, dude, I've seen you put the sourceware site down a few times,
but I can't imagine anything being any better.  Maybe that's because I
have not joined any sourceforge projects: if I did I might discover
that they offer even better handling of mailing lists, CVS and so
forth.

I agree that Cygnus missed a boat by not offering sourceware to a
broader public.

By the way, Red Hat is now running the cvs.gnome.org site.  Will it
merge with sourceware?

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Andrew Cagney]

Excerpts from mail: 4-Feb-100 Re: Wow, look at a sourcewa.. Jason
Molenda@cygnus.com (1550*)

> For the projects on sourceware, I had enough dictatorial control :-) that
> I could get everyone to make their projects clearly hosted at the site.
> Several people have bemoaned my inflexibility (and paid dearly for their
> insolence, I assure you!) on this matter -- if the site is to be grown,
> more flexibility will undoubtedly be required.  The projects actually
> run by Cygnus people on Cygnus time are stuck on sourceware, but the
> other projects could just as easily flit away to sourceforge or gnu.org
> or whoever happens to be offering the best services that week.

To keep the FSF on board.  Support for that has to be added to the
sourceware package on offer.

	Andrew

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Alexandre Petit-Bianco]

Tom Tromey writes:

> Anyway, sourceforge provides some things that sourceware doesn't.
> It would be nice to get them for sourceware.  On the other hand,
> sourceware has a nicer aesthetic sense than sourceforge.
> Sourceforge is pretty ugly, visually.

It looks like SourceForge has some marketing spin to it -- or at least
it's used as a PR machine by VA (like dynamic stats and so on -- they
give the impression that the site really matters.) You can actually go
see someone with an idea and point the person at SourceForge in order
for him or her to get a feel on how the project matters.

It also urges people to either create a project or go hack on one by
providing things like the highest ranked project. Hackers seeking
personal fame can decide to go work on something popular, for example.

They also put the emphasis on smaller things, like ready to use
code. Sourceware has that (libbffi is one of them) but really doesn't
take that direction. And Sourceware projects are definitively tied to
Cygnus business -- infrastructure pieces as we used to call them. The
only thing that doesn't belong to that category is Xconq.

SourceForge is Sourceware with a /. spin to it.

./A

Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jason Molenda]

While tagging devo, I took a few seconds to look at slashdot.  They've got
an article from some guy at Andover who saw VA Linux's Larry Agustin's
talk at the linux conference:

	http://slashdot.org/features/00/02/04/0912250.shtml

Hey, I'm impressed.  I don't intend to sound too cynical, but again you
can see Cygnus getting beat at its own free software game by snoozing.

Instead of the hackers going off in a corner and setting up their own
little free software site, VA grabbed on to the idea, integrated it
to their story, and has developed the site so that it is becoming the
definitive place on the net to host free software projects.  They started
sourceforge, what, six months ago?  Sourceware has been up and running
for over a year and a half.

I've said it before, but it is pretty clear that being first (as
sourceware was) is not good enough in a competitive market.

J

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Bob Manson]

In message < Pine.SOL.3.91.1000204145617.22969G-100000@cse.cygnus.com >, Benjamin
 Kosnik writes:
>for the record i'm quite pleased with the sourceware infrastructure. 

Ditto, but I don't ask for a lot. :-) 

And, I will miss Jason very much.  I think he's done a fantastic job
given the resources available, and especially considering the
anti-forces that were (unintentionally, I'm sure...;-) working against
him to make it a good site.
						Bob

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Mark Galassi]

    Anthony> Jason wrote:

    >> Hey, I'm impressed.  I don't intend to sound too cynical, but
    >> again you can see Cygnus getting beat at its own free software
    >> game by snoozing.

    Anthony> I don't understand this.  I thought you always only
    Anthony> intended to host Cygnus sponsored/owned projects on the
    Anthony> site.

The impression I got was that Jason felt that was all he could get
away with.

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Benjamin Kosnik]

> I noticed SourceForge uses VALinux ressources (Duh.) Some VALinux
> pages are cached by Akamai. It might be the case for SourceForge.

this whole T1 vs T3 stuff is a bit archaic, don't you think? I mean, why 
don't we just co-locate a server ontop of a OC3 or whatever at hurricane, 
abovenet or whereever?
 
It would cost us around $500 bux a month depending on the profile of the 
case, versus >$1000. Nutty

oh well. 

for the record i'm quite pleased with the sourceware infrastructure. 

-benjamin

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jeffrey A Law]

  In message < Pine.SOL.3.91.1000204145617.22969G-100000@cse.cygnus.com >you writ
e:
  > > I noticed SourceForge uses VALinux ressources (Duh.) Some VALinux
  > > pages are cached by Akamai. It might be the case for SourceForge.
  > 
  > this whole T1 vs T3 stuff is a bit archaic, don't you think? I mean, why 
  > don't we just co-locate a server ontop of a OC3 or whatever at hurricane, 
  > abovenet or whereever?
  >  
  > It would cost us around $500 bux a month depending on the profile of the 
  > case, versus >$1000. Nutty
Err, no.  We looked at co-location about a year ago, it was *much* more 
expensive than you think.

It does appear that we'll be co-locating sourceware in the not too distant
future though.

jeff

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Mark Galassi]

    Per> Kawa is one.  It isn't directly tied to Cygnus business,
    Per> though there are some historical and indirect tries.

GSL (GNU Scientific Library) is another project unrelated to Cygnus.
I always wanted to test the waters and see if Jason would allow me to
put Dominion up there...

Paradoxically, the DocBook tools are used much more by Red Hat than
they ever were by Cygnus after I left.

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Alexandre Petit-Bianco]

Jason Molenda writes:

> What are they using over at VA, a T3 last I heard?

I noticed SourceForge uses VALinux ressources (Duh.) Some VALinux
pages are cached by Akamai. It might be the case for SourceForge.

./A

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jeffrey A Law]

  In message < 389B5AE2.15433CDE@shebs.cnchost.com >you write:
  > Anthony Green wrote:
  > > 
  > > Jason wrote:
  > > > Hey, I'm impressed.  I don't intend to sound too cynical, but again you
  > > > can see Cygnus getting beat at its own free software game by snoozing.
  > > 
  > > I don't understand this.  I thought you always only intended to host
  > > Cygnus sponsored/owned projects on the site.
  > 
  > It occurs to me that with me gone and Jason departing, I need to know who
  > will be in charge of sourceware, and if Xconq will still be able to live
  > there.  If not, sourceforge will acquire another project...
I'm not sure if we know for sure who "owns" sourceware now.  For all I know
it might be me :-)

Given the rumblings I'm hearing, I doubt someone is going to say that xconq
is not appropriate for the sourceware machine.

For now, overseers is probably the best contact point for sourceware related
issues.

jeff

  > 
  > Stan
  > 

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Tom Tromey]

>> Hey, I'm impressed.  I don't intend to sound too cynical, but again
>> you can see Cygnus getting beat at its own free software game by
>> snoozing.

Anthony> I don't understand this.  I thought you always only intended
Anthony> to host Cygnus sponsored/owned projects on the site.

I'm confused, too, because I thought Jason always wanted to keep
marketing and/or Cygnus management out of the picture.  Jason, isn't
this the case?

Anyway, sourceforge provides some things that sourceware doesn't.  It
would be nice to get them for sourceware.  On the other hand,
sourceware has a nicer aesthetic sense than sourceforge.  Sourceforge
is pretty ugly, visually.

Tom

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jason Molenda]

On Fri, Feb 04, 2000 at 04:04:26PM -0700, Jeffrey A Law wrote:

> I'm not sure if we know for sure who "owns" sourceware now.  For all I know
> it might be me :-)


Yah, I haven't figured out what we're going to do there.

There will probably be a follow-on system in the near future, built
from scratch with hints from the design/implementation on sourceware.
That system will undoubtedly have a new set of maintainers.

The day-to-day maintenance is straightforward and boring.  I usually get
one person per day who can't unsubscribe; I unsubscribe them without any
further communication.  I usually get one person who accidentally sends
mail to the -owner address instead of the list; I usually let those people
fall through the cracks unless it's a particularly interesting message.
I usually get one complaint a week about the RBLs, how I'm unjustly
persecuting someone, and how I'm an idiot.

Someone needs to be responsible for all of that junk.  It's an hour a
week kind of commitement.

New accounts (for Cygnus people and for external contributors) need
to be created.  Help must be provided when these people have trouble
getting in with SSH (I learned how to do it by trial and error :-).
New mailing lists must be set up, new projects must be created.  These
happen infrequently.  I will be leaving behind detailed procedures for
all of these things.

I expect Jeff Law or Jim Kingdon will volunteer for these responsibilites
(they probably did not know that they're volunteering :-)

The system, as is, does not have any problems and does not require
any additional time.  I know I've said it before, but I ain't jokin':
It just works.  Helping clueless humans and setting up new stuff is all
that is needed.

> Given the rumblings I'm hearing, I doubt someone is going to say that xconq
> is not appropriate for the sourceware machine.

Yah, the last thing I expect to see is projects being asked to leave
the system.

> For now, overseers is probably the best contact point for sourceware related
> issues.


Agreed.  Until now it has been mostly an announcement vehicle by me,
but a little more communication will probably be necessary and this is
the best forum.


Jason

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jim Kingdon]

> Jim Kingdon was suprised at the hesitation --- he said he'd get reamed
> at the conference for not releasing everything immediately.

Just by way of updating people, reaction at the conference to the
community announcements seemed positive.

    kernel - http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000201/nc_red_hat_1.html
    cluster - http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000202/ny_red_hat_2.html
    tools - http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000131/nc_red_hat_1.html

A little hard to know what the reaction would have been if we hadn't
made the announcement.  People actually weren't as worried about the
whole subject as I had expected.  So perhaps I was overreacting, I
dunno.

Oh, and VA paying $700 million for slashdot was greeted with *lots* of
skepticism.  So don't worry about Red Hat having missed the boat
there.  The only explanation I found was to ask not why this is good
for VA, but why it is good for the community (this is the way that
Larry Augustin thinks - even more foreign to most businesspeople than
the Red Hat attitude, but it seems to work fairly well for him if you
look at their growth rate).  On the business side Andover.net
consisted of some rather clueless suits and obnoxious sales people.
And I think it is safe to say that this will change under VA mgmt.

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jason Molenda]

On Fri, Feb 04, 2000 at 02:58:58PM -0800, Benjamin Kosnik wrote:

> this whole T1 vs T3 stuff is a bit archaic, don't you think? I mean, why 
> don't we just co-locate a server ontop of a OC3 or whatever at hurricane, 
> abovenet or whereever?


For the record, RH intends to colocate the sourceware box at some big-ass
ISP in the forseeable future.  I assume it'll have a lot of bandwidth at
that point, although it's a pay-by-the-packet kind of arrangement so there
will probably be limits on how much traffic we can allow from the site.

For those who don't study the weekly bandwidth reports :-), the VAAAST
majority of the traffic from sourceware is ftp traffic, and nearly fifty
percent of the ftp traffic is GCC.  We can (and often have) throttle
number of simultaneous ftp connections allowed, but that's site-wide.
We don't really care how many people are downloading libffi or Xconq;
we want to keep the GCC downloaders in check.  This is not very easy
to do well.  If we just lower the # of simultaneous ftp users, smaller
projects (with weaker mirroring arrangements) are the ones that suffer
the most.

J

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Ben Elliston]

> which to this weeks ftp/http/cvs site.  It means that the FSF can shop
> around for the best site.  I don't actually see subversions being a
> great help as it's butting many eggs (egcs?) in a single basket.

As you know, I recently put config.* under CVS on subversions.  Based on
the way things seem to operate, I'm not expecting it to be anywhere near
as reliable as sourceware.

Ben

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Per Bothner]

Jason Molenda <crash@cygnus.com> writes:

> I talked with Per last week, he has a new project that he's hosting
> on Sourceforge (the bastard! :).  If I understand correctly, they'll
> support a hostname like "jemacs.sourceforge.net" and they stick some
> little graphic ad for Sourceforge on the home page

That they do automatically - i.e. for all their projects.

> (or maybe he meant
> that they would allow him to do "www.jemacs.org").

They will also allow this, I'm told.  (They don't provide the name
service at this point, though, which is a disappointment.)
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/~per/

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Chris Faylor]

On Sat, Feb 05, 2000 at 09:47:48AM -0500, Jim Blandy wrote:
>For cripes' sake, we hired a CEO who didn't get Free software.  How
>the hell did that happen?  Did somebody forget to mention it?

I think you're mistaken, Jim.  Alex Daly was a "free software advocate".
He said so, many times.

I should also mention that I am a "Nobel laureate".  I'm going to keep
saying this until it becomes true...

>Certain pieces of GDB just got freed.  The GDB team was very cautious
>about releasing the code, because they wanted to synchronize with the
>marketing department to get the most PR value out of it.  That's the
>way Cygnus has done it.  Jim Kingdon was suprised at the hesitation
>--- he said he'd get reamed at the conference for not releasing
>everything immediately.

I actually don't have a problem with getting PR as long as they don't
result in unrealistic limitations, e.g., "Could you wait three months
before you release this so that we can announce it in Embedded World
2001?"

>The dichotomy here is that Cygnus sees Free software as a PR gimmick.
>You release it to look good to the outside world.  Red Hat sees Free
>software as the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of their
>brand, which is their whole business.  They don't expect the rest of
>the world to be proud of them for freeing stuff --- they expect to
>lose credibility by *not* freeing stuff.

I'm not so sure that Red Hat doesn't have people who look upon open
source as a PR opportunity.  I actually hope that they, er..., we,
do have people who know how to capitalize on Red Hat's strong open
source stance.

Right now, it sure seems to me that we're losing ground to VA Linux,
aka SourceForge, though.

>Which is why it sucks that Jason is leaving.  I think there's a
>better-than-even chance that we just acquired the management that
>would actually be able to take sourceware where it should go.
>What a useless trade.

I have to say that when I started at Cygnus I was sort of surprised to
see the large amount of caution that surrounded the free software
concept.  It seemed, and still does seem, that all of the free software
stuff that was going on was done by individuals who believed in it.
From management, there was never anything but corporate lip service to
the concept.

When we released the sources to gdbtk, I sort of got the feeling that
somebody thought they were doing us all a favor by allowing us to do
this.

Also, when the Cygwin CD came out, I was told on a number of occasions
that I had to wait for approval from marketing before I made any more
net releases.  It was extremely galling to have to defend this position
to people asking for the source.  It is true, of course, that we are
adhering to the letter of the GPL by only releasing the sources on the
CD.  I think we lose a large amount of good will by holding back,
however.

I really hope that things will start changing rapidly on the free
software front now that Red Hat is running things.

cgf

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Stan Shebs]

Jason Molenda wrote:
> 
> While tagging devo, I took a few seconds to look at slashdot.  They've got
> an article from some guy at Andover who saw VA Linux's Larry Agustin's
> talk at the linux conference:
> 
>         http://slashdot.org/features/00/02/04/0912250.shtml
> 
> Hey, I'm impressed.  I don't intend to sound too cynical, but again you
> can see Cygnus getting beat at its own free software game by snoozing.

Yeah, what's with all of RH's Web folks in SF?  Isn't this kind of thing
supposed to be their job?  (Or is their purpose just to consume money so
that RH will look like a true Internet company?)  For all of Young's and
Tiemann's talk about the value of branding and the poo-pooing of VA Linux,
it's VA that's now collecting all the attention, while Red Hat is nowhere
to be seen.

Stan

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Tom Tromey]

Jason>   If I were doing a system like Sourceforge, I'd be going out
Jason> to notable free software projects and selling them on moving
Jason> their whole project over to my system.  I think the "use as
Jason> much of Sourceforge as you want" is a good approach, but I'd
Jason> really push for a consistent buy-in from important projects as
Jason> much as I could.

I like this approach too.  It would be an easier sell if, for specific
projects, we would also let them pick their own domain name.  For
instance, it would be easier to have GNU projects there if the site
were named (eg) autoconf.gnu.org.

Of course, this reduces brand recognition, and so it has to depend on
your overall goal.  Asking such projects to have a "hosted by
sourceware" graphic on their web page might be an ok tradeoff; it
depends.

Tom

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Alexandre Petit-Bianco]

Mark Galassi writes:
> 
>     Per> Kawa is one.  It isn't directly tied to Cygnus business,
>     Per> though there are some historical and indirect tries.

Sorry I missed that one, but I took my info (like a random user would
do) from http://sourceware.cygnus.com/sourcecode.html , where Kawa is
notably absent.

> GSL (GNU Scientific Library) is another project unrelated to Cygnus.

Noted. They still make a fraction of what Sourceware has to offer.

./A

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Andrew Cagney]

Excerpts from mail: 4-Feb-100 Re: Wow, look at a sourcewa.. Tom
Tromey@cygnus.com (821*)

> Jason>   If I were doing a system like Sourceforge, I'd be going out
> Jason> to notable free software projects and selling them on moving
> Jason> their whole project over to my system.  I think the "use as
> Jason> much of Sourceforge as you want" is a good approach, but I'd
> Jason> really push for a consistent buy-in from important projects as
> Jason> much as I could.

> I like this approach too.  It would be an easier sell if, for specific
> projects, we would also let them pick their own domain name.  For
> instance, it would be easier to have GNU projects there if the site
> were named (eg) autoconf.gnu.org.

Yes.

> Of course, this reduces brand recognition, and so it has to depend on
> your overall goal.  Asking such projects to have a "hosted by
> sourceware" graphic on their web page might be an ok tradeoff; it
> depends.

For GDB, i think there should be:

	gdb.fsf.org
and	fsf.org/gdb

which to this weeks ftp/http/cvs site.  It means that the FSF can shop
around for the best site.  I don't actually see subversions being a
great help as it's butting many eggs (egcs?) in a single basket.

	Andrew

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Tom Tromey]

Alex> SourceForge is Sourceware with a /. spin to it.

Good call.  And that chatty feeling is going to make it popular with
the ever-growing /. crowd.  It wouldn't be bad for us to emulate
this.

T

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jason Molenda]

On Fri, Feb 04, 2000 at 02:53:05PM -0700, Mark Galassi wrote:
> 
> Jason, dude, I've seen you put the sourceware site down a few times,
> but I can't imagine anything being any better.  


I don't mean to put down sourceware.  I'm proud of this system -- more
so than anything else I've ever done at Cygnus over the last six years.
There are only a handful of infrastructure bits I haven't added that
would be useful (irc/icb, news, FAQ handler for all the projects).
It's a great system.

I look at Sourceforge and I see a system with similar capabilities,
with a wider mission (host any project that wants it, allow project-level
administration by the project maintainers), being publicized, supported,
and leveraged really well by VA.

VA and Cygnus (now Red Hat) both have a site that is about the same as
the other's.  VA is doing great things with their site, Cygnus is not.

Maybe Red Hat will do great things with this site, but Cygnus has all
but ignored the site except to push individual projects hosted on there
(Java, eCos, Elix).  It was a major accomplishment last summer when I
got approval from KimK to buy a new box to host the system and later in
the fall when approval came through to get a T1 just for Sourceware.
What are they using over at VA, a T3 last I heard?

I am impressed by what VA has done.  They're doing a great job.
I'm disappointed by opportunity lost because Sourceware was treated
as something on the periphery that had little to do with our business.
Red Hat can make a compelling follow-on site to sourceware and do great
things with it, but they're now in the unenviable position of having to
match an established site (Sourceforge) in name awareness and facilities.

When I created Sourceware, Cygnus was just starting to like free software
again.  I guess I should be thankful that I was able to do it at all --
if I had tried to do this a year earlier, it wouldn't have flown.

Jason // Sourceware Czar
         Free the Software!

Re: Wow, look at a sourceware like site being supported and leveraged by VA

[Jason Molenda]

On Fri, Feb 04, 2000 at 03:19:30PM -0800, Alexandre Petit-Bianco wrote:
> 
>   Per> Kawa is one.  It isn't directly tied to Cygnus business,
>   Per> though there are some historical and indirect tries.
> 

> Sorry I missed that one, but I took my info (like a random user would
> do) from http://sourceware.cygnus.com/sourcecode.html , where Kawa is
> notably absent.


I never listed it because it was such a weirdo project.  I was striving
for a certain standard on sourceware -- if a project was on sourceware,
you knew it would have a home page, you knew it would have cvs archives,
you knew it would have mailing lists with web archives and ftp archives,
you knew it would have an ftp site.  And you knew it would be the same
for every project on there.  I was trying to make it so people would say,
"Oh, it's on sourceware!  Well, I know that I can expect to see a really
well supported project if it's on sourceware."

I think I just had the kawa mailing lists for a long time.  Then I
picked up the repo at some point (maybe I have the timeline wrong) and
the home page moved over to the FSF, along with the ftp dir.  And the
home page/cvs repo were destined to be moved over to gnu.org as soon as
they got their new cvs server running or whatever.

In short, the way Kawa was using sourceware didn't make the cut and it
looked likely to leave cygnus.com entirely in the near future.  So I
never documented its existance.

Guile is another one like that, kind of half-hosted on sourceware,
half-hosted on gnu.org, half-hosted on some random ftp site somewhere.
Unlike Kawa, I think I have links to Guile on the top-level pages.

Incidentally, this approach is distinctly different from Sourceforge
where they just have people host any part of any project that they
want to.  A lot of the projects on there have just one little thing
(maybe a mailing list or a message board or a web page).  If I were doing
a system like Sourceforge, I'd be going out to notable free software
projects and selling them on moving their whole project over to my system.
I think the "use as much of Sourceforge as you want" is a good approach,
but I'd really push for a consistent buy-in from important projects as
much as I could.


Jason