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* Re: proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
@ 2022-09-01 19:18 Marc
  2022-09-01 19:47 ` Frank Ch. Eigler
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Marc @ 2022-09-01 19:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: fche; +Cc: bkuhn, overseers, pono, mark

Hi!

Thanks for everything! As a (very minor) contributor of the GCC-Rust, I
can see how the CI is really helpful. The public-inbox looks also very
interesting (Mark listed some of the nice features this tool offers,
I've already looked at piem), thanks!

> This year, we set up a roadmap to improve the services for tracking
> and automation of email based patches and testing
> https://inbox.sourceware.org/overseers/YrLdfDWzq1T4k5xg@wildebeest.org/
> This resulted in the launch of several new or updated services
> (builder.sourceware.org, patchwork.sourceware.org and
> inbox.sourceware.org).  This didn't need any additional funds (except
> for the sourcehut mirror which costs $10 a month).  We are proud to
> operate these services with minimal costs so we can sustain them both
> in good and in bad years.  But that doesn't mean everything has to be
> done on a zero budget.  Financial contributions are more than welcome
> so that if the need arises we can contract for some unusual admin
> stuff or additions to services like bugzilla, buildbot, patchwork,
> public-inbox or sourcehut.
>
> There are a few small-ticket items that we would dearly welcome
> community assistance with.  This is just a draft of a draft, just to
> give you an idea of the scope.  No gigaprojects, just community scale:
> helping each other out.  That kind of low-budget efficiency seems to
> be a perfect match for SFC.

I understand that the best would be to offer manpower, but you also
mention funding. It's not clear (at least for me) how it's currently
working, and how it would work if/when the project is accepted by the
SFC. I don't feel qualified for any of the small-tickets you list but
would still like to help if possible. If there's a way to donnate to the
project, could you explain how?

I guess this will be discussed during the upcoming Cauldron during
Mark's presentation?

Thanks again for all your work :)
Marc

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
  2022-09-01 19:18 proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project Marc
@ 2022-09-01 19:47 ` Frank Ch. Eigler
  2022-09-01 20:47   ` Christopher Faylor
  2022-09-02 11:10   ` Mark Wielaard
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Frank Ch. Eigler @ 2022-09-01 19:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Overseers mailing list; +Cc: Marc, pono, mark

Hi -

> Thanks for everything! As a (very minor) contributor of the GCC-Rust, I
> can see how the CI is really helpful. The public-inbox looks also very
> interesting (Mark listed some of the nice features this tool offers,
> I've already looked at piem), thanks!

Our pleasure!

> > There are a few small-ticket items that we would dearly welcome
> > community assistance with.  [...]
>
> I understand that the best would be to offer manpower, but you also
> mention funding. It's not clear (at least for me) how it's currently
> working

Basically, Red Hat has been covering all the direct costs, and folks
inside and outside the company have been working together to keep
things running.

> and how it would work if/when the project is accepted by the SFC. 

This arrangement would let outside donors, even very small ones, pool
contributions toward future infrastructure projects.

> I don't feel qualified for any of the small-tickets you list but
> would still like to help if possible. If there's a way to donnate to
> the project, could you explain how?

If the SFC proposal is accepted, this will be straightforward.

> I guess this will be discussed during the upcoming Cauldron during
> Mark's presentation?

I believe so.


- FChE


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
  2022-09-01 19:47 ` Frank Ch. Eigler
@ 2022-09-01 20:47   ` Christopher Faylor
  2022-09-02 11:10   ` Mark Wielaard
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Faylor @ 2022-09-01 20:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Frank Ch. Eigler; +Cc: Overseers mailing list, pono, mark, Marc

On Thu, Sep 01, 2022 at 03:47:16PM -0400, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
>> I don't feel qualified for any of the small-tickets you list but
>> would still like to help if possible. If there's a way to donnate to
>> the project, could you explain how?
>
>If the SFC proposal is accepted, this will be straightforward.

And, there will basically be no changes to status quo other than having
the potential to implement new stuff on sourceware more quickly.

cgf


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
  2022-09-01 19:47 ` Frank Ch. Eigler
  2022-09-01 20:47   ` Christopher Faylor
@ 2022-09-02 11:10   ` Mark Wielaard
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mark Wielaard @ 2022-09-02 11:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Overseers mailing list; +Cc: Frank Ch. Eigler, pono, Marc

Hi Marc,

On Thu, 2022-09-01 at 15:47 -0400, Frank Ch. Eigler via Overseers
wrote:
> > I guess this will be discussed during the upcoming Cauldron during
> > Mark's presentation?
> 
> I believe so.

Frank (virtually) and I (in person) will give a presentation on:
Sourceware GNU Toolchain Infrastructure and beyond
https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/cauldron2022#cauldron2022talks.sourceware_gnu_toolchain_infrastructure_and_beyond

   The Sourceware infrastructure is continually improving. Just like
   our other services, such as bugzilla, mailinglists  and git repos,
   we like to provide zero maintenance infrastructure for tracking and
   automation of patches, testing and analyzing testresults.

   This BoF is for everybody who likes to discuss (and wants to help
   with) automating the  infrastructure to make contributing to our
   projects more fun and more productive. 

   Topics to discuss include the shared buildbot. Whether we need
   more/other arches/distro support. Which builders are most beneficial
   to projects. How buildbot should report issues. Whether to use the
   buildbot to automate other tasks like updating documentation,
   websites, generate release tars or updating bugzilla. How to use git
   user try branches. Taking advantage of the Bunsen testrun cluster
   analysis, per-testrun testcase search/browse engines, search
   operators, testsuite summary (vs detail) grids. Patch tracking using
   patchwork integrated with buildbot and the CICD trybot. How to use
   the sourcehut mirror. And anything else that would make you more
   productive and happy contributing.

(I see the official description doesn't mention public-inbox, but I
prepared some examples and would love to discuss whether and how people
are using it.)

So we really want to concentrate on discussing having fun contributing
to the various sourceware projects. But if the sourceware application
to be a Conservancy member project is approved by then we can also
discuss that (not implying that fiscal sponsorship isn't a fun topic,
but I suspect most hackers will be interested in discussing technical
stuff).

Cheers,

Mark

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
  2022-08-30 18:03 Frank Ch. Eigler
                   ` (2 preceding siblings ...)
  2022-09-02 11:47 ` Mark Wielaard
@ 2022-09-05 12:20 ` Dodji Seketeli
  3 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Dodji Seketeli @ 2022-09-05 12:20 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Overseers mailing list
  Cc: Frank Ch. Eigler, Daniel Pono Takamori, Bradley M. Kuhn

Hello,

First of all, I'd like to warmly thank the overseers of the sourceware
service for providing us with such a great home during all those years.

And things just kept improving.  For instance, I am an extremely happy
user of the buildbot and inbox services.  What a change these brought!
And all of that based on a 100% Free Software infrastructure.  For some
of us, that matters a lot.

[...]

"Frank Ch. Eigler via Overseers" <overseers@sourceware.org> a écrit:

> The overseers of the hosting server sourceware.org aka cygwin.org aka
> gcc.gnu.org aka (others *) invite the community to assist us in
> further securing the future of the service.  Red Hat has been and
> continues to be a generous sponsor of the hardware, connectivity, and
> the very modest employee time it requires.  We are glad to report
> there are zero indications of any change to this commitment.  Things
> are stable, new services are coming online, and users seem to be
> happy.  However, it is always good to think about any future needs.
>
> To protect confidence in the long term future of this hosting service,
> we have reached out to the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) to
> function as a "fiscal sponsor".  For those who aren't familiar with
> it, the SFC is a registered US 501(c)(3) public-benefit charity,
> associated with dozens of major FOSS projects, including Buildbot,
> Inkscape, Git, Outreachy, QEMU and Xapian:
> https://sfconservancy.org/projects/current/

I am thrilled to see this development. 

I must say that I didn't need my confidence in the long term future of
this hosting service to be protected given how smooth things have been
so far.

Given how strong of a steward the SFC has been for so many great
Free Software projects over the years, I welcome this move
wholeheartedly.

With my humble libabigail maintainer hat on, this is a +10000 from me.

[...]

Cheers,

-- 
		Dodji

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
  2022-08-30 18:03 Frank Ch. Eigler
  2022-09-01 14:19 ` Elena Zannoni
  2022-09-01 18:45 ` Corinna Vinschen
@ 2022-09-02 11:47 ` Mark Wielaard
  2022-09-05 12:20 ` Dodji Seketeli
  3 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mark Wielaard @ 2022-09-02 11:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Overseers mailing list
  Cc: Frank Ch. Eigler, Daniel Pono Takamori, Bradley M. Kuhn

Hi,

On Tue, 2022-08-30 at 14:03 -0400, Frank Ch. Eigler via Overseers
wrote:
> We are reaching out to the 20 most active projects on
> Sourceware (binutils, bunsen, bzip2, cgen, cygwin, debugedit, dwz,
> elfutils, gcc, gccrs, gdb, glibc, insight, kawa, libabigail, libffi,
> newlib, sid, systemtap, valgrind) about this proposal to make sure
> nobody is caught unaware. And Sourceware is also responsible for
> preserving the history of another 40 projects which are either less
> active, have been archived or moved on.

So this generated almost 6000 emails about the proposal and even an lwn
news article: https://lwn.net/Articles/906502/

And normally you hit at least one troll when doing such a broad public
discussion (knock on wood) which is why I was a little hesitant when
the Conservancy requested we be very public about the application. But
all responses have been positive. I didn't even get any negative
personal emails about spamming so many people.

Also asking around in some of the irc channels of a few sourceware
projects people seemed positive about the application or at worst
neutral. No negative reactions at all.

So I believe people are generally happy with how overseers are handling
sourceware and people trust SFC to be a good fiscal sponsor for the
project.

Cheers,

Mark

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
  2022-09-01 18:45 ` Corinna Vinschen
  2022-09-01 18:54   ` Frank Ch. Eigler
@ 2022-09-02 10:51   ` Mark Wielaard
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mark Wielaard @ 2022-09-02 10:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: overseers; +Cc: Corinna Vinschen

Hi Corinna,

On Thu, 2022-09-01 at 20:45 +0200, Corinna Vinschen via Overseers wrote:
> On Aug 30 14:03, Frank Ch. Eigler via Overseers wrote:
> > This year, we set up a roadmap to improve the services for tracking
> > and automation of email based patches and testing
> > https://inbox.sourceware.org/overseers/YrLdfDWzq1T4k5xg@wildebeest.org/
> > This resulted in the launch of several new or updated services
> > (builder.sourceware.org, patchwork.sourceware.org and
> > inbox.sourceware.org).  This didn't need any additional funds (except
> > for the sourcehut mirror which costs $10 a month).  We are proud to
> > operate these services with minimal costs so we can sustain them both
> > in good and in bad years.  But that doesn't mean everything has to be
> > done on a zero budget.  Financial contributions are more than welcome
> > so that if the need arises we can contract for some unusual admin
> > stuff or additions to services like bugzilla, buildbot, patchwork,
> > public-inbox or sourcehut.
> 
> I'd like to raise my finger here.  As you probably know well, Cygwin
> has very little need for official services like the above.

Of course you don't need to use any of them if you don't need them. All
the cygwin mailinglists are now also included in the public-inbox
instance at https://inbox.sourceware.org/ (so also accessible through
git, atom, imap and nntp) but that doesn't change anything about the
existing mailinglist setups. And you can ignore patchwork and builder
if you don't need them. But they are there in case you do.

>   Apart from
> website, git, and mailing list, we especially require the handcrafted
> services for our Windows-centric package management of our distro.
> We're maintaining this stuff pretty much self-sufficiently for a long
> time.  I take it this can continue and will still be supported in
> future?

Of course! Like Frank already said "we contemplate no necessary
technical change or disruption of any sort, including to operations,
governance, or hosted project procedures or licensing.  It would be
solely a way to help future needs by providing routing for financial
contributions, and have an official, charitable entity (with a real
legal existence) for supporting sourceware.org."

Thanks,

Mark

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
  2022-09-01 14:19 ` Elena Zannoni
  2022-09-01 18:10   ` Christopher Faylor
@ 2022-09-02 10:14   ` Mark Wielaard
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Mark Wielaard @ 2022-09-02 10:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Overseers mailing list, Frank Ch. Eigler
  Cc: Elena Zannoni, Daniel Pono Takamori

Hi Elena,

On Thu, 2022-09-01 at 08:19 -0600, Elena Zannoni via Overseers wrote:
> Hi folks, good to see this effort.
> 
> As one of the old timers that was there at the initial setup of the
> public repos in 1998, I first of all want to thank you for keeping
> this effort going smoothly for such a long time.
> 
> My team uses sourceware services every day and we wouldn't be able to
> do so without your dedication.

Thanks.

> The announcements of latest improvements and updates and the roadmap
> itself have not been seen by many people I am afraid, so I think it's
> worth to point to them here:
> 
> https://sourceware.org/pipermail/overseers/2022q2/018453.html
> https://sourceware.org/pipermail/overseers/2022q2/018529.html
> https://sourceware.org/pipermail/overseers/2022q3/018636.html
> https://sourceware.org/pipermail/overseers/2022q3/018716.html
> 
> Would it be worth to put them in the News section of sourceware.org?
> Maybe also post the roadmap on a page on sourceware.org?

Thanks for noticing. And yeah, maybe we aren't selling our services
enough. But if we would need to then it would also probably mean the
services aren't zero-maintenance (for the projects). And we really
don't want to oversell. Ideally the services just keep on improving
without anybody needing to care.

I did just add the services from the roadmap which are more or less
ready builder.sourceware.org, patchwork.sourceware.org and
inbox.sourceware.org to the homepage so people can find them easily.

We were actually talking about changing the homepage to be all about
the projects hosted on sourceware instead of sourceware itself. So you
would easily find news, mailinglists, repos and activity for each one.

> It is good to see this effort to regularize the responsibilities for
> Sourceware a bit more. I agree that a fiscal sponsor is a good thing to
> have and the SFC seems like a good home. Hopefully the governance can be
> maintained as light as possible, and hopefully it will be neutral,
> having the best interest of the developer communities in mind.
> 
> I do not believe that Sourceware is broken as it is today, but
> establishing a more solid structure will help to maintain it healthy for
> many more years to come.

That is certainly the intention!

Thanks for your feedback,

Mark

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
  2022-09-01 18:45 ` Corinna Vinschen
@ 2022-09-01 18:54   ` Frank Ch. Eigler
  2022-09-02 10:51   ` Mark Wielaard
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Frank Ch. Eigler @ 2022-09-01 18:54 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: overseers

Hi, Corinna -


> > [...] It would be solely a way to help future needs by providing
> > routing for financial contributions, and have an official, charitable
> > entity (with a real legal existence) for supporting sourceware.org.
>
> Some of these services sound pretty good.  I like especially the
> "Avoid Non-Profit Administrivia" :)))

Yeah, and none of that is for individual guest projects to worry about
anyway.  That's for people who want to help guide funding and related
work on the shared infrastructure.


> [...]  I'd like to raise my finger here.  As you probably know well,
> Cygwin has very little need for official services like the above.
> Apart from website, git, and mailing list, we especially require the
> handcrafted services for our Windows-centric package management of
> our distro.  We're maintaining this stuff pretty much
> self-sufficiently for a long time.  I take it this can continue and
> will still be supported in future?

Nothing about the proposed SFC arrangement implies ANY change to how
any of our valued guest projects enjoy their home on sourceware.  They
remain welcome to come, stay, and leave if they like.


- FChE

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
  2022-08-30 18:03 Frank Ch. Eigler
  2022-09-01 14:19 ` Elena Zannoni
@ 2022-09-01 18:45 ` Corinna Vinschen
  2022-09-01 18:54   ` Frank Ch. Eigler
  2022-09-02 10:51   ` Mark Wielaard
  2022-09-02 11:47 ` Mark Wielaard
  2022-09-05 12:20 ` Dodji Seketeli
  3 siblings, 2 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Corinna Vinschen @ 2022-09-01 18:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: overseers

On Aug 30 14:03, Frank Ch. Eigler via Overseers wrote:
> SFC takes open applications from FOSS communities and projects. Our
> application process has just begun.  As a part of this effort, we
> contemplate no necessary technical change or disruption of any sort,
> including to operations, governance, or hosted project procedures or
> licensing.  It would be solely a way to help future needs by providing
> routing for financial contributions, and have an official, charitable
> entity (with a real legal existence) for supporting sourceware.org.
> If accepted as a member project, sourceware.org would have access to
> this list of services from SFC, and possibly more:
> https://sfconservancy.org/projects/services/

Some of these services sound pretty good.  I like especially the
"Avoid Non-Profit Administrivia" :)))

> This year, we set up a roadmap to improve the services for tracking
> and automation of email based patches and testing
> https://inbox.sourceware.org/overseers/YrLdfDWzq1T4k5xg@wildebeest.org/
> This resulted in the launch of several new or updated services
> (builder.sourceware.org, patchwork.sourceware.org and
> inbox.sourceware.org).  This didn't need any additional funds (except
> for the sourcehut mirror which costs $10 a month).  We are proud to
> operate these services with minimal costs so we can sustain them both
> in good and in bad years.  But that doesn't mean everything has to be
> done on a zero budget.  Financial contributions are more than welcome
> so that if the need arises we can contract for some unusual admin
> stuff or additions to services like bugzilla, buildbot, patchwork,
> public-inbox or sourcehut.

I'd like to raise my finger here.  As you probably know well, Cygwin has
very little need for official services like the above.  Apart from
website, git, and mailing list, we especially require the handcrafted
services for our Windows-centric package management of our distro.
We're maintaining this stuff pretty much self-sufficiently for a long
time.  I take it this can continue and will still be supported in
future?


Corinna


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
  2022-09-01 14:19 ` Elena Zannoni
@ 2022-09-01 18:10   ` Christopher Faylor
  2022-09-02 10:14   ` Mark Wielaard
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Christopher Faylor @ 2022-09-01 18:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Elena Zannoni; +Cc: Overseers mailing list

Thanks Elena.

In case it isn't clear we're doing this for all of the projects on this page:
https://sourceware.org/projects.html (some of which are defunct, but still).  This isn't just for
the GNU Toolchain projects like binutils, gcc, gdb, and glibc .

We're also interested in hearing from popular projects like cygwin, newlib, and systemtap


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* Re: proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
  2022-08-30 18:03 Frank Ch. Eigler
@ 2022-09-01 14:19 ` Elena Zannoni
  2022-09-01 18:10   ` Christopher Faylor
  2022-09-02 10:14   ` Mark Wielaard
  2022-09-01 18:45 ` Corinna Vinschen
                   ` (2 subsequent siblings)
  3 siblings, 2 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Elena Zannoni @ 2022-09-01 14:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Overseers mailing list, Frank Ch. Eigler
  Cc: Daniel Pono Takamori, Bradley M. Kuhn

On 8/30/22 12:03 PM, Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> The overseers of the hosting server sourceware.org aka cygwin.org aka
> gcc.gnu.org aka (others *) invite the community to assist us in
> further securing the future of the service.  Red Hat has been and
> continues to be a generous sponsor of the hardware, connectivity, and
> the very modest employee time it requires.  We are glad to report
> there are zero indications of any change to this commitment.  Things
> are stable, new services are coming online, and users seem to be
> happy.  However, it is always good to think about any future needs.
> 
> To protect confidence in the long term future of this hosting service,
> we have reached out to the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) to
> function as a "fiscal sponsor".  For those who aren't familiar with
> it, the SFC is a registered US 501(c)(3) public-benefit charity,
> associated with dozens of major FOSS projects, including Buildbot,
> Inkscape, Git, Outreachy, QEMU and Xapian:
> https://sfconservancy.org/projects/current/
> 
> SFC takes open applications from FOSS communities and projects. Our
> application process has just begun.  As a part of this effort, we
> contemplate no necessary technical change or disruption of any sort,
> including to operations, governance, or hosted project procedures or
> licensing.  It would be solely a way to help future needs by providing
> routing for financial contributions, and have an official, charitable
> entity (with a real legal existence) for supporting sourceware.org.
> If accepted as a member project, sourceware.org would have access to
> this list of services from SFC, and possibly more:
> https://sfconservancy.org/projects/services/
> 
> This year, we set up a roadmap to improve the services for tracking
> and automation of email based patches and testing
> https://inbox.sourceware.org/overseers/YrLdfDWzq1T4k5xg@wildebeest.org/
> This resulted in the launch of several new or updated services
> (builder.sourceware.org, patchwork.sourceware.org and
> inbox.sourceware.org).  This didn't need any additional funds (except
> for the sourcehut mirror which costs $10 a month).  We are proud to
> operate these services with minimal costs so we can sustain them both
> in good and in bad years.  But that doesn't mean everything has to be
> done on a zero budget.  Financial contributions are more than welcome
> so that if the need arises we can contract for some unusual admin
> stuff or additions to services like bugzilla, buildbot, patchwork,
> public-inbox or sourcehut.
> 
> There are a few small-ticket items that we would dearly welcome
> community assistance with.  This is just a draft of a draft, just to
> give you an idea of the scope.  No gigaprojects, just community scale:
> helping each other out.  That kind of low-budget efficiency seems to
> be a perfect match for SFC.
> 
> - For helping future overseers come on board, we'd love someone's help
>   to write refreshed SOP documentation about how things work and how
>   to fix problems.
> 
> - We could use more documentation for projects to help them come on
>   board, operate their share of the infrastructure, and easily leave
>   if they like.
> 
> - We might need a new security review and more tooling to manage
>   credentials and access.
> 
> - We could use help further automating the management of the new
>   buildbot system, and would love ever more build workers.
> 
> - Some projects operate extra infrastructure services on sourceware
>   that require occasional updates, which they would prefer to offload
>   to someone else.
> 
> These are only some ideas.  We'd love yours.  We can start tracking
> these on bugzilla, why not?
> https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/describecomponents.cgi?product=sourceware
> 
> We would especially love to hear from people who are able to oversee
> and/or carry out this kind of work.  If our application to the SFC
> succeeds, we need likeminded folks to help officially judge funding
> priorities.  We promise the SFC application & committee work would be
> as low-stakes and informal as possible.  Bradley and Daniel from the
> Conservancy have agreed to monitor this discussion and answer any
> questions about what the SFC can and cannot do to help us if we become
> an SFC member project.
> 
> Sourceware has been operating since 1998.  With your advice and help,
> we can keep hosting projects and their developers, comfortably and
> steadily, another few decades.  https://sourceware.org/mission.html
> 
> Chris Faylor <cgf@sourceware.org>
> Frank Eigler <fche@sourceware.org>
> Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org>
> 
> 
> (others *): We are reaching out to the 20 most active projects on
> Sourceware (binutils, bunsen, bzip2, cgen, cygwin, debugedit, dwz,
> elfutils, gcc, gccrs, gdb, glibc, insight, kawa, libabigail, libffi,
> newlib, sid, systemtap, valgrind) about this proposal to make sure
> nobody is caught unaware. And Sourceware is also responsible for
> preserving the history of another 40 projects which are either less
> active, have been archived or moved on.
> 
> 
> ed on.
> 

Hi folks, good to see this effort.

As one of the old timers that was there at the initial setup of the
public repos in 1998, I first of all want to thank you for keeping this
effort going smoothly for such a long time.

My team uses sourceware services every day and we wouldn't be able to do
so without your dedication.

The announcements of latest improvements and updates and the roadmap
itself have not been seen by many people I am afraid, so I think it's
worth to point to them here:

https://sourceware.org/pipermail/overseers/2022q2/018453.html
https://sourceware.org/pipermail/overseers/2022q2/018529.html
https://sourceware.org/pipermail/overseers/2022q3/018636.html
https://sourceware.org/pipermail/overseers/2022q3/018716.html

Would it be worth to put them in the News section of sourceware.org?
Maybe also post the roadmap on a page on sourceware.org?

It is good to see this effort to regularize the responsibilities for
Sourceware a bit more. I agree that a fiscal sponsor is a good thing to
have and the SFC seems like a good home. Hopefully the governance can be
maintained as light as possible, and hopefully it will be neutral,
having the best interest of the developer communities in mind.

I do not believe that Sourceware is broken as it is today, but
establishing a more solid structure will help to maintain it healthy for
many more years to come.

thanks!
elena

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

* proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project
@ 2022-08-30 18:03 Frank Ch. Eigler
  2022-09-01 14:19 ` Elena Zannoni
                   ` (3 more replies)
  0 siblings, 4 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Frank Ch. Eigler @ 2022-08-30 18:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: overseers; +Cc: Bradley M. Kuhn, Daniel Pono Takamori

The overseers of the hosting server sourceware.org aka cygwin.org aka
gcc.gnu.org aka (others *) invite the community to assist us in
further securing the future of the service.  Red Hat has been and
continues to be a generous sponsor of the hardware, connectivity, and
the very modest employee time it requires.  We are glad to report
there are zero indications of any change to this commitment.  Things
are stable, new services are coming online, and users seem to be
happy.  However, it is always good to think about any future needs.

To protect confidence in the long term future of this hosting service,
we have reached out to the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) to
function as a "fiscal sponsor".  For those who aren't familiar with
it, the SFC is a registered US 501(c)(3) public-benefit charity,
associated with dozens of major FOSS projects, including Buildbot,
Inkscape, Git, Outreachy, QEMU and Xapian:
https://sfconservancy.org/projects/current/

SFC takes open applications from FOSS communities and projects. Our
application process has just begun.  As a part of this effort, we
contemplate no necessary technical change or disruption of any sort,
including to operations, governance, or hosted project procedures or
licensing.  It would be solely a way to help future needs by providing
routing for financial contributions, and have an official, charitable
entity (with a real legal existence) for supporting sourceware.org.
If accepted as a member project, sourceware.org would have access to
this list of services from SFC, and possibly more:
https://sfconservancy.org/projects/services/

This year, we set up a roadmap to improve the services for tracking
and automation of email based patches and testing
https://inbox.sourceware.org/overseers/YrLdfDWzq1T4k5xg@wildebeest.org/
This resulted in the launch of several new or updated services
(builder.sourceware.org, patchwork.sourceware.org and
inbox.sourceware.org).  This didn't need any additional funds (except
for the sourcehut mirror which costs $10 a month).  We are proud to
operate these services with minimal costs so we can sustain them both
in good and in bad years.  But that doesn't mean everything has to be
done on a zero budget.  Financial contributions are more than welcome
so that if the need arises we can contract for some unusual admin
stuff or additions to services like bugzilla, buildbot, patchwork,
public-inbox or sourcehut.

There are a few small-ticket items that we would dearly welcome
community assistance with.  This is just a draft of a draft, just to
give you an idea of the scope.  No gigaprojects, just community scale:
helping each other out.  That kind of low-budget efficiency seems to
be a perfect match for SFC.

- For helping future overseers come on board, we'd love someone's help
  to write refreshed SOP documentation about how things work and how
  to fix problems.

- We could use more documentation for projects to help them come on
  board, operate their share of the infrastructure, and easily leave
  if they like.

- We might need a new security review and more tooling to manage
  credentials and access.

- We could use help further automating the management of the new
  buildbot system, and would love ever more build workers.

- Some projects operate extra infrastructure services on sourceware
  that require occasional updates, which they would prefer to offload
  to someone else.

These are only some ideas.  We'd love yours.  We can start tracking
these on bugzilla, why not?
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/describecomponents.cgi?product=sourceware

We would especially love to hear from people who are able to oversee
and/or carry out this kind of work.  If our application to the SFC
succeeds, we need likeminded folks to help officially judge funding
priorities.  We promise the SFC application & committee work would be
as low-stakes and informal as possible.  Bradley and Daniel from the
Conservancy have agreed to monitor this discussion and answer any
questions about what the SFC can and cannot do to help us if we become
an SFC member project.

Sourceware has been operating since 1998.  With your advice and help,
we can keep hosting projects and their developers, comfortably and
steadily, another few decades.  https://sourceware.org/mission.html

Chris Faylor <cgf@sourceware.org>
Frank Eigler <fche@sourceware.org>
Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org>


(others *): We are reaching out to the 20 most active projects on
Sourceware (binutils, bunsen, bzip2, cgen, cygwin, debugedit, dwz,
elfutils, gcc, gccrs, gdb, glibc, insight, kawa, libabigail, libffi,
newlib, sid, systemtap, valgrind) about this proposal to make sure
nobody is caught unaware. And Sourceware is also responsible for
preserving the history of another 40 projects which are either less
active, have been archived or moved on.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2022-09-05 12:20 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 13+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2022-09-01 19:18 proposing Sourceware as Software Freedom Conservancy member project Marc
2022-09-01 19:47 ` Frank Ch. Eigler
2022-09-01 20:47   ` Christopher Faylor
2022-09-02 11:10   ` Mark Wielaard
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2022-08-30 18:03 Frank Ch. Eigler
2022-09-01 14:19 ` Elena Zannoni
2022-09-01 18:10   ` Christopher Faylor
2022-09-02 10:14   ` Mark Wielaard
2022-09-01 18:45 ` Corinna Vinschen
2022-09-01 18:54   ` Frank Ch. Eigler
2022-09-02 10:51   ` Mark Wielaard
2022-09-02 11:47 ` Mark Wielaard
2022-09-05 12:20 ` Dodji Seketeli

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