From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from gnu.wildebeest.org (gnu.wildebeest.org [45.83.234.184]) by sourceware.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 1640F382DB0C for ; Thu, 1 Sep 2022 08:28:19 +0000 (GMT) DMARC-Filter: OpenDMARC Filter v1.4.1 sourceware.org 1640F382DB0C Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; dmarc=none (p=none dis=none) header.from=klomp.org Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=klomp.org Received: from reform (deer0x16.wildebeest.org [172.31.17.152]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ADH-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by gnu.wildebeest.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id B0898302AB2C; Thu, 1 Sep 2022 10:28:16 +0200 (CEST) Received: by reform (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 3CF1D2E821E2; Thu, 1 Sep 2022 10:28:16 +0200 (CEST) Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2022 10:28:16 +0200 From: Mark Wielaard To: Overseers mailing list Cc: "Jose E. Marchesi" , Daniel Pono Takamori , "Bradley M. Kuhn" Subject: Re: Proposing Sourceware as SFC member project Message-ID: References: <87ler4qcmo.fsf@gnu.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="3UNA514ThCGfCLvE" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <87ler4qcmo.fsf@gnu.org> X-Spam-Status: No, score=-5.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,JMQ_SPF_NEUTRAL,KAM_DMARC_STATUS,KAM_SHORT,SPF_HELO_NONE,SPF_PASS,TXREP,T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.6 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.6 (2021-04-09) on server2.sourceware.org List-Id: --3UNA514ThCGfCLvE Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Hi Jose, On Thu, Sep 01, 2022 at 12:19:59AM +0200, Jose E. Marchesi via Overseers wrote: > > If you have an interest in the long term future of the sourceware > > hosting server which this project is using, please consider checking > > out this thread on our local overseers@ mailing list. Everything is > > fine, we're just thinking ahead. > > > > https://sourceware.org/pipermail/overseers/2022q3/018802.html > > Do you plan to publish the application text before actually starting the > process? If so, where can it be found? Where can it be discussed, in > case people have comments/suggestions? The full text of the application is attached. The process is fairly informal https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/ We had some informal chats about the idea some months ago to see if applying even made sense to them. Luckily they were enthousiastic. You are then requested to supply your formal application in plain text form more like a story than a Q/A form. The attached full text leaves out the parts that didn't make sense to a pure hosting project like sourceware. I believe sourceware is the first pure free software hosting project that is applying, so it is also somewhat new to them. You are then requested to be as transparent as possible with the community so people can make suggestions and nobody is caught by surprise. Which is the step we are at now. Then they'll sent the application to the SFC evaluation committee which must approve https://sfconservancy.org/about/eval-committee/ We should hear before Cauldron whether or not we were accepted. I CCed Daniel and Bradley from the Conservancy to correct any mistakes in my description of the procedures. Cheers, Mark --3UNA514ThCGfCLvE Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="apply-conservancy.txt" Sourceware provides hosting to essential free software toolchain projects using only free software and in a way that the developers themselves are in control. It can be seen as alternative to proprietary hosting platforms, but has existed long before free software project hosting became a business. It tries to enable developers to be in control of their own hosting. We don't have an immediate need for fiscal sponsorship, but we want to be ready when we do. We hope Conservancy can be our partner when in the future we do need an independent (non-profit, public benefit) party to hold assets or enter into contracts. For example if we do want to hire someone to do some basic admin stuff or we decide we want to have some cloud machines. If we want to crowdfund funds to contract some additions to projects like buildbot, patchwork or sourcehut on which we rely. Conservancy seems like a good pick for a fiscal sponsor since it has a strong commitment to Software Freedom, community and public interest. We also believe we would be a good partner to Conservancy by offering hosting to toolchain related projects, for example to those projects wanting to migrate off github. We also rely on various projects which are already Conservancy member projects and can and will upstream any of the improvements we are making to those. Sourceware is mainly known for hosting the GNU Toolchain projects, gcc at https://gcc.gnu.org/, glibc, binutils and gdb. But also hosts projects like annobin, bunsen, bzip2, cgen, cygwin at https://cygwin.org/, debugedit, dwz, elfutils at http://elfutils.org, gccrs, gnu-abi, insight, kawa, libffi, libabigail, mauve, newlib, systemtap and valgrind at https://valgrind.org/. A longer list of projects Sourceware supports, those without their own domain names, including several dormant projects, can be found here: https://sourceware.org/mailman/listinfo. Projects hosted by Sourceware are mostly lower level toolchain related. Projects can come and go as their needs change. Not all projects use all of the services Sourceware offers. Although various projects share services on sourceware, projects are free to tweak or adjust services as needed. Most projects aren't simply "consumers" of the Sourceware provided infrastructure but active participants. Our main challenge is the fact that most sourceware communities use an email based workflow, which has been working great for them but isn't always welcoming to newcomers. The following URL provides a roadmap to making email/git based workflow more fun, secure and productive by automating contribution tracking and testing across different distros and architectures using buildbot, bunsen, patchwork, public-inbox and possibly sourcehut: https://sourceware.org/pipermail/overseers/2022q2/018529.html If we would raise funds through Conservancy we would try to find a way to support our current efforts to extend the services we offer. This could be contract negotiation for some basic admin stuff or additions to projects like bugzilla, buildbot, patchwork or sourcehut. These activities have no specific geographic place. Funds aren't the most important/crucial for Sourceware. The important part is expanding the active overseers and/or project admins. The project has no trademarks. Sourceware was used first by Cygnus Solutions in 1994 as an alternative term for Free Software before adopting the term Open Source. See http://www.toad.com/gnu/cygnus The project uses a green variant of the public domain Copleft sign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#/media/File:Copyleft.svg It used as favicon and is on various of our pages/services: https://sourceware.org/img/GreenCopyleft.svg https://sourceware.org/img/logo_big2.png sourceware.cygnus.com was established in 1998 by Cygnus to host various GNU projects Cygnus contributed to and Cygwin (which later got its own cygwin.org domain, but shared hosting with Sourceware). In 1999 it was merged with gcc.gnu.org as the developer controlled hosting side for GCC. In 2000 after Cygnus merged with Red Hat it was briefly renamed to sources.redhat.com till in 2001 Ian Lance Taylor registed sourceware.org and it became an independent hosting project. Red Hat still provides hardware and network connectivity through https://osci.io/ but does not involve itself with the actual running of the project. Sourceware has a very flexible governance structure. There is a group of overseers (basically those people with root access to the main hosting server) who can create new user accounts for projects. Of these overseers there are three people who do the day to day maintenance (Frank, Chris and Mark), who can be considered the Sourceware representatives. Projects hosted by Sourceware do not need to contribute or participate in the infrastructure services, but most do. For example Overseers grant access to project specific accounts to install cronjobs or git hooks, grant admin permissions to bugzilla or other services. In general projects define their own rules on who gets accounts and permissions for manipulating their services which Overseers follows. There have been no major disputes. In general we have had enough resources to provide any service projects have asked for. And we don't hold projects hostage and will help them if they want to (partially) migrate to another hosting service. As a hosting project you could say that all our offerings are Software as a Service. All services are offered to all project and they are all based on Free Software. We try to use packaged software as much as possible and try to upstream any patches we make. If possible (and if we remember) we try to document the setup too for others to replicate locally to make contributing to the service as easy as possible. See e.g our buildbot service which has its full configuration in a git repo with full documentation on how to setup and hack on a local copy: https://sourceware.org/git/?p=builder.git;a=tree Red Hat's OSCI https://osci.io/, provides hardware and network connectivity for our main hosting server. We get additional build servers from OSUOSL, Marist University, Brno University, IBM, Arm and a handful of individuals. All servers are maintained by volunteers, either by the Sourceware overseers or project maintainers. We prefer these informal relationships as long as the developers are in control of the provided hardware. Even when Conservancy becomes the fiscal sponsor for Sourceware we would like to keep this informal sponsorships in place. So we don't think it would work if Conservancy becomes the exclusive way to sponsor Sourceware with resources. Accross all projects hosted by Sourceware we have ~1250 user (developer) accounts. The shared bugzilla database lists ~13500 users (this excludes GCC which has its own bug database). We have more than 200 mailinglists some with a handful, some with hundreds or even a thousand subscribers. Here is an image of all our contributors/hosted projects from 2019 https://sourceware.org/img/sourceware.png --3UNA514ThCGfCLvE--