* BBB instances @ 2022-09-20 20:41 Elena Zannoni 2022-09-21 3:23 ` Ian Kelling 2022-09-25 23:04 ` Mark Wielaard 0 siblings, 2 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Elena Zannoni @ 2022-09-20 20:41 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Overseers mailing list Hi, Mark, Frank, Chris, one of the things that was discussed at Cauldron was that it would be good to have BBB easily available for community meetings etc. Imagine a group of developers want to exchange ideas about some implementation details, etc. If they could just jump onto a BBB room on sourceware it would be a cool thing to have. Any thoughts on doing something like that? elena ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: BBB instances 2022-09-20 20:41 BBB instances Elena Zannoni @ 2022-09-21 3:23 ` Ian Kelling 2022-09-21 19:47 ` Bradley M. Kuhn 2022-09-25 23:04 ` Mark Wielaard 1 sibling, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread From: Ian Kelling @ 2022-09-21 3:23 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Overseers mailing list; +Cc: Elena Zannoni Elena Zannoni via Overseers <overseers@sourceware.org> writes: > Hi, Mark, Frank, Chris, > one of the things that was discussed at Cauldron was that it would be > good to have BBB easily available for community meetings etc. Imagine a > group of developers want to exchange ideas about some implementation > details, etc. If they could just jump onto a BBB room on sourceware it > would be a cool thing to have. > > Any thoughts on doing something like that? > > elena About BBB, It currently includes MongoDB in it's server software, which went nonfree a few years ago. You can still run an older version which is all free software and BBB upstream is looking at ways to switch to a free database. However, right now, I wouldn't deploy a new instance of BBB. For simple web based video conference, I'd look at Jitsi Meet. Other options: GNU Jami, but that requires installing a client. Nextcloud Talk looks interesting but I haven't tried it yet. -- Ian Kelling | Senior Systems Administrator, Free Software Foundation GPG Key: B125 F60B 7B28 7FF6 A2B7 DF8F 170A F0E2 9542 95DF https://fsf.org | https://gnu.org ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: BBB instances 2022-09-21 3:23 ` Ian Kelling @ 2022-09-21 19:47 ` Bradley M. Kuhn 2022-09-22 19:27 ` Elena Zannoni 2022-09-23 0:03 ` Ian Kelling 0 siblings, 2 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Bradley M. Kuhn @ 2022-09-21 19:47 UTC (permalink / raw) To: overseers Starting my response to Elena's inquiry with a bit of background: One of the reasons for SFC's interest in helping Sourceware (and among the reasons why our Evaluation Committee offered Sourceware project membership at SFC) is that SFC has become increasingly concerned in the last few years at how many FOSS projects (even some of our own member projects) are using proprietary infrastructure to develop FOSS. We at SFC see proprietary infrastructure for FOSS development as one of the biggest threats to software freedom. As such, we at SFC were thrilled to see how much effort the Sourceware Overseers have put into FOSS-only infrastructure. We discussed it with them as part of their application their commitment to FOSS-only infrastructure. It fit well with our approach to this problem: we don't want to insist FOSS projects already using proprietary software give it up overnight, but in an effort to coax those projects to give it up, we want to offer reliable, viable FOSS alternatives for project hosting. We also believe a diversity of offerings is ideal (to ward of the tendency toward monoculture that companies like GitHub rely on to entice adoption). We at SFC have been working on this on a number of fronts for about two years — it's a hard problem to solve because the amount of proprietary infrastructure that FOSS developers now use keeps growing. We're excited at the opportunity to partner with Sourceware as another, parallel approach. Now, with regard to video chat, we have indeed been looking closely at BBB: Elena Zannoni via Overseers wrote at 13:41 (PDT) on Tuesday: >> one of the things that was discussed at Cauldron was that it would be good >> to have BBB easily available for community meetings etc. … If [we] could >> just jump onto a BBB room on sourceware it would be a cool thing to have. >> Any thoughts on doing something like that? At the beginning to the pandemic, with help of a dedicated volunteer, SFC was able to get an instance of BBB up and running, hosted on OSU-OSL's infrastructure. Many of our member projects are already using it for their team meetings (switching away from tools like Zoom and Google Meet that they had previously been using). We're also using it for all our SFC's video conferencing needs, and many of you attended our chat sessions about the Sourceware application. Our initial findings confirmed the (obvious) hypothesis: scaling is extremely difficult for video chat. Right now, we've tested a few (simultaneous) meetings with 5-10 people and our existing infrastructure can handle it. We're currently talking with grant makers and partners about how we can increase capacity. Our current assessment is that it's unlikely that we can offer BBB services to the entire FOSS-developing *public* any time soon. However, if Sourceware joins SFC, this is a great opportunity to expand slowly, which is definitely possible. We at SFC generally would like to do that, and it fits with the types of grants and work we're already seeking to improve in our effort to build “FOSS infrastructure for FOSS projects”. We also think Sourceware makes an excellent partner to begin working on this for the reasons I mentioned above and others. But, it will likely take time (and a little bit of funding) to make this happen for Sourceware once they join SFC. Nevertheless, I think SFC is the best partner for this; we have seen that most other fiscal sponsors simply use proprietary video chat for their projects, or don't have offering video chat as part of their plans for infrastructure. By partnering with Sourceware, our feeling is that we can expand offering beyond just SFC projects (i.e., to the guest projects at Sourceware that are *not* SFC projects themselves) in a manner that allows for time to scale and test. (If we could do magic, SFC would offer BBB services to every FOSS project in the world (whether they were an SFC member or not) tomorrow to get them all off Zoom, etc., but, absent magic, offering that without slowly scaling up is a recipe for crashed servers and unhappy users.) Ian Kelling via Overseers wrote at 20:23 (PDT) on Tuesday: > About BBB, It currently includes MongoDB in it's [sic] server software, > which went nonfree a few years ago. You can still run an older version > which is all free software Indeed, SFC's instance currently does this. We published our methodology on how to do it as well. It's important to note that the main database that BBB uses is Postgres, and MongoDB is only used for runtime session data. > However, right now, I wouldn't deploy a new instance of BBB. Frankly, I think this is an alarmist response. I don't believe the problem is urgent, given the limited use of MongoDB by BBB, but if the problem were to become urgent … > and BBB upstream is looking at ways to switch to a free database. … surely this work could be funded? SFC's plan was that if the problem became a priority [0], we'd rapidly fund the upstream work necessary to reduce dependency on MongoDB. But, it looks like you've in parallel put some effort on this with upstream, Ian. Can you post a link to a to BBB mailing list thread or bug ticket on the matter? Meanwhile, I noticed the FSF has also done various public-facing events on your BBB instance … Ian, can you brief us on the FSF's current plans to handle the MongoDB problem? Are you looking to abandon BBB entirely, as you hint above? If not, what's FSF's contingency plan? * * * As a side note, in an unrelated effort that we pursued at SFC, we did spend substantial effort looking into the viability of maintaining a fork of MongoDB under AGPLv3 after the SS Public License change. We decided such a project wasn't worth the effort. (Curious to know if any other organizations did the same, and if you came to the same conclusion?) Specifically, I led that investigation at SFC and determined that a MongoDB AGPLv3 fork was unlikely to succeed. One reason is there are a lot of other FOSS options for NoSQL databases. While MongoDB, Inc. has a tendency to act as if their solution is amazingly unique, in practice, it seemed that the popularity of MongoDB over alternatives seemed to have more to do with their marketing than their technological superiority. However, I'm not a NoSQL DB expert (I relied on interviews that I had with those who were), so if anyone came a different conclusion on this, I'd be glad to discuss it. So, that work, which predated my and SFC's interest in BBB, did inform my conclusion about BBB's MongoDB dependency. However, I'm always open to revisit that work, and am very grateful that folks in the Sourceware community really care about the issues of “Is this solution for development infrastructure really FOSS, and how do we make sure it *stays* FOSS?” — so I'm thrilled to be having this conversation with you all! > For simple web based video conference, I'd look at Jitsi Meet. FWIW, I also worked with an SFC volunteer on a test instance of Jitsi Meet. We found it to be more resource intensive than BBB. While Jitsi Meet's UI is much better for impromptu meetings and chats than BBB, ultimately we've been reluctant to deploy a community-facing Jitsi Meet instance for fear we'd face resource constraints worse than we face with BBB. However, FOSDEM's use of Jitsi Meet integrated with Matrix to run their event was intriguing, and we have it on our long-term list to work with the FOSDEM organizers on how they pulled that off and if it would be possible to set up a Matrix/Jitsi Meet combo instance in the manner they used for breakout rooms at FOSDEM. Generally speaking, I think we shouldn't be avoiding any FOSS alternative in the space of software development infrastructure. Video chat is just one of many collaboration tools that FOSS projects now often need where the “default option” is proprietary software. [0] The only ways I see the MongoDB issue becoming urgent is if there is a major security problem/bug with the last AGPLv3'd version where no patch is available, or if BBB drifts in its usage such that it relies on new features that only newer MongoDB versions support. Am I missing something? -- Bradley M. Kuhn - he/him Policy Fellow & Hacker-in-Residence at Software Freedom Conservancy ======================================================================== Become a Conservancy Sustainer today: https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: BBB instances 2022-09-21 19:47 ` Bradley M. Kuhn @ 2022-09-22 19:27 ` Elena Zannoni 2022-09-22 22:23 ` Denver Gingerich 2022-09-23 0:03 ` Ian Kelling 1 sibling, 1 reply; 7+ messages in thread From: Elena Zannoni @ 2022-09-22 19:27 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Overseers mailing list; +Cc: Bradley M. Kuhn On 9/21/22 1:47 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn via Overseers wrote: (Replying to some of the points only.) > At the beginning to the pandemic, with help of a dedicated volunteer, SFC > was able to get an instance of BBB up and running, hosted on OSU-OSL's > infrastructure. Many of our member projects are already using it for their > team meetings (switching away from tools like Zoom and Google Meet that they > had previously been using). We're also using it for all our SFC's video > conferencing needs, and many of you attended our chat sessions about the > Sourceware application. > > Our initial findings confirmed the (obvious) hypothesis: scaling is > extremely difficult for video chat. Right now, we've tested a few > (simultaneous) meetings with 5-10 people and our existing infrastructure can > handle it. We're currently talking with grant makers and partners about how > we can increase capacity. > > Our current assessment is that it's unlikely that we can offer BBB services > to the entire FOSS-developing *public* any time soon. However, if > Sourceware joins SFC, this is a great opportunity to expand slowly, which is > definitely possible. We at SFC generally would like to do that, and it fits > with the types of grants and work we're already seeking to improve in our > effort to build “FOSS infrastructure for FOSS projects”. > > We also think Sourceware makes an excellent partner to begin working on this > for the reasons I mentioned above and others. > My observations regarding BBB is that it scaled well for the LPC conference. We used it in 2020 and 2021 to host the conference as a 100% virtual conference. We had about 1000 participants, with rooms at time having about 200 participants. It was integrated with Matrix. It was used again for this year's LPC, which was a mix of in person and hybrid participation. It has had teething problems of course, but overall it was a good solution. There were some modifications that were made to BBB and are collected in a github (yes I know) repo which is public. But I believe most of the changes were upstreamed. There is also a long blog by James, who actually worked on the Matrix integration with BBB here, with good lessons learned in 2021: https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/linux-plumbers-conference-matrix-and-bbb-integration/ The caveat with the video, was that we asked the participants to mute the video and the audio, and unmute both only if participating actively. That kept the load in the acceptable range. You can see that with a good choice of the size of the servers (on cloud instances for easy scaling) the CPU usage was not above 70%. We did talk to the Fosdem organizers as well. Regarding the use of MongoDB, James tells me that we used something equal or earlier than mongodb-org 4.4.16, on Ubuntu. In 2020, we used Ubuntu 16 because BBB was working only on that version, so the MongoDB would have been whatever was available on that Ubuntu server. I believe there would be good opportunities to learn from the LPC experience and the code is available for all the pieces. > Ian Kelling via Overseers wrote at 20:23 (PDT) on Tuesday: >> About BBB, It currently includes MongoDB in it's [sic] server software, >> which went nonfree a few years ago. You can still run an older version >> which is all free software > > Indeed, SFC's instance currently does this. We published our methodology on > how to do it as well. It's important to note that the main database that > BBB uses is Postgres, and MongoDB is only used for runtime session data. > Do you have a link to the article? >> For simple web based video conference, I'd look at Jitsi Meet. > > FWIW, I also worked with an SFC volunteer on a test instance of Jitsi Meet. > We found it to be more resource intensive than BBB. While Jitsi Meet's UI > is much better for impromptu meetings and chats than BBB, ultimately we've > been reluctant to deploy a community-facing Jitsi Meet instance for fear > we'd face resource constraints worse than we face with BBB. However, > FOSDEM's use of Jitsi Meet integrated with Matrix to run their event was > intriguing, and we have it on our long-term list to work with the FOSDEM > organizers on how they pulled that off and if it would be possible to set up > a Matrix/Jitsi Meet combo instance in the manner they used for breakout > rooms at FOSDEM. > We did look at Jitsi for LPC... we didn't find it as solid as BBB. But this was 3 years ago (in 2020) maybe things have changed. Anyway, I think it's good that we have alternatives and merging our collective experiences we can achieve a workable solution. thanks elena ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: BBB instances 2022-09-22 19:27 ` Elena Zannoni @ 2022-09-22 22:23 ` Denver Gingerich 0 siblings, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Denver Gingerich @ 2022-09-22 22:23 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Overseers mailing list disclosure: One of my employers is Software Freedom Conservancy. I worked a bit on things related to SFC's BBB server, so thought I could help a bit here. On Thu, Sep 22, 2022 at 01:27:36PM -0600, Elena Zannoni via Overseers wrote: > Regarding the use of MongoDB, James tells me that we used something > equal or earlier than mongodb-org 4.4.16, on Ubuntu. In 2020, we used > Ubuntu 16 because BBB was working only on that version, so the MongoDB > would have been whatever was available on that Ubuntu server. I have some technical questions about that setup, which I'll follow up about off-list. I think digging too deep into BBB deployment discussion is (at best) premature for this list right now. > On 9/21/22 1:47 PM, Bradley M. Kuhn via Overseers wrote: > > Ian Kelling via Overseers wrote at 20:23 (PDT) on Tuesday: > >> About BBB, It currently includes MongoDB in it's [sic] server software, > >> which went nonfree a few years ago. You can still run an older version > >> which is all free software > > > > Indeed, SFC's instance currently does this. We published our methodology on > > how to do it as well. It's important to note that the main database that > > BBB uses is Postgres, and MongoDB is only used for runtime session data. > > Do you have a link to the article? The source with the description is linked from the main page of our BBB instance. In short, we are using the version of MongoDB from the stock distro repository rather than the MongoDB provided by BBB's repository, as it sounds like you are doing as well. It seems that few (if any?) distributions have even packaged the SS-Public-Licensed version of MongoDB. We're curious to know why upstream is pushing folks toward that version, but we didn't want to raise it upstream until we were ready to set aside time for wider BBB deployments, which we do hope to do soon -- possibly with Sourceware as a member project! Denver ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: BBB instances 2022-09-21 19:47 ` Bradley M. Kuhn 2022-09-22 19:27 ` Elena Zannoni @ 2022-09-23 0:03 ` Ian Kelling 1 sibling, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Ian Kelling @ 2022-09-23 0:03 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Overseers mailing list; +Cc: Bradley M. Kuhn FSF is working on helping BBB to move databases. In hindsight, my post was off-hand and alarmist, and partly plain wrong: I assumed that a free version of mongo wouldn't work with the latest BBB. After posting, I actually tested it, and the latest version of BBB (2.5) actually can be used with a free version of mongodb, (i tried 3.6, which I think is fine to run for many years from now, even if it is in an older distro chroot). Thank you to Bradley and SFC for documenting the freedom fix for BBB 2.3 ( https://k.sfconservancy.org/conservancy-bigbluebutton ). I note that BBB 2.3 still has an indefinite support timeline, so it is a fine version to use. I'll be working on getting that and the BBB 2.5 freedom fix upstreamed. As Bradley suggested, if you know about this issue, BBB is fine. At FSF, we evaluated Jitsi a few years ago and found BBB to be more reliable, a bit more scalable, and have more features geared toward presentations and teaching, and we plan to keep using it including for LibrePlanet 2023. With my personal FSF sysadmin hat on, I look forward to more and ongoing collaboration with Sourceware and SFC. -- Ian Kelling | Senior Systems Administrator, Free Software Foundation GPG Key: B125 F60B 7B28 7FF6 A2B7 DF8F 170A F0E2 9542 95DF https://fsf.org | https://gnu.org ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
* Re: BBB instances 2022-09-20 20:41 BBB instances Elena Zannoni 2022-09-21 3:23 ` Ian Kelling @ 2022-09-25 23:04 ` Mark Wielaard 1 sibling, 0 replies; 7+ messages in thread From: Mark Wielaard @ 2022-09-25 23:04 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Overseers mailing list; +Cc: Elena Zannoni Hi Elena, On Tue, Sep 20, 2022 at 02:41:06PM -0600, Elena Zannoni via Overseers wrote: > one of the things that was discussed at Cauldron was that it would be > good to have BBB easily available for community meetings etc. Imagine a > group of developers want to exchange ideas about some implementation > details, etc. If they could just jump onto a BBB room on sourceware it > would be a cool thing to have. > > Any thoughts on doing something like that? So from experience managing a jitsi server, this isn't really zero maintenance. BBB (and jitsi) aren't really packaged software and you must update and tweak the setup regularly because of client changes. The best we probably could do with the current setup and technical volunteers is setup a mumble server https://www.mumble.info/ which is packaged and seems to mostly be zero maintenance. But that is voice only. For video (and screen sharing) I am happy to see various people/organisations exchanging their BBB setup/infrastructure. We should collect all that information and see which resources are needed and if we can find a (paid) volunteer to set something up. Creating a clear plan of initial setup cost, server/bandwidth costs and periodic maintenance costs. The SFC can then help us setup a crowdfunding campaign for that. Looking at some of the projects that are already using video chats (valgrind has a developer chat every couple of months, gccrs a monthly one, both on meet.jit.si, and glibc has a weekly patch review session on some proprietary system and the SFC video chats). I would say that initially we would just need to support one or two simultanious sessions of 6 till 12 participants (with often just up to 4 using video at the same time). It would be nice to be able to scale up a bit. But I think we should not try to make it scale to something conference size. Cheers, Mark ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 7+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2022-09-25 23:04 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 7+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2022-09-20 20:41 BBB instances Elena Zannoni 2022-09-21 3:23 ` Ian Kelling 2022-09-21 19:47 ` Bradley M. Kuhn 2022-09-22 19:27 ` Elena Zannoni 2022-09-22 22:23 ` Denver Gingerich 2022-09-23 0:03 ` Ian Kelling 2022-09-25 23:04 ` Mark Wielaard
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