* Re: Proposing Sourceware as SFC member project [not found] <Yw5btfOsg6EJRvsM@wildebeest.org> @ 2022-09-05 15:51 ` Thomas Fitzsimmons 0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread From: Thomas Fitzsimmons @ 2022-09-05 15:51 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Mark Wielaard; +Cc: overseers Hi Mark, Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org> writes: > 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 This proposal looks good to me. It seems like a good idea that sourceware.org have a way to receive donations. The ongoing continuous integration and patch management improvements will likely make sourceware.org services desirable to more Free and Open Source software projects. Thomas ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
[parent not found: <Yw5aTCLyYx8qqN3W@wildebeest.org>]
* Re: Proposing Sourceware as SFC member project [not found] <Yw5aTCLyYx8qqN3W@wildebeest.org> @ 2022-08-31 22:19 ` Jose E. Marchesi 2022-09-01 8:28 ` Mark Wielaard 0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread From: Jose E. Marchesi @ 2022-08-31 22:19 UTC (permalink / raw) To: overseers > 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 > > Chris Faylor <cgf@sourceware.org> > Frank Eigler <fche@sourceware.org> > Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org> 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? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: Proposing Sourceware as SFC member project 2022-08-31 22:19 ` Jose E. Marchesi @ 2022-09-01 8:28 ` Mark Wielaard 2022-09-02 18:51 ` Daniel Pono Takamori 0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread From: Mark Wielaard @ 2022-09-01 8:28 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Overseers mailing list Cc: Jose E. Marchesi, Daniel Pono Takamori, Bradley M. Kuhn [-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1697 bytes --] 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 [-- Attachment #2: apply-conservancy.txt --] [-- Type: text/plain, Size: 7037 bytes --] 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 ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: Proposing Sourceware as SFC member project 2022-09-01 8:28 ` Mark Wielaard @ 2022-09-02 18:51 ` Daniel Pono Takamori 2022-09-03 14:07 ` Karen M. Sandler 0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread From: Daniel Pono Takamori @ 2022-09-02 18:51 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Mark Wielaard; +Cc: Overseers mailing list, Jose E. Marchesi, Bradley M. Kuhn Mark Wielaard wrote yesterday today: > I CCed Daniel and Bradley from the Conservancy to correct any mistakes > in my description of the procedures. Thanks, Mark, your summary of SFC's processes are basically correct. What I'd like to add is that we've already pointed SFC's Evaluation Committee to this thread — and we're confident they will all review the discussion here as part of the evaluation of Sourceware for membership and fiscal sponsorship by SFC. Organizationally, we believe in transparency by default for FOSS projects, and this is even more important for community decision making. We encouraged Sourceware to discuss their application publicly. Almost ten years ago (before my time), SFC participated in a discussion with the VertX project (and many others) when VertX was choosing a non-profit fiscal sponsor: https://groups.google.com/g/vertx/c/WIuY5M6RluM/m/LC_6WkTaQN0J We learned from that experience (and other similar experiences) that public discussion on a project's mailing list about the options available for fiscal sponsorship, and frank discussion by the project's leadership about what fiscal sponsorship organization best fits their needs as a project are essential. These days there are *so many* great options for fiscal sponsorship. There are for-profit fiscal-sponsorship-as-a-service companies like OpenCollective. There are corporate-business-interest-focused trade association fiscal sponsors like Eclipse (where VertX ultimately ended up). Then, there are charities like SFC. All these options exist because projects' needs and culture differ. We think fiscal sponsorship sign-up is the best time for a FOSS community to do some identity-searching and figure out what organizational structure best fits their project culture. When governance hasn't been explicitly defined, these growing experiences are the times when communities need to reflect and embed their values into their governance structure. And, in a true FOSS way, we believe this should be done in public, community discussion. We also post an FAQ for projects (or other fiscal sponsors looking for information) that are considering applying: https://sfconservancy.org/projects/apply/ In particular you can review the standard fiscal sponsorship agreement (FSA) that we use https://sfconservancy.org/docs/sponsorship-agreement-template.pdf that might give you a better sense of the kind of governance and fiscal/ legal oversight we provide. SFC's interest in this regard is to preserve the creation of free software with free software tools and to preserve community driven development. Please let me know if you have any questions or are curious about the differences between SFC and other fiscal sponsors. Sincerely, Pono, Community Organizer at Software Freedom Conservancy ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: Proposing Sourceware as SFC member project 2022-09-02 18:51 ` Daniel Pono Takamori @ 2022-09-03 14:07 ` Karen M. Sandler 2022-09-03 16:38 ` Mark Wielaard 0 siblings, 1 reply; 6+ messages in thread From: Karen M. Sandler @ 2022-09-03 14:07 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Daniel Pono Takamori Cc: Mark Wielaard, Overseers mailing list, Jose E. Marchesi, Bradley M. Kuhn Pono wrote: > These days there are *so many* great options for fiscal sponsorship. +1, SFC has really been thrilled to see so many organizations build fiscal sponsorship programs. People tend to think because SFC was one of the early fiscal sponsors in FOSS that we view the other ones as "competitors". In fact, we frequently point projects to other organizations that could be a better fit. We like a transparent, public discussion by projects to pick the fiscal sponsor that fits them best. In that vein, since this thread was started, we have received communication from a couple of people telling us that there was also a proposal for an application related to Sourceware with the Linux Foundation for fiscal sponsorship. We're glad to hear it because we *always* encourage applicants to SFC to also simultaneously apply to other fiscal sponsors in parallel, as a method to vet and evaluate the various options. I and my staff will be monitoring this thread to answer questions on SFC's behalf, and presume that LF folks will do the same. We look forward to the discussion, particularly because we love discussion of the different ways that organizations accomplish fiscal sponsorship, and part of our mission is educating the FOSS community about non-profit governance options. And perhaps an entirely different approach might emerge from multiple organizations working together that hasn't even been thought of yet. In any case, I'm excited to see the future for this important free software hosting project! Karen M. Sandler Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy __________ Become a Sustainer today! http://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
* Re: Proposing Sourceware as SFC member project 2022-09-03 14:07 ` Karen M. Sandler @ 2022-09-03 16:38 ` Mark Wielaard 0 siblings, 0 replies; 6+ messages in thread From: Mark Wielaard @ 2022-09-03 16:38 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Karen M. Sandler Cc: Daniel Pono Takamori, Overseers mailing list, Jose E. Marchesi, Bradley M. Kuhn Hi Karen, On Sat, Sep 03, 2022 at 10:07:29AM -0400, Karen M. Sandler wrote: > I and my staff will be monitoring this thread to answer questions on SFC's > behalf, and presume that LF folks will do the same. We look forward to the > discussion, particularly because we love discussion of the different ways > that organizations accomplish fiscal sponsorship, and part of our mission is > educating the FOSS community about non-profit governance options. And > perhaps an entirely different approach might emerge from multiple > organizations working together that hasn't even been thought of yet. > > In any case, I'm excited to see the future for this important free software > hosting project! Thanks so much for your guidance and excitement. It is great seeing the non-profit organizations working together so well. That is especially important for a free software hosting project like Sourceware because we host both little and big projects. Some with their own fiscal sponsor, some without any funding at all. Being able to share non-profit organisation resources and services is a great thing to look forward to. Thanks, Mark ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 6+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2022-09-05 15:51 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 6+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- [not found] <Yw5btfOsg6EJRvsM@wildebeest.org> 2022-09-05 15:51 ` Proposing Sourceware as SFC member project Thomas Fitzsimmons [not found] <Yw5aTCLyYx8qqN3W@wildebeest.org> 2022-08-31 22:19 ` Jose E. Marchesi 2022-09-01 8:28 ` Mark Wielaard 2022-09-02 18:51 ` Daniel Pono Takamori 2022-09-03 14:07 ` Karen M. Sandler 2022-09-03 16:38 ` Mark Wielaard
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