[steering-discuss] connecting external services to our domain

Hi,

Sorry, I'm not part of the Steering committee, but I'm very interested in
understanding the principles. I would prefer Open Source solutions like
Alfresco over Google Apps for Document Management System. Obviously with the
respective security requirements. If it's in an internal network or on
Amazon, I don't really see the difference, why does this concern you? or
does this really concern you? I mean if it's in the home of someone, that
will concern me, but if it's running on Amazon or some other Cloud provider,
what is the problem? Wouldn't you prefer to use an OSS solution than Google
Apps?

as soon as some service is hosted at the LibO or TDF domain or is otherwise linked, anything bad that happens will be reflected on us (and might even cause liability issues). So, I'd like to have some stable security provided...

Florian

I think its best guide lines for 3rd party servers and mirrors. Once things are well established I think it would be hard to change the guidelines for those 3rd parties that were established prior to the guidelines existing.

I'm all for security and stability, but I would expect that OSS is prefered
over Proprietary services like Google Apps.

Sure, Google Apps was just an example.

Hi, :slight_smile:

The situation is that the workflow can already be considered to be 80%
or 90% complete, and the next step will be some pilot testing with
actual work on documentation content, which could start later this
week.

In parallel, I'd also been planning to throw open an invite to i18n
people who might be interested in Alfresco as a tool for their work.
That might require the development of a separate workflow, depending
on what usage was envisioned.

But what seems to be the active core of the documentation team does
not seem to be at all averse to adopting Alfresco for documentation
work.

Personally, I'm perfectly happy to operate the Alfresco site on my
server, and to grant all appropriate access to relevant TDF SC members
at OS level. I had suggested alfresco.libreoffice.org for the
sub-domain.

However, I will - of course - cooperate fully with whatever decision
the SC takes.

The main need would be to take a decision fairy soon, before the
number of user accounts, the sophistication of the workflow and the
mass of data and content reach a point at which migration becomes a
bigger task.

You would probably find it useful to know that installing and
setting-up Alfresco is a not-inconsiderable process, and that you want
a minimum of 1 Gigabyte of memory, with 2 to 3 being recommended to me
for a busier system.

My server has excellent 24/7 technical support.

Thoughts?

David Nelson

What do you mean by "My server has excellent 24/7 technical support."? Is
your server @ Amazon or other amazon like Company?

For a Document Management System DMS, I will definitely suggest to use
Alfresco in a secure place which guarantees 24/7 up time and support, but
definitely not a home server. I really don't think there is any OSS solution
better than Alfresco out there for DMS. And even if for some reason you need
to migrate from one Alfresco server to another, it's not so difficult. So
I'll propose to define Alfresco as DMS and now we need to find a secure,
stable and reliable server, with mirrors, etc.

Cheers!

Jaime

Hi, :slight_smile:

but
definitely not a home server

FYI, I am definitely not running a "home server". :wink:

It's located in a proper, secure data center in the UK, with regular
backups and 24/7 professional technical support. It implements the
same kind of approaches to security as TDF's own servers.

Just 2 cents of facts for consideration by the SC. :wink:

David Nelson

Hi Florian, :slight_smile:

* self-hosted servers can only be connected if they are in our
infrastructure management and fit our security requirements

Actually, I only just properly read your original post....

Is there a way I can satisfy this constraint, or should we just set
this idea aside?

If you don't want to assign the subdomain 'alfresco.libreoffice.org'
and if the docs team seems interested in using the site on my server,
what would be your thoughts if I renamed the domain to
'libreoffice.myserver.com'?

David Nelson

Hi Florian, :slight_smile:

Ah! Now I understand why you kept me waiting for 2 weeks for any kind
of reply to my request! :smiley:

http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/ODFAuthors-Site-with-workflow-tp2282617p2282617.html

David Nelson

Hi David,

Hi Florian, :slight_smile:

Ah! Now I understand why you kept me waiting for 2 weeks for any kind
of reply to my request! :smiley:

http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/ODFAuthors-Site-with-workflow-tp228261
7p2282617.html

please be fair. Florian explained the reason, why he don't want to connect external
services to LO. This has nothing to do with the new ODFAuthors site.

If you think that Alfresco is the best fitting CMS for documentation writing inside
the LO-Team then ask Florian for a resource of TDF.

I did so with Jean a longer time ago and started the work just in front of Christmas.
The ODFAuthors site is only a offering to the authors of LO documentation. You have
not to accept it. It is used by the authors of the current OOoAuthors group anyway.

Regards,
Andreas

Hi, :slight_smile:

My request for the alfresco.libreoffice.org sub-domain still holds.

I am willing to offer Christian/Florian full root access to the
system, if necessary, and to comply with all feasible requirements to
satisfy TDF.

Would it be appropriate to request consideration of this at the next SC meeting?

Or is the refusal firm and non-negotiable?

David Nelson

Hi,

please be fair. Florian explained the reason, why he don't want to connect external
services to LO. This has nothing to do with the new ODFAuthors site.

sorry for the delay, David - not on purpose, and has nothing to do with ODFAuthors. Was just on vacation until 10th, then instantly got ill, so am still behind my Inbox. Sorry if you get the wrong impression... :slight_smile:

Will try to follow-up soon.

Florian

Hi David,

My request for the alfresco.libreoffice.org sub-domain still holds.

I am willing to offer Christian/Florian full root access to the
system, if necessary, and to comply with all feasible requirements to
satisfy TDF.

Would it be appropriate to request consideration of this at the next SC meeting?

Or is the refusal firm and non-negotiable?

no, there's no refusal in general, don't worry. :slight_smile: I'm just looking on how we can keep the infrastructure constant. We've just reached a rather stable and security state, and I would like to keep what we have achieved. For sure, we will have to look for external offers and options, I do not want to have everything in control, neither do I have the time for that. It's just that we didn't come up with policies for that yet. :slight_smile:

So, don't take this as a refusal, but just a question for the ease of use: Would theoretically hosting Alfresco on one of our servers also be an option to consider, or do you see huge advantages of having it on yours?

And, as a side question: Is there anyone who actually uses Alfresco? I didn't follow the documentation list closely, but I want avoid the same "what tool do we need" discussion we have for the website. So, have the requirements and the possible tools already been discussed or is this basically a one man show?

Sorry for the direct questions, but I guess you know what I mean. I just want to avoid a group of people working on a tool they like, when there are issues with actually using it right now...

Thanks for your work!
Florian

Hi Davi, *

Von: Florian Effenberger <floeff@documentfoundation.org>

> My request for the alfresco.libreoffice.org sub-domain still holds.
>
> I am willing to offer Christian/Florian full root access to the
> system, if necessary, and to comply with all feasible requirements to
> satisfy TDF.
>
> Would it be appropriate to request consideration of this at the next SC
meeting?
>
> Or is the refusal firm and non-negotiable?

no, there's no refusal in general, don't worry. :slight_smile: I'm just looking on
how we can keep the infrastructure constant.

I agree with Florian here, but another thought:
Can you give some reason for having alfresco? E.g. which team will use
the tool for what purpose. A brief summary or just a link to such a
summary would be helpfull (and sorry, If this is already available
and I missed it :frowning: ).

regards,

André

Hi Florian, :slight_smile:

All the active members of the docs team have accounts on the Alfresco
site I'm hosting right now. There is a general consensus/willingness
to use it, and people have already started trying it out for actual
work.

Putting it under a TDF sub-domain will only further strengthen
people's commitment to uptake.

We're ready to start a pilot work project, using the workflow that has
been developed. We have a system set up with:

- a custom-designed workflow for the docs team, developed by a
professional Alfresco developer and a member of the docs team,
- full git-like versioning,
- rollback,
- discussion around documents,
- full built-in support for ODF/OOo/LibreOffice file formats,
- simple usage (publication/updating) for users via the use of an
existing plugin for OOo/LibO that lets you collaborate right from
within the LibO applications,
- sophisticated searching capability, that can extend right into
hosted documents.

Basically, we have all the sophisticated functionality we need for
properly-managed, automation-assisted documentation development and
prepping for publication, with the potential ability to interface with
a variety of outside systems, such as directly with the LibreOffice
code repository...

It would be a great tool for producing developer documentation in the
future, in addition to the user documentation the docs team is now
working on.

It could also be used for easy management of HTML content on TDF
servers (documentfoundation.org, for instance), and for a variety of
other purposes.

Using Alfresco, we will be able to develop all our documentation and
many other kinds of content in-house, and we will acquire expertise
and autonomy within the LibreOffice project and docs team.

The advantages of hosting it on my server would be as follows:

1) It's quite a complicated package to set-up and configure. It is
quite memory-hungry. On my server, it is already fully operational. No
workload or worry for you. Version upgrades will be done whenever I
want, without putting workload and responsibility on you.

2) On my server, it is running within an environment that is simple to
manage. No problems of conflicts with the many other software products
that TDF runs. You get none of the complications that would inevitably
exist with integrating Alfresco into a TDF server.

3) I have access to 24/7 professional technical support, with in-house
Alfresco expertise. Any problems can be troubleshot within minutes, at
any time of day or night, with no problems of people on vacation,
sick, etc.

4) On my server, I have full root access and full control over all the
other software running on the server. I can't have that on a TDF
server.

5) On my server, I can peacefully reboot the system at any time and,
generally, do anything I want, without having to worry about other
users, running software, etc. And one does need to anticipate
occasional *total* system outages during the running-in period.

6) On my server, I can do memory and disk space upgrades 24/7 within
minutes. That kind of turnaround will not be available on a TDF
server.

7) The server is hosted in a secure data center in the UK, and
automated backups are taken at regular intervals, under my control.

8) You and Christian already have admin access to the Alfresco back
end. You can also both have permanent SSH user accounts to inspect the
server, suggest security improvements, etc. But you will find pretty
much the same security arrangements as I found on
documentfoundation.org.

9) I undertake to provide TDF with the best-possible service, and to
work on building a strong docs team and documentation base for
LibreOffice. I will also make a major effort in the future to expand
the number of active docs contributors within the LibreOffice project.

If you agree, the sub-domain name I would suggest would be
alfresco.libreoffice.org.

What do you think? :wink:

David Nelson

From my point of view, Alfresco is great, but just for better understanding,

who is sponsoring your server? What would be your benefit?

And how can you warranty the uptime and performance and for how long?

Cheers!

JFWIW - Alfresco looks like an OpenOffice.org-like, single-vendor
dominated, copyright-assignment-based, pseudo-Free-Software project to
me :slight_smile:

  As such, I'm no fan of it personally; but luckily I don't have to use
it :wink: so if there is nothing else that works well for the job perhaps
we have to. Do we have to run it ourselves though ? [ surely we could
just give a domain-name re-direct to David's existing machine ].

  ATB,

    Michael.

Come on, an Alfresco image is even offered by Amazon, you can download the
Community version, which is certified only to work with OpenSource, so the
only problem is that it doesn't work with proprietary SW (e.g. Windows). You
can try it out yourself: http://www.alfresco.com/try/

There are other big, medium & small vendors offering services and
integrating Alfresco to their business.

And here you find the SourceCode:

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Source_Code

Cheers!

David,

sorry if I joined discussion only late, maybe my questions have been
answered already, so bear with me please.

All the active members of the docs team have accounts on the Alfresco
site I'm hosting right now.

1) Is there any integration (planned?) with odfauthors or is it just
about a new and different place to produce documentation (specific for
libreoffice maybe)?

2) what about the l10n people? Are they involved already or is it
planned to involve them? Or is it just about to create "international"
(i.e. English) documents (optionally serving as master for translation)?

Nino

Hi, :slight_smile:

1) Is there any integration (planned?) with odfauthors or is it just
about a new and different place to produce documentation (specific for
libreoffice maybe)?

IMHO, it is in the best interests of LibreOffice project for the
LibreOffice documentation project to have its own workflow, expertise
and policies for LibreOffice documentation.

However, I proactively asked Jean Weber (odfauthors.org) to be part of
the Alfresco site and the LibreOffice documentation team. I invited
her to have an admin account on the Alfresco site, and actually gave
her one despite her only-lukewarm interest, to encourage her close
participation.

But she is very taken up with odfauthors, and does not seem want any
close involvement in the LibreOffice documentation team. I even
suggested to her to take team leadership of the LibreOffice docs team
two times in the past. But she's very much occupied with odfauthors.

In any case, no matter what similarities there might be between OOo
and LibO right at present, the two products are quickly going to
diverge. LibreOffice might as well start developing its own
documentation team and expertise now.

2) what about the l10n people? Are they involved already or is it
planned to involve them? Or is it just about to create "international"
(i.e. English) documents (optionally serving as master for translation)?

There is every opportunity for interested l10n people to work with
Alfresco, and I have been intending to throw open an invitation. But
I've held back on that until a) the SC grants me a remit to operate an
Alfresco server for the project and b) I've been able to consult and
liaise with Sophie Gauthier beforehand.

who is sponsoring your server?

No-one is sponsoring it. I operate it myself.

What would be your benefit?

The pleasure, interest and kudos of working for TDF and the
LibreOffice Open Source project?
Worthwhile professional experience?

And how can you warranty the uptime and performance and for how long?

The server is hosted in a high-quality, secure data center in the UK,
with all the security and backup systems you find in such modern
infrastructures. I can't *warranty* the server uptime and performances
beyond a best-effort, good-faith commitment and the guarantees offered
by the data center. But Open Source projects don't offer better, do
they?

For how long? Not beyond my death, in any case. Up to then, things
should be OK. But, seriously, I would always cooperate in all good
faith in a handover, and would always make best arrangements not to
damage the LibreOffice project's interests. I *care* about the
project, and I *care* about my reputation. :wink:

Florian, SC, please read my post below:

David Nelson