I do not have or plan anything that would be useful to have one of the Windows O/Ses for.
If someone else has - why not, if such a server could be made secure.
Greetings - Purodha
That's the problem, a Windows server is likely to be a little less secure, IMHO.
-Soxred93
On Feb 6, 2008, at 11:13 AM, Purodha wrote:
I do not have or plan anything that would be useful to have one of the Windows O/Ses for.
If someone else has - why not, if such a server could be made secure.
Greetings - Purodha
Toolserver-l mailing list Toolserver-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/toolserver-l
On Feb 6, 2008 11:36 AM, Soxred93@gmail.com soxred93@gmail.com wrote:
That's the problem, a Windows server is likely to be a little less secure, IMHO.
Doubtful. A legal copy of Windows (so you can get the updates) can be secured as well as Linux, at least assuming the administrator is equally skilled in managing both. That's not a very good rationale against using it.
Simetrical schrieb:
On Feb 6, 2008 11:36 AM, Soxred93@gmail.com soxred93@gmail.com wrote:
That's the problem, a Windows server is likely to be a little less secure, IMHO.
Doubtful. A legal copy of Windows (so you can get the updates) can be secured as well as Linux, at least assuming the administrator is equally skilled in managing both. That's not a very good rationale against using it.
A lot more virus/worm/h4xx authors focus on Windows platforms than on Linux/Solaris. And there are a lot more remotely exploitable errors to gain root access for Windows than for Linux. Another point is thatin Linux you just shut down the vulnerable service, while some rootexploits for Windows affect core components.
Marco
That's why I said "likely", not "will".
-Soxred93
On Feb 6, 2008, at 1:32 PM, Marco Schuster wrote:
Simetrical schrieb:
On Feb 6, 2008 11:36 AM, Soxred93@gmail.com soxred93@gmail.com wrote:
That's the problem, a Windows server is likely to be a little less secure, IMHO.
Doubtful. A legal copy of Windows (so you can get the updates) can be secured as well as Linux, at least assuming the administrator is equally skilled in managing both. That's not a very good rationale against using it.
A lot more virus/worm/h4xx authors focus on Windows platforms than on Linux/Solaris. And there are a lot more remotely exploitable errors to gain root access for Windows than for Linux. Another point is thatin Linux you just shut down the vulnerable service, while some rootexploits for Windows affect core components.
Marco
Toolserver-l mailing list Toolserver-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/toolserver-l
2008/2/6, Purodha toolserver-l.wikipedia.org@publi.purodha.net:
I do not have or plan anything that would be useful to have one of the Windows O/Ses for.
If someone else has - why not, if such a server could be made secure.
Personally, I don't think there are things which can be done only using Windows system. What's more, in my opinion remote use of Windows isn't even half as convenient as Unix shell. I believe the idea of running Windows toolserver is completely pointless.
... and, why waste, what, $800 bucks on the base license, plus more on extra memory due to its bloat, plus even more due to terminal licensing 'n' number of users, when we can shell out the same amount of cash to get yet another toolserver? I mean, I'd rather two for the price of one than one for the price of two, wouldn't you guys?
What really hate on this discussion is, that it turned to "Windows is evil, Linux is best". That was not the point of the original question.
Now, I repeat the major issue nobody replied to:
It's the question of reusability of software. I know about people (including myself) who wrote stuff running on Windows. And they did not write it on Linux just because either they didn't need it or simply because they don't understand Linux programming that much or even not at all. Now, does that mean we should throw away all the stuff which has been done? It's unlikely to happen those users will port it on Linux. So the question is, how to make usefull scripts available for all, if they're written on Windows. So, please, think about this question - it's much more important than infantile tug-of-war about is Windows that bad or not.
Price issue has been mentioned here few times: River correctly pointed out, we can get the non-profit prices. But nobody even mentioned the possibility we can get it for free (or $1). The purchase is being rejected without even trying to get it on nice price. That is definitely bad approach. We can always give up on trying to set the wints up, if we couldn't get good conditions, but why should we reject it in advance before any try? Just because Linux masters think it's worthless?
Like not every person speaks English/Russian/German/..., not every person "speaks" Linux. Does that mean those people are second-rate? If Windows-speaking people were willing to write useful stuff, is there any reason why we should tell them "your work was worthless"? Please, try to get around your personal antipathy to Windows and try to look at it from the usability and usefulness point of view. Thank you.
Danny B.
It's the question of reusability of software. I know about people (including myself) who wrote stuff running on Windows. And they did not write it on Linux just because either they didn't need it or simply because they don't understand Linux programming that much or even not at all. Now, does that mean we should throw away all the stuff which has been done? It's unlikely to happen those users will port it on Linux. So the question is,
Then ask for help!
What is there that can only be done on Windows but not on Linux? No examples have been presented yet.
If it just boils down to "I feel cozy using C# on windows and never had a look at mono", then I'm sorry, that doesn't cut it for me. I had to acquire a considerable amount of expertise and put in a substantial amount of time to do the stuff I'm doing on the toolserver. Shelling out even one dollar just because someone is to lazy (sorry) to learn new things seems unacceptable to me.
On Feb 7, 2008 3:28 PM, Daniel Schwen lists@schwen.de wrote:
If it just boils down to "I feel cozy using C# on windows and never had a look at mono", then I'm sorry, that doesn't cut it for me. I had to acquire a considerable amount of expertise and put in a substantial amount of time to do the stuff I'm doing on the toolserver. Shelling out even one dollar just because someone is to lazy (sorry) to learn new things seems unacceptable to me.
It's kind of lovely how you feel that you have the right to judge how other people should spend their time. This is especially interesting in the light of the fact that you have no idea what range of commitments and engagements other people have that also occupy their time and how that compares to the task of learning how to program in a Linux environment.
Other than that, it seems to me that the pressing points again are: what would people use a Windows environment for that was beneficial for Wikimedia projects, for that's what the tool server is for. If there are users who are most comfortable with a Windows environment and who have something valuable to contribute, it seems somewhat shortsighted to tell them off because they're "too lazy" to learn how to work with Linux.
Now, while I don't take personal offense, I am actually one of the people who works exclusively in a Windows environment. While I do not know if River has thought about raising the "Windows question" before, but I think him asking here was also prompted when I asked him that question on IRC a few days ago. I've written several bots that are in use on German Wikipedia (plus a few other projects) performing archiving and recategorizing tasks. The archiving bot is the most popular one used on German Wikipedia, the recat bot is tightly integrated in our CfD process. These bots currently run on an external Windows 2003 server I rent, paid out of my own pocket. To make these bots work, I've written a general purpose "bot framework" (similar to pywiki perhaps although I've never once looked at its code) that can do a lot of things. It's written in C# and, because it's based on .NET, can be used without problems by any other .NET compatible language. Do I think there's value in what I created? Certainly. It's closed source at the moment though but I've been toying with the idea of opening the source for a while now.
If there was a toolserver with a Windows environment available, these bots could be run on that server and managed just the same way as they are on my own. Porting them to Linux would require quite a bit of work mostly because all the logging is done with a local SQL Server 2005 database which is accessed by an ASP.NET website on the same server ( http://sebmol.de/bots/log.aspx if you are curious). This porting work would not really add any value to the actual bot, it would also mean that I couldn't be involved in it anymore since I do not have time to learn how to use and program in a Linux environment.
I hope this makes somewhat clear what we're talking about. Comments are greatly appreciated, provided they don't burn down to something like "Microsoft is evil, Linux FTW".
Best regards,
Sebastian
Od: Daniel Schwen lists@schwen.de
(excerpt)
... Shelling out even one dollar just because someone is to lazy (sorry) to learn new things seems unacceptable to me.
What makes you rightful to say in other words that Windows programmers are lazy slackers? Who are you?
And what about if I turned it vice versa, what would you say if I said "_you_ are lazy to learn new things (= Windows based programming)"?
So hold your horses and keep such personal attacks away from this talk, please.
I've seen many cases of intolerance to minorities (because of race, religion, sexual oritentation etc.) and this seems to me it becomes to be the same. I wonder what makes Windows programmers worse than Linux guys. And what makes Linux guys pontificaly reject the equal rights and chances for Windows people. I thought this is community project with equal opportunities to contribute to everybody who's interested. Or are we all equal but some of us are more equal than others?
Danny B.
... Shelling out even one dollar just because someone is to lazy (sorry) to learn new things seems unacceptable to me.
What makes you rightful to say in other words that Windows programmers are lazy slackers? Who are you?
Oh geez! AGF, for crying out loud! Neither was this a personal attack, nor was I playing that annoying old Linux vs. Windows record (even if you want to make me sound like it).
Read my post again!
I was asking for examples where a valuable tool developed on windows cannot simply be run on Linux. You didn't provide any.
Now Sebmol seems to have such an example, which is perfectly fine. Neither am I opposed to the general idea of having a Windows toolserver, nor do I deem Windows "evil".
The gist is: if conversion is possible no money should be spent. If it is not (with reasonable effort) and the tools provide substantial value, then fine by me.
On Feb 7, 2008 10:18 AM, Danny B. Wikipedia.Danny.B@email.cz wrote:
I've seen many cases of intolerance to minorities (because of race, religion, sexual oritentation etc.) and this seems to me it becomes to be the same. I wonder what makes Windows programmers worse than Linux guys. And what makes Linux guys pontificaly reject the equal rights and chances for Windows people. I thought this is community project with equal opportunities to contribute to everybody who's interested. Or are we all equal but some of us are more equal than others?
There are those of us who do believe that reliance upon proprietary software is in fact damaging, contrary to Wikimedia's mission, and perhaps even wrong. That would indeed make us reject "equal rights" for Windows users, just as it would make us reject equal rights for those who don't want to GFDL their Wikipedia contributions. This is not, however, an issue on the toolservers, because neither those who own them nor those who run them are sympathetic to that point of view. Either way, that question is explicitly off-topic here, although I wouldn't mind debating it with you elsewhere.
The question is whether getting a Windows server is worth the cost. So far we have one person who has concretely said he would be interested in moving his application to a Windows toolserver. That project is already running on a private Windows server and will presumably continue to do so even if a Windows toolserver is not provided (or at least, we were told nothing to the contrary). I'm not clear, either, on whether that code would run anyway under Mono with no modifications -- the fifth post in this thread was by River, saying that Windows vs. Mono "shouldn't make any difference as far as i know" for running C#/.NET. The base cost is at least $400, for a one-CPU license -- this allows multicore, by the way, so that's unlikely to be a big problem. At $6/user, the per-user licensing cost seems likely to run to at least one or two hundred dollars more per year, unless it's very unpopular (in which case that's an argument against bothering in itself).
So that means at least $500-600/year, if I'm correct in assuming that the $400 base is also per year. (If it's one-time, that seems like fairly remarkable pricing, I'm pretty sure lower than a copy of Vista Home Premium and Office, so I think I'm correct.) It might be higher if some cost was forgotten or misunderstood, but it's maybe also possible to get a lower price from some other supplier. If this figure is correct, I think it's fair to say that to justify the cost, we would need at least one useful thing that would be run on the toolserver that we are fairly certain would not be run otherwise. That's just as a minimum, to justify the expense and the effort. Preferably you'd think there should be more than one thing. But as far as I can tell, nobody has yet come up with even one thing, so based on the response so far, it doesn't seem that there's anything that's been suggested yet that would justify this.
Is there any disagreement on the last two paragraphs?
Would a "Windows toolserver" require an own physical server, or have you planned running it virtual?
On Feb 7, 2008 5:35 PM, Simetrical Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 7, 2008 10:18 AM, Danny B. Wikipedia.Danny.B@email.cz wrote:
I've seen many cases of intolerance to minorities (because of race, religion, sexual oritentation etc.) and this seems to me it becomes to be the same. I wonder what makes Windows programmers worse than Linux guys. And what makes Linux guys pontificaly reject the equal rights and chances for Windows people. I thought this is community project with equal opportunities to contribute to everybody who's interested. Or are we all equal but some of us are more equal than others?
There are those of us who do believe that reliance upon proprietary software is in fact damaging, contrary to Wikimedia's mission, and perhaps even wrong. That would indeed make us reject "equal rights" for Windows users, just as it would make us reject equal rights for those who don't want to GFDL their Wikipedia contributions. This is not, however, an issue on the toolservers, because neither those who own them nor those who run them are sympathetic to that point of view. Either way, that question is explicitly off-topic here, although I wouldn't mind debating it with you elsewhere.
The question is whether getting a Windows server is worth the cost. So far we have one person who has concretely said he would be interested in moving his application to a Windows toolserver. That project is already running on a private Windows server and will presumably continue to do so even if a Windows toolserver is not provided (or at least, we were told nothing to the contrary). I'm not clear, either, on whether that code would run anyway under Mono with no modifications -- the fifth post in this thread was by River, saying that Windows vs. Mono "shouldn't make any difference as far as i know" for running C#/.NET. The base cost is at least $400, for a one-CPU license -- this allows multicore, by the way, so that's unlikely to be a big problem. At $6/user, the per-user licensing cost seems likely to run to at least one or two hundred dollars more per year, unless it's very unpopular (in which case that's an argument against bothering in itself).
So that means at least $500-600/year, if I'm correct in assuming that the $400 base is also per year. (If it's one-time, that seems like fairly remarkable pricing, I'm pretty sure lower than a copy of Vista Home Premium and Office, so I think I'm correct.) It might be higher if some cost was forgotten or misunderstood, but it's maybe also possible to get a lower price from some other supplier. If this figure is correct, I think it's fair to say that to justify the cost, we would need at least one useful thing that would be run on the toolserver that we are fairly certain would not be run otherwise. That's just as a minimum, to justify the expense and the effort. Preferably you'd think there should be more than one thing. But as far as I can tell, nobody has yet come up with even one thing, so based on the response so far, it doesn't seem that there's anything that's been suggested yet that would justify this.
Is there any disagreement on the last two paragraphs?
Toolserver-l mailing list Toolserver-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/toolserver-l
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Simetrical:
S> So that means at least $500-600/year, if I'm correct in assuming that S> the $400 base is also per year. (If it's one-time, that seems like S> fairly remarkable pricing, I'm pretty sure lower than a copy of Vista S> Home Premium and Office, so I think I'm correct.)
the prices i quoted were from TechSoup, a non-profit software supplier that works with Microsoft and other vendors to provide cheap software to people like us. the prices are not per-year, unless i misunderstood the licensing model (which is quite possible). they are obviously much cheaper than retail prices (for example, Windows Server 2003 Enterprise retail price is around $3,500).
- river.
------------ Původní zpráva ------------ Od: Simetrical Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.com Předmět: Re: [Toolserver-l] Windows toolserver Datum: 07.2.2008 17:36:11
The question is whether getting a Windows server is worth the cost. So far we have one person who has concretely said he would be interested in moving his application to a Windows toolserver. That project is already running on a private Windows server and will presumably continue to do so even if a Windows toolserver is not provided (or at least, we were told nothing to the contrary). I'm not clear, either, on whether that code would run anyway under Mono with no modifications -- the fifth post in this thread was by River, saying that Windows vs. Mono "shouldn't make any difference as far as i know" for running C#/.NET. The base cost is at least $400, for a one-CPU license -- this allows multicore, by the way, so that's unlikely to be a big problem. At $6/user, the per-user licensing cost seems likely to run to at least one or two hundred dollars more per year, unless it's very unpopular (in which case that's an argument against bothering in itself).
So that means at least $500-600/year, if I'm correct in assuming that the $400 base is also per year. (If it's one-time, that seems like fairly remarkable pricing, I'm pretty sure lower than a copy of Vista Home Premium and Office, so I think I'm correct.) It might be higher if some cost was forgotten or misunderstood, but it's maybe also possible to get a lower price from some other supplier. If this figure is correct, I think it's fair to say that to justify the cost, we would need at least one useful thing that would be run on the toolserver that we are fairly certain would not be run otherwise. That's just as a minimum, to justify the expense and the effort. Preferably you'd think there should be more than one thing. But as far as I can tell, nobody has yet come up with even one thing, so based on the response so far, it doesn't seem that there's anything that's been suggested yet that would justify this.
Is there any disagreement on the last two paragraphs?
Couple.
I never heard about yearly payment for MS software unless you lease it. It's been pointed out these are prices for non-profits, so it's obvious they are much cheaper then retail or even OEM version. Thus I'd take them as +- final.
I strongly disagree with setting things in the way "Could it be run elsewhere? Then it should not be on Windows." This approach is very simplyfying - it's same as I'd say: Can you get from city to city in Skoda? So don't use Mercedes, Cadillac, Citroen... Again - who wrote it on Windows, most probably won't rewrite it. Will you? Who of you is going to rewrite my ASP libraries eg.? And I'd like to emphasize I am one of those, who _are_ willing to learn new things (and not lazy as been mentioned before) and in fact I'm trying to do so. I have bunch of ideas for tools which I'd done in few minutes/hours if I was doing it in ASP using my libraries. Now I don't have those tools, because I'm fighting with PHP and it takes me ages to make every simple stupid script running. (Yes, Linux masters can start to ROFL now...) Which makes me exhausted for pretty long time ahead. Nobody has time to waste, so everybody will decide if they'll spend an hour writing either bunch of tools in minutes in language they are familiar with or one tool in entire hour (if ever) in language they aren't familiar with.
This leads to my other disagreement, which is about sentences like: "nobody showed the tools = no need for wints". I am pretty sure there is bunch of Windows programmers out there who don't participate with their brains because they simply don't have a conditions to. I'd say if there was a Windows toolserver it would attract other people with new ideas and tools, because they will have an opportunity to do so. Maybe it wouldn't be bad to make some public poll about that?
Also thanks to Sebmol who pointed out that every single person is master of its time. So, please, don't tell people to waste an hour of their free time to create one tool if they can utilize the same hour to create five tools. The world isn't single colored. We have wide palette of programming/scripting languages and different people are familiar with different languages. I am not pushing you to use those I use, don't push me to use those you use.
Danny B.
2008/2/7 Danny B. Wikipedia.Danny.B@email.cz:
I never heard about yearly payment for MS software unless you lease it. It's been pointed out these are prices for non-profits, so it's obvious they are much cheaper then retail or even OEM version. Thus I'd take them as +- final.
Well, I was just surprised that MS would sell a copy of Windows Server 2003 and MS SQL Server to a non-profit for, I think, less than they would sell Vista and Office . . . to that same non-profit. Or do their non-server products also give discounts to nonprofits?
I strongly disagree with setting things in the way "Could it be run elsewhere? Then it should not be on Windows."
I support that attitude in general for Wikimedia, but it's been said it's not relevant to the toolserver and in particular is not relevant to this discussion, so there's no reason to talk about it further.
This leads to my other disagreement, which is about sentences like: "nobody showed the tools = no need for wints". I am pretty sure there is bunch of Windows programmers out there who don't participate with their brains because they simply don't have a conditions to. I'd say if there was a Windows toolserver it would attract other people with new ideas and tools, because they will have an opportunity to do so.
Sure, quite possibly -- I'm just saying that it seems like a bad idea to spend money belonging to either the Wikimedia Foundation or any of its local chapters on a new OS if you have don't have reason to believe it will actually give any benefit to Wikimedia users. It seems logical to me to say that you should at least have one project that will run only if we have a Windows toolserver, because otherwise I don't see any benefit to anyone. The toolserver enables people to run tools if they either don't have their own server space or really need database access; that's basically the only benefit to anyone.
I guess you could argue that it's inevitable someone will want to use it eventually, for some app they wouldn't have otherwise written. It just seems sensible to me to find that person *before* you pay a few hundred dollars, rather than paying it and only then waiting for him to turn up.
Also thanks to Sebmol who pointed out that every single person is master of its time. So, please, don't tell people to waste an hour of their free time to create one tool if they can utilize the same hour to create five tools. The world isn't single colored. We have wide palette of programming/scripting languages and different people are familiar with different languages. I am not pushing you to use those I use, don't push me to use those you use.
This is, again, off-topic. I'll respond off-list.
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Simetrical:
S> Well, I was just surprised that MS would sell a copy of Windows Server S> 2003 and MS SQL Server to a non-profit for, I think, less than they S> would sell Vista and Office . . . to that same non-profit. Or do S> their non-server products also give discounts to nonprofits?
i did not quote prices for Vista or Office because it didn't seem relevant (i don't think we want to provide a server for people to produce Powerpoint slides on). you can search the entire list of available products at http://www.techsoup.org/, which includes desktop Windows (at least XP, i didn't check Vista), Office, and a lot of other software.
S> Sure, quite possibly -- I'm just saying that it seems like a bad idea S> to spend money belonging to either the Wikimedia Foundation or any of S> its local chapters on a new OS if you have don't have reason to S> believe it will actually give any benefit to Wikimedia users.
the entire point of this discussion was to find out whether it will provide a benefit to users (by producing more tools). that is why i asked people to refrain from discussing whether or not we should considering deploying Windows; there's no point doing that until we can see an actual need for it.
- river.
There will probably be religious controversies if Wikimedia sponsors a Windows toolserver, so our best bet is to find a third party who is willing to put up with the costs.
On Feb 7, 2008 6:02 PM, River Tarnell river@wikimedia.org wrote:
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Simetrical:
S> Well, I was just surprised that MS would sell a copy of Windows Server S> 2003 and MS SQL Server to a non-profit for, I think, less than they S> would sell Vista and Office . . . to that same non-profit. Or do S> their non-server products also give discounts to nonprofits?
i did not quote prices for Vista or Office because it didn't seem relevant (i don't think we want to provide a server for people to produce Powerpoint slides on). you can search the entire list of available products at http://www.techsoup.org/, which includes desktop Windows (at least XP, i didn't check Vista), Office, and a lot of other software.
S> Sure, quite possibly -- I'm just saying that it seems like a bad idea S> to spend money belonging to either the Wikimedia Foundation or any of S> its local chapters on a new OS if you have don't have reason to S> believe it will actually give any benefit to Wikimedia users.
the entire point of this discussion was to find out whether it will provide a benefit to users (by producing more tools). that is why i asked people to refrain from discussing whether or not we should considering deploying Windows; there's no point doing that until we can see an actual need for it.
- river.-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)
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Toolserver-l mailing list Toolserver-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/toolserver-l
On Feb 7, 2008 6:02 PM, River Tarnell river@wikimedia.org wrote:
the entire point of this discussion was to find out whether it will provide a benefit to users (by producing more tools). that is why i asked people to refrain from discussing whether or not we should considering deploying Windows; there's no point doing that until we can see an actual need for it.
Yes, precisely.
toolserver-l@lists.wikimedia.org