Marc *Pelletier / Coren* wrote:
I don't think it's reasonable to expect that every external supplier is all-FLOSS. For one, the movement would be pretty much stuck without hardware, networking gear, and power at the very least.
Is there a list of equipment that WMF uses without viable FLOSS alternatives, please?
I can currently buy what appears to be incredibly cost effective RAID-5 network attached storage and powerful database and web servers meeting what I believe to be current WMF requirements for throughput with FLOSS solutions based on NetBSD, FreeBSD, Debian, or CentOS from apparently reputable and highly-rated consumer outlets for a tiny fraction of the cost that was necessary from wholesale vendors in 2009, when for some reason beyond my present recollection I did the same exercise.
Sincerely, Jim
On 3/22/16 12:15 AM, James Salsman wrote:
Is there a list of equipment that WMF uses without viable FLOSS alternatives, please?
Since the context here is t-shirts, I think we can understand Coren's remarks in a very broad context, and so of course he's right. We might choose to only do business with t-shirt manufacturers who use open source software, but it is not clear that we'd find any.
I have always been a strong advocate of looking for FLOSS solutions for as many things as we can. This is particularly true for things that directly impact the freedom of the website(s). (I'd strongly oppose running Wikipedia on a proprietary database platform, for example.)
And I like favoring vendors who are FLOSS-friendly, even if they are t-shirt partners. It sounds like Shopify are ok in the regard (I haven't personally checked).
But there are many many vendors we need to work with where it will be completely impractical to demand FLOSS purity. The lawyers who are suing the NSA? Our auditors? The venues for Wikimania?
On 2016-03-21 6:15 PM, James Salsman wrote:
Is there a list of equipment that WMF uses without viable FLOSS alternatives, please?
The switches and routers for one; as far as I know, high-end networking hardware is not available with Libre OSes, nor would the supplier support one flashed with a non-proprietary OS (as one can do with some mid-range gear).
And there is a fuzzy line about being "all-FLOSS". Do you use servers with only open source BIOS and firmware on all attached hardware? At best, that severely crimps your options and I'm not sure there exists viable alternative for /all/ required hardware.
The *important* thing is that anyone can grab Mediawiki, the dumps, and a Libre OS supporting LAMP and make the projects run. Beyond that, best effort to always favour FLOSS when it gets the job done is a solid philosophical stance that is universally applied. But, like most principles, it cannot be a suicide pact. We cannot, as a movement, refuse to get the job done unless we reinvent every proprietary wheel - this way lies both madness and a tremendous waste of donors' money[1].
-- Coren / Marc
[1] For instance, a common thing that is surfaced is to home-spin software when the only FLOSS alternatives require either serious customization or maintenance; we *could* hypothetically hire enough engineers to maintain every bit of needed software - or even write the bits that don't exist - but that's not what we *do* (nor should it be).
See also: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Wikimedia_Foundation_Guiding... https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FLOSS-Exchange
On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 6:44 PM, Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org wrote:
On 2016-03-21 6:15 PM, James Salsman wrote:
Is there a list of equipment that WMF uses without viable FLOSS alternatives, please?
The switches and routers for one; as far as I know, high-end networking hardware is not available with Libre OSes, nor would the supplier support one flashed with a non-proprietary OS (as one can do with some mid-range gear).
And there is a fuzzy line about being "all-FLOSS". Do you use servers with only open source BIOS and firmware on all attached hardware? At best, that severely crimps your options and I'm not sure there exists viable alternative for /all/ required hardware.
The *important* thing is that anyone can grab Mediawiki, the dumps, and a Libre OS supporting LAMP and make the projects run. Beyond that, best effort to always favour FLOSS when it gets the job done is a solid philosophical stance that is universally applied. But, like most principles, it cannot be a suicide pact. We cannot, as a movement, refuse to get the job done unless we reinvent every proprietary wheel - this way lies both madness and a tremendous waste of donors' money[1].
-- Coren / Marc
[1] For instance, a common thing that is surfaced is to home-spin software when the only FLOSS alternatives require either serious customization or maintenance; we *could* hypothetically hire enough engineers to maintain every bit of needed software - or even write the bits that don't exist - but that's not what we *do* (nor should it be).
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I think there are two clear policies here:
1. The forkability of the projects 2. The "niceness" of suppliers.
The first is a movement and project principle. The second is - loosely - connected to a broader movement. It is philosophically and morally dubious to coerce people to conform to our preferred ethics model. Perhaps this would be highlighted best if we were to consider only serving web pages to readers using FLOSS operating systems.
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