[steering] proposed letter to theforum

[Martin Burns]

On Sun, 26 Jan 2003, Marlene Bruce wrote:

> -----
>
> Subject: evolt.org revamp comment period open
>
> Everyone,
>
> Over the last month or so the Steering Committee has been discussing
> a major upgrade to evolt.org's site, lists, and services.
>
> We want to improve many aspects of what we're currently doing, including:
>
> * providing better content and services to our members and visitors,
> * coming more into alignment with our open-source philosophy,

'compliance' changed to 'alignment' as compliance has more of an
enforcement angle

> * better facilitating community ownership, participation and
> communication,
> * revamping our back and front ends,
> * dramatically lowering our costs, and our need to fundraise, so
increasing the certainty of evolt.org's continuation

added 'need to fundraise and resulting risk...'

> * and more...

I like the 'and more'...

> As you can imagine, this is a major undertaking. Come this December
> evolt.org will be celebrating our 5th birthday, and we'd like to
> unveil a dramatically improved evolt.org prior to and in anticipation
> of this milestone.
>
> There are several steps that we have already identified, though this
> list may not be comprehensive:

'inclusive' changed to 'comprehensive' as I wasn't quite sure what
'inclusive' meant in the context.

> * [I was going to add bullets based on our Steering discussion.]

First draft - hack as necessary

HOSTING:
Hosting with Ron has been very good for evolt - he took us in and provided
a highly effective place for us to host our 5 boxes, and he has very
kindly not as yet billed us for any of the ~140GB a month of his that we
chew through. However, he's rightly moving towards invoicing us for the
bandwidth we use, and this will bring costs of US$3.50/GB.
We propose:
* To move to an environment such as http://www.rackshack.net with data
costs of ~US$0.30/GB (nb this is where eouk & css-d are hosted)
* To reduce the number of boxes required to 2 (likely one for leo, and one
for all the web content & apps)
* To use managed hosting (rather than owning our own boxes in co-lo)

TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE:
As the above setup is unlikely to be able to run Oracle as the back-end
db, and we don't currently have the documentation required to satisfy a
license audit on Oracle or CF, we propose:
* To move the backend db to another technology (either an OSS solution
such as Postgres or MSSQL). MSSQL will likely require a Windows-based
provider who will also supply necessary license for operating system and
DB. To maintain the current CMS will also require finding a CF license
supplier.
* To make such changes as are necessary to the CMS layer to cope with that
change. This will be a major undertaking as it has a large amount of
Oracle-specific code.

MEO:
* At present, meo provides the same facilities as f2o, but f2o does it
better.
* Because it's free, we have to come down very hard on anyone using it as
a production hosting service as we can't afford the bandwidth
* It doesn't provide much in the way of community building, integrated
with the other things we do
We propose:
* To kill meo as is - stop taking new accounts immediately, and give
existing members time to migrate elsewhere if necessary
* To develop a hosting environment which will provide pre-built
applications for members to host content such as photo albums, wikis, blogs,
event-diaries ("Next month's beervolts...) etc.
* To charge a small monthly fee for this. This will balance affordability
with helping the rest of evolt.org to be financially self-sufficient, and
shouldn't be much above US$10 a month in the first instance. If we got 50
accounts, this could fund evolt.org *entirely*.

FRONTEND & CONTENT:
We propose:
* To improve the site's IA & usability in the light of our experience with
it over the last 2 years, based on Javier's work at
http://freezope2.nipltd.net/acorn/evolt/InformationArchitecture
* To revisit the visual design & coding standards
* To add a general-purpose wiki, starting with much of the content on
freezope2.nipltd.net/acorn/evolt/

> What we need is agreement in principle from theforum to start pursuing
> the upgrade. A comment period will extend until [one week(?) from when
> this email is sent, unless the need for a deadline extension becomes
> apparent.]

'approval' changed to 'agreement in principle'. I would guess we'll be
going back for a final approval on whatever the more definite, detailed
proposal is.

> If you want to read the discussion we've had on Steering, you can see
> the full text starting at:
> http://lists.evolt.org/steeringarchive/2002-December/000163.html
and continuing until the present

> If you're interested in commenting on what we (on steering) propose,
> please read the discussion first.
>
> Voting will commence at the end of the discussion period, and last
> 5(?) days. I will send specific details about voting just before it
> commences.
>
> Thanks,
> Marlene
>
> -----
--
"Names, once they are in common use, quickly
 become mere sounds, their etymology being
 buried, like so many of the earth's marvels,
 beneath the dust of habit." - Salman Rushdie