[steering] proposed letter to theforum

[javier velasco]

Looks good to me, thanks Marlene and Martin.

I think 5 days is OK.

Marlene Bruce wrote:

>
> --- REVISED LETTER ---
>
> 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,
> * better facilitating community ownership, participation and communication,
> * revamping our back and front ends,
> * dramatically lowering our costs, need to fundraise and resulting
> risk, increasing the certainty of evolt.org's continuation,
> * 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:
>
> 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.
>
> MEMBERS.EVOLT.ORG (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.]
>
> 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.