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List:       kde-www
Subject:    Re: apps/ftp.kde.com
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       2003-12-09 16:09:55
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Hi,

There have been a number of comments on this thread and I will try to
respond to them point-by-point, to the extent my feedback is warranted.

First, what happened to appsy?  My ISP first moved (resulting in some
downtime) and then due to some space restrictions ended up disconnecting
the MieTerra servers from the Internet; this brought down email, DNS
servers and everything else so I was not reachable for a while
(currently there is a bad workaround in place).  Due to some travel and
funding issues I have not yet found an alternative though some options
are being worked on with the help of some potential sponsors.  The
sponsors might provide sufficient resources to maintain the site for the
foreseeable future.

Second, it seems that all the alternatives to using FM have been
exhausted, due to the obvious reason that I have mentioned for a long
time:  maintaining appsy is a *LOT* of work.  But this misses the main
point:  FM.net has been around longer than appsy, and one could always
browse the site by "KDE" apps (if the site's project maintainer chose to
classify the project in the KDE category, which of course is a
requirement that would survive creating kde.fm.net or whatever).  In
other words I don't know exactly what is anticipated will change with
FM.

What made appsy special was all the work I put into it (not just in
quality control but also in terms of finding applications to list).  The
other thing special about it was the binary packages.  Of course
currently the packages are subscription-only but that was meant only to
pay for the bandwith the site uses.  If the site obtains sponsors there
is no reason why this package service should not be freely available;
and indeed if that were combined with some sort of KDE client for easy
install this would provide a nice advantage to KDE over some
alternatives.  The question again is one of sponsorship and the cost
really would not be that great.

Also I do not like the ever-increasing dependence on VA Software.  To
the extent FM does its own thing, great, but to the extent KDE
encourages contribution to FM, I don't understand the point.  I would
note that KDE never encouraged contribution to a.k.c and to the extent
someone seriously considers apps.kde.org I would note that also was
never made available to a.k.c, so I wonder what has changed in these
regards.  I was personally content that a.k.o was not used as a.k.c was
not controlled by kde.org and thus using a kde.org address was
inappropriate - I remain of this opinion, whether a.k.c comes online
again soon (hopefully) or fm.net is used.

Third, there is the issue of turning over the a.k.c database/code to
a.k.o or so.  Due to some debt issues that currently is not possible
(due to fraud on creditors principle), but if some way is found to pay
off this debt this becomes a real possibility.  There is no real point
on focusing on this though at this point since the debt issue is a real
problem ATM; however, I have been in talks with possible sponsors to
solve this problem (perhaps with a few sponsors it will work) and the
database and PHP code can be provided under a suitable OS license.  Yet
as was also noted this still leaves a site maintenance requirement which
does not go away, even though this could be distributed somehow (e.g. in
the a.k.c code any number of people can be given special "admin" status
to approve a submission).

There was also some talk about by S. Binner about "root" access to
maintain a.k.c.  I did inform him of this but I also told him this could
be fixed (with about 4-8 hours work) so that the entire process -
including binary package building - could work through the web
interface; just currently with the lack of a firm commitment of help by
anybody I did not think this was the best use of my time.

So for me I go back to the issue of finding sponsors for a.k.c (I am
happy to actually shut down w.k.c since with the new w.k.o it is not
needed anymore; the search stuff I guess would need to be implemented
elsewhere or that remnant could remain, it's not such a big deal).
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