Andreas Tille writes ("Please give a summary (Was: Debian services and Debian infrastructure)"): > as a random reader I have the feeling that this thread is about a > conflict between DSA members and DPL. For me all these mails do not > make the slightest sense and it would help if someone could give a > summary what you are talking about and if possible give some example > what you think is OK and what not.
AFAICT the DPL (and perhaps some other people) have been offered the opportunity to obtain donated "cloud hosting". That is, VMs which would be hosted by the cloud provider for free but administered by Debian folk. That's nice and a thing we might want to take advantage of. (In my day job with the Xen Project, we make extensive use of VM hosting graciously donated by Rackspace, for example.) Lucas seems to be intending to mediate these offers to interested DDs (who have Debian-related uses for a VM) directly, with the apparent expectation that those DDs would end up administering those VMs directly in an ad hoc manner. DSA haven't been involved or informed (until now). I can see at least three problems with this, which have been mentioned in this and previous threads: Firstly, there is the prospect that "bad things" would happen to these VMs. For example, they might get compromised; or access to them could be lost when the invididual DDs who had been running them leave or go on vacation. This would be bad for the project, and of course it's bad for DSA because in such a situation DSA would be asked about these VMs and expected to fix it but have no access to or knowledge about them. Secondly, there is the risk that there would be no coherent way to retire these VMs when they are no longer needed. When we take on ongoing donated resources like that, there should be a mechanism for ensuring that the project knows about them, can periodically check that they're still being used and needed, etc. Thirdly, it increases the risk of services being developed in a way that would make them hard to deploy on DSA-managed infrastructure. Developers of services would benefit from early contact with DSA to understand at least in general terms how to make a readily deployable and maintainable online service. Fourthly, it appears to be inconsistent with the DPL's DSA delegation, which specifically delegates to DSA the sysadmin responsibility for all of Debian's systems (which clearly ought to include these VMs). This whole affair is a nontrivial social problem because it gives the impression that the DPL lacks confidence in DSA, and vice versa. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-project-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/21214.47196.917425.913...@chiark.greenend.org.uk