Thingiverse, et al.

[Cassandra Brockett]

So... I just finished reading Prusa's blog entry about the Replicator 2... and the primary thing I got out of it was the link to the current legal page over at Thingiverse.

A quick heads up for anyone in the area thinking of using Thingiverse to host something, in layman's terms (and for what it's worth, I'm not a lawyer, but I do read a bunch of legal contracts as part of what I do, especially ones related to open source), if you post something on Thingiverse, Makerbot (Thingiverse's owners) have the legal right to take your object, no matter the license you post it to the site with, and sell it, either solo, or as part of a new product.  And you have very very few legal recourses.  I won't say you have none, but for most attorney's you'd be told you had none, you'd have to find someone who was very good to break you out of that legalese....

Given how I have been contemplating for a while with putting a few things up there, and just haven't done it yet, I figured I'd ask a simple question... anyone know of any other sites out there for that sort of thing?  And if not, do we (as in the bay area reprap community) want to host our own little site where we control things?

If the latter, I'm willing to start doing the grunt work to get a site pieced together for hosting that stuff, and maybe anything else we felt like piecing together...

Before anyone asks, no I wouldn't restrict this to just those of us in the bay area (in fact, I'd want to get it linked off reprap.org), but I've met a few of you now, and figure given our membership we could relatively easily get a site going that did most of what we needed/wanted.  For now, once I get the few models I've been meaning to get put online together, I'll be placing them up on my personal blog.  But if everyone does that sort of thing, it will be hard to find them all... hence this suggestion.

I can provide server space for the site, my skills as a sysadmin to get the site up and running, some very limited design skills for the site layout, but if it was just me, the site is going to painful for people to use, as I'd make it easy for the system on the backend, not for the users.

[Tim Driedger]

I think you'll find these kind of term are in the fine print of any of the online services we all use. Facebook, Google and others all "own" the content you contribute.

By the same token, I can take an idea or thing that someone posts to Thingiverse, or any other "Open Source" project and incorporate it into something I sell to others. I can't patent any of these things, neither can Makerbot, so really it's each persons willingness to share in the first place that keeps the open source ball rolling.

Tim

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[Cassandra Brockett]

Again, I look at website and other license all the time for my job, it's part of why I make the money I do.

I do not use Facebook due to it's licensing allowing them to circumvent the legal protections offered by the area I am currently living in, and in violation of the privacy laws in other regions.  Secondly, Google's license for it's source-code system (code.google.com) does NOT grant them the rights to take your code and claim it as their own, for other sections of Google's site, they have such rights, but I do not use those services.

In terms of your second sentence, regarding the licensing listings... if something is released under a Non-Commercial license, then it is forbidden from selling the product, or incorporating it into a product to sell to others.  That's the whole reason for the non-commercial attribution.  If something is released under the GPLv2 (which has no non-commercial restriction for example), then yes, your right, HOWEVER, as a purchaser, or an interested party, I can force the seller to provide me with the source materials.  The GPLv3 is actually worse, it taints all other licenses it comes into contact with, thereby making them open-sourced also (at least, that's the stance the EFF takes on it, and has sued over).  Closed source locks out such things, and if you had read the Prusa article, you would note he contacted Makerbot requesting the source, and was denied.  Now, it is quite likely that the person he spoke to there did not in fact understand that they had to provide the source documentation for the open-sourced parts, but after his follow up attempts to get clarification where rebutted he posted to his blog what happened.

To clarify for those who might wish to try to turn this into an argument for/against open source, my original message was not meant to start a flame war, or to have an argument over who believes what about open source licensing (as everyone has it wrong, even me, until there are proven legal cases the world over, we're just guessing at what the licenses truly mean).  My original message was specifically to ask if we wanted to start our own site to host our own models (or other data), in a manner in which we (the bay area reprap community) control.  If you want to post Thingiverse, where you have waived your protections under CA law (where Makrbot can use the piece with or against your posted license), go right ahead.  I will not. Perhaps others on this list also would prefer not to, hence the request to find out who would like to do something like this.

Please do not argue with me over what you think the terms of any websites you use or do not use have, or you think they have.  I don't actually care about that.  What I care about is that my reading of the license to post to Thingiverse is that if I posted something there, Makerbot is free to take my design and claim it as their own, as I told them they could due to their site license.  As I object to that, and the license has changed recently (It was not that a few months back when I first started looking at the site), I want to know if others in the area are interested in starting our own site to host stuff.  If enough of us got together to do such as thing, we could wind up with out own "sourceforge" style site for maker parts.  If you are interested, please let me know, if you are not, or wish to argue semantics about licensing, please don't bother trying to let me know, I'm not here for an argument.

[matthew bennett]

Did you guys notice Githubuverse? Not to discourage anyone; quite the contrary!

http://garyhodgson.com/reprap/2012/09/githubiverse-a-github-pages-template-for-3d-printing-projects/

-matthew-

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[Cassandra Brockett]

I had seen something related to that, but could not (at first) find an example (now have, it's at http://garyhodgson.github.com/githubiverse-tst/)....

I like the look, though unsure of searchability and access (github can be off putting to some) at this time.  I didn't want to mention any specific options, though, more of a "hey, who likes the idea?", and figured we'd go from there, so thanks for shooting out an idea :)

[wolfmanjm]

I think a thingy aggregator may be useful. it certainly would be easier to do.

Basically it would have search and tags and would link to wherever the actual thing was, be it thingiverse or github or personal blogs. People could register their links to things, and also a bot could search for things to link to.

[Ray Dillinger]

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On 09/20/2012 04:04 PM, Cassandra Brockett wrote:

> I like the look, though unsure of searchability and access (github
> can be off putting to some) at this time. I didn't want to mention
> any specific options, though, more of a "hey, who likes the idea?",
> and figured we'd go from there, so thanks for shooting out an idea
> :)

Some time ago, I nabbed two domains,

"freehardwaremovement.org" and "freehardwaremovement.com"

intending to use them to develop a site that is more or less exactly
what you're talking about.

I haven't done it yet, though; I guess I'm a bit short of knowledge on
where to start, and I haven't learnt enough web programming and
database integration yet (though I've been meaning to) to do this site
well.

Help would certainly be appreciated. I can probably figure out how
to install WordPress and a Wiki System if I work at it, but a
repository of plans etc is beyond my capabilities at least until I
read a lot more man pages about databases and how to use them.

My main idea for the site was that it ought to be a repository of
plans and schematics that anybody can download and use to build
things, definitely including plans and schematics to make all the
tools you need to use all the other plans and schematics, and
specifically (but not to exclusion) focused on the use of
computer-controlled and
robotic tools.

Legally, I think plans and schematics more properly fall under copyright
law than anything else. But we don't have the situation with them that
you can make an obligation to distribute source contingent on the
distribution of an executable, because physical devices aren't
executables. I think it is reasonable, though, to make an obligation
to distribution of plans and schematics contingent on the sale
(probably not contingent merely on the distribution) of objects
constructed according to those plans and schematics.

A thought I've had is that if it is well-organized, it should be
possible to use some backward-chaining logic to automatically develop
"build plans." That is, given your current capabilities (including
tools you have and project budget) and the thing/s you want to build,
it should be possible to work out what you need to do. Starting with
building (or buying) the appropriate tools, or farming the work out to
other builders who can do it cheaper because they already have those
tools.

Another thought was that part of the work to be done is making the
various tools integrate well with each other and be part of a common
infrastructure that operates according to some standards. A repository
of compatible plans (plans for devices that work on the same protocols
and measurements and can be controlled by the same hardware, etc) can
be a "shop distribution" in the same sense that Linux has
distributions of compatible software that all uses the same OS
services and other
infrastructure. A change in infrastructure requires compatible
changes in a lot of different tooling if that tooling is to continue
to work together, and should be part of a coordinated revision
process, where we make a new "shop distribution."

I am not focused specifically on plastic-extrusion devices. They are
nice, they are useful, they are a good "root tool" for developing
robotics and other tools. But they are not always the appropriate
tool for the job. If someone's goal is to build X thousand identical
copies of some plastic widget per month, it is a far far better thing
for him or her to immediately set about building an injection molding
system or rotocaster, and hire a builder whose tools include a mill to
mill him the molds. (or, well, building the mill himself, if he wants
to own one).

Ultimately, we're aiming for that nerdgasm scene from the "Iron Man"
movie where Tony Stark finalizes the plans for his new armor, hits
the "build" command, and his shop goes to work on building it - with
all its integrated components, including parts handling and doing
final assembly, etc -- while he goes out to a party. "Estimated time
to completion, 22 hours and 37 minutes." He's got everything from
mills to circuit printers to pick-and-place systems to hammers and
screwdrivers under robotic control. And it's my contention that that
kind of complete automated shop is something that can be built, and
ought to be built, and ought to be usable to build others. It won't
be exactly like the movies (no plot-device power sources, and I
imagine most final assembly will be by hand for a long time), but
that's what we're aiming for eventually.

Bear
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[Peter]

Did you guys see this:

http://marcuswolschon.blogspot.de/2012/09/occupy-thingiverse.html

You are not the only one to want an alternative to Thingiverse.

[Charles Butkus]

so, they're saying that it's ok to opensource their designs to everybody, except those they don't like? 

Sent from my iPhone

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[Cassandra Brockett]

Few quick responses.

1) I had not seen that link Peter, it's good to have someone who has categorised all the thingiverse (and makerbot specific) issues in one place.  I do not "hate" or object to Makerbot/Thingiverse for this or the likely decision for the replicator 2 to be closed sourced, that's their decision, I just won't post my objects on a site that it is unclear what the real licensing situation is with the items, and wanted an alternative.

2) airdamien - I believe the current brujahaha is in regards to a steamroll of changes all happening at once and the new replicator just brought things to a head.  I would love to Creative-Commons a lot of my objects with a "non-commercial" attribution, as I do not believe someone should make money off my designs without giving me a percentage (or asking me specifically for other terms), I'd love to see a million of my designs out there in the real world, from reprap people.

3) Ray - Happy to talk more about the site technical items, I believe that Jon has us booked in MP this coming Wednesday (the 26th), if you happen to be there (and anyone else who is interested in discussing this in more depth), I'd be glad to find a quiet corner away from the rest of the group for a bit to has out ideas for things.  I can't provide much in the way of time every day, but considering I can easily handle most of the technical aspects (I even have colo space and paid-for bandwidth that's available for use for anything we want to get together), then my limited time, might be worth a lot more than I think it truly is.... (for me for example, tossing up a new site with a wiki, content manager (aka wordpress type thing, maybe even wordpress *grin*), mailling list manager, database setup, et al, would probably only take about an hour...).

[Bryan Bishop]

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 3:20 AM, Cassandra Brockett <cbro...@ophiuchi.net> wrote:

new site with a wiki, content manager (aka wordpress type thing, maybe even wordpress *grin*), mailling list manager, database setup, et al, would probably only take about an hour...).

I highly recommend not using wordpress for thingiverse2. Don't do that.

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507

[Ray Dillinger]

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On 09/22/2012 08:13 AM, Bryan Bishop wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 3:20 AM, Cassandra Brockett
> <cbro...@ophiuchi.net>wrote:
>
>> new site with a wiki, content manager (aka wordpress type thing,
>> maybe even wordpress *grin*), mailling list manager, database
>> setup, et al, would probably only take about an hour...).
>
>
> I highly recommend not using wordpress for thingiverse2. Don't do
> that.
>

Please mention a specific reason for your objection. I might agree
heartily with you, if only I knew what the problems were.

Also, please recommend an open-source alternative that you consider
to be a better choice, and say why it's a better choice.

At this point we have the luxury of choosing; scraps of relevant
information you make available before the choice is made will have
many many times the influence of information not known until a system
is up and running and there is content that needs to be converted.

Bear





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[Ray Dillinger]

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On 09/22/2012 01:20 AM, Cassandra Brockett wrote:

> 3) Ray - Happy to talk more about the site technical items, I
> believe that Jon has us booked in MP this coming Wednesday (the
> 26th), if you happen to be there (and anyone else who is interested
> in discussing this in more depth), I'd be glad to find a quiet

> corner away from the rest of the group for a bit to hash out ideas
> for things.

Wednesday evenings are difficult for me as I work midnight to 8AM
during the week, but I will make an effort to be there.

> I can't provide much in the way of time every day, but considering
> I can easily handle most of the technical aspects (I even have colo
> space and paid-for bandwidth that's available for use for anything
> we want to get together), then my limited time, might be worth a
> lot more than I think it truly is.... (for me for example, tossing
> up a new site with a wiki, content manager (aka wordpress type
> thing, maybe even wordpress *grin*), mailling list manager,
> database setup, et al, would probably only take about an hour...).

What I would really like to do, then, is sit next to your elbow and
take notes while you go through the process of setting it up. But
me taking notes and asking questions may slow the whole thing down by
a factor of 2 or so. I can bring a machine with preinstalled software
to configure.

I have some static IP addresses at home; I've set up webservers, mail
servers, etc, in the past but I've never administered content on
colocated servers. We could provide some redundancy between your colo
and my static uplink by having ".com" hosted in one place and ".org"
hosted from the other.

I have decent tech skills, but I haven't done much "web" - I'm a
programmer who mostly hacks compilers, development tools, and natural
language systems rather than websites.

Bear
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[Bryan Bishop]

On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Ray Dillinger <be...@sonic.net> wrote:

Please mention a specific reason for your objection.  I might agree
heartily with you, if only I knew what the problems were.

Are you a programmer? Let me know what level I need to explain this at.

 

Also, please recommend an open-source alternative that you consider
to be a better choice, and say why it's a better choice.

There is no open source thingiverse yet. Wordpress isn't a thingiverse. You would need to make your own. You're not going to get git integration in a wordpress plugin without a lot of additional php. But if you're going to be making that sort of investment, you might as well just setup a basic MVC web app anyway, both for future programmer's sanity in maintaining it and present development.

[Ray Dillinger]

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On 09/22/2012 05:45 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote:


> On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Ray Dillinger <be...@sonic.net>
> wrote:

>> Please mention a specific reason for your objection. I might
>> agree heartily with you, if only I knew what the problems were.

> Are you a programmer? Let me know what level I need to explain this
> at.

I am in fact, a computer programmer. I mostly hack natural-language
systems, compilers, and development tools in a UNIX environment using
C and C++ and various LISPS and shell scripting languages, but haven't
done much "web." There are lots of other programming languages I'm
aware of or grok the basics of, but my familiarity is mostly from
research, short scripts, or from working on dev tools rather than from
actually using them day-to-day over long periods.

>> Also, please recommend an open-source alternative that you
>> consider to be a better choice, and say why it's a better
>> choice.

> There is no open source thingiverse yet. Wordpress isn't a
> thingiverse. You would need to make your own. You're not going to
> get git integration in a wordpress plugin without a lot of
> additional php. But if you're going to be making that sort of
> investment, you might as well just setup a basic MVC web app
> anyway, both for future programmer's sanity in maintaining it and
> present development.

It seems likely that if the needs are sufficiently distinct from WP,
and especially if WP goes a different direction in the future, they
may eventually result in a software fork. But in the absence of a
better alternative, I don't see a reason to not start with the
available software off the shelf.

Let's think about what we need.

0) A channel for news, announcements, and project updates, with
backchannels for discussion-of and feedback-to. This is the
role I'd been considering WordPress a good fit for. Each
"project" becomes a channel or WordPress "blog" that people
can subscribe to via RSS for updates, etc. The people doing
the project make an announcement, and then the "discussion"
area below the announcement allows for discussion-of and
feedback-about from users and interested parties.

1) Mailing lists with webby archives, and a web-form that allows
member contributions when members don't have an email client
handy or don't want to do it via email. There's any number of
standalone products for this, including plugins for WP and
Wiki. These would be the persistent channels for admin, for
standardization discussions, for working groups, etc, that
announcements, project updates, etc, would mostly flow from.

2) Open Discussion Forums. For support and user discussion
mostly. Again, there are any number of standalone products
for this, including plugins for both WordPress and Wikis.

3) A wiki-ish repository of information. I imagine each project
and meta-project having its own page of wiki where it's explained
what it's for, what it works with, a link to the "announcements"
blog for that project, etc. I had been thinking that source
control was more naturally (and more easily) tied to a wiki
than to a discussion forum or announcement channel anyway,
which is why I'm not too concerned about integrating WP with
git. Wikis have their own revision control built-in, so
cross-linking wiki revisions to github revisions seems like
a natural fit.

4) Revision control -- git is certainly a lead contender but not
the only contender.

5) Bug database -- needs to be integrated with source control,
wiki, and mailing lists, but also have its own face. This is
probably the most challenging part of the web design.


I'm thinking that most of the integration we need to do can be
done by the simple expedient of using URL's that point from
discussions, blog posts, or mail lists to bugs in the bug
database, from bugs to discussions or forum topics, etc.

The problem with that approach is "lock-in"; if you change a
component, all the extant URLs that point at pages generated
by that component no longer work, because the new component
is unlikely to generate the same set of URLs. Sometimes,
if excessively obnoxious fnord, this happens even with just
version upgrades.

There are several solutions, but mostly they are simple if you
just recognize the problem before trying to make a switch.
I favor the straightforward and simple; "serial ID tags"
for every chunk of content (or at least every URL target) on
the whole site. Every single update to anything would get
a unique serial number from a central counter, and these
serial numbers would be embedded in the document somewhere
or used as an ID for the document in a database table, or
both.

These we would use to build redirection tables. For
every URL, we'd record the serial number of the document
it points to. Then when a new component takes over some
role, after all the "content migration" that doesn't respect
any integration with other components, we can find the URLs
that point to documents having the same serial number as
the documents that the old URLs pointed to. After that
we can either update the text in-place using search/
replace across the whole database or just maintain
redirections by putting a redirect file into the local
config for the web server.

There's a QA problem with build plans and schematics
that's familiar from cookbooks, but which we don't see with
conventional computer software. Finding out whether a build
plan or recipe actually works can't easily be automated.

You can't easily write a test suite, nor do automated
nightly builds to see if something broke a dependency.
As a result, even "obvious" bugs or requirements no longer
possible to meet may remain unnoticed until someone actually
needs it to work.

When you're working with atoms instead of bits, you have
to respect the fact that both atoms and the energy and
equipment to manipulate them cost orders of magnitude more
in time and money than bits, and therefore non-live testing
becomes prohibitively expensive and slow.

To address this, we would need to model atoms using bits --
meaning something like a software model of a working shop
that can test run build plans and model the results.

Nothing like this exists now. It's sort of within my area
of expertise (in dev tools) to build or architect, but
it's a big project.

The restricted case of a plastic-extrusion reprap might
be a within reach to model, however -- and that's the
starting "shop" that most of the build plans available
at this time are for. That would at least allow us to
generate warnings that, eg, the holes in XXX model
have "fake" diameters which are intended to result in
"desired" diameters that are actually different, when
printed by a machine with a common misconfiguration.
Or, conversely, warnings that they DON'T have fake diameters
for those whose machines actually ARE misconfigured in
exactly that way.

Bear

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[Bryan Bishop]

On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 12:04 PM, Ray Dillinger wrote:
> On 09/22/2012 05:45 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote:

> > On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Ray Dillinger wrote:
> >> Please mention a specific reason for your objection. I might
> >> agree heartily with you, if only I knew what the problems were.
>
> > Are you a programmer? Let me know what level I need to explain this
> > at.
>

> C and C++ and various LISPS and shell scripting languages, but haven't
> done much "web." There are lots of other programming languages I'm

Okay. Wordpress is notorious in the web development community for its
security blunders. Additionally, the architecture doesn't promote good
application programming practices. People try to shoehorn it into each
situation even when it doesn't really make sense, especially through
the theme and plugin APIs that mix content, presentation, and business
logic.

> may eventually result in a software fork. But in the absence of a
> better alternative, I don't see a reason to not start with the
> available software off the shelf.

Are you judging "better" just by the sheer number of bloggers that use
wordpress, versus the <500 people who run git-backed hardware hosting
sites?

> 0) A channel for news, announcements, and project updates, with
> backchannels for discussion-of and feedback-to. This is the
> role I'd been considering WordPress a good fit for. Each

Having a place to post RSS isn't a big issue these days. If you were
to release a website with just this feature, it wouldn't have much of
anything to do with hardware.. just saying. Wordpress can definitely
do RSS, but so can a million other things. RSS isn't going to enable
more hardware, it's just a nice-to-have on a website, and it
definitely makes sense, but not as a central focus.

> 1) Mailing lists with webby archives, and a web-form that allows

I agree mailing lists are nice things.

> 2) Open Discussion Forums. For support and user discussion

What is the difference to a mailing list?

> 3) A wiki-ish repository of information. I imagine each project

How about just put the wiki in a repository, like all the other sane
version-controlled wikis? ikiwiki comes to mind, but github wiki pages
are also in a repository. Or, erm, at least, bitbucket's wikis are.

> control was more naturally (and more easily) tied to a wiki
> than to a discussion forum or announcement channel anyway,
> which is why I'm not too concerned about integrating WP with
> git. Wikis have their own revision control built-in, so

Most wikis are insane like that. I don't recommend mediawiki because
of it. For example, diyhpl.us/wiki is a git-backed wiki if you want to
play around with that.

> 4) Revision control -- git is certainly a lead contender but not
> the only contender.

Wordpress doesn't offer that.

> 5) Bug database -- needs to be integrated with source control,
> wiki, and mailing lists, but also have its own face. This is
> probably the most challenging part of the web design.

Why not use github issues? (Actually, a few years ago I would have
recommended bugseverywhere, except development stopped, and for some
reason nobody other than me cares about tracking issues inside your
version control repository.)

> The problem with that approach is "lock-in"; if you change a
> component, all the extant URLs that point at pages generated
> by that component no longer work, because the new component
> is unlikely to generate the same set of URLs. Sometimes,

That's not a problem because of server-side URL rewriting. Just make
sure you document the before/after URLs when you are making big
changes. But your users will hate you if they have to memorize a new
set of URLs or URL formats. (Google Groups, I'm looking at you.)

> I favor the straightforward and simple; "serial ID tags"
> for every chunk of content (or at least every URL target) on
> the whole site. Every single update to anything would get
> a unique serial number from a central counter, and these

I disagree with this approach strongly because it makes it harder for
me to memorize URLs.

> These we would use to build redirection tables. For
> every URL, we'd record the serial number of the document
> it points to. Then when a new component takes over some
> role, after all the "content migration" that doesn't respect
> any integration with other components, we can find the URLs

These are trivial issues solved by modern web frameworks. You
shouldn't be concerned with this _at all_.

> There's a QA problem with build plans and schematics
> that's familiar from cookbooks, but which we don't see with
> conventional computer software. Finding out whether a build
> plan or recipe actually works can't easily be automated.

I have some code in http://diyhpl.us/cgit/skdb or
https://github.com/kanzure/skdb in that direction, but I agree it
remains largely unsolved.

> You can't easily write a test suite, nor do automated
> nightly builds to see if something broke a dependency.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it anyway.

[Ray Dillinger]

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On 09/23/2012 10:19 AM, Bryan Bishop wrote:

- -quotation levels adjusted-

>> On Sat, Sep 22, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Ray Dillinger wrote:

>> Please mention a specific reason for your objection. I might
>> agree heartily with you, if only I knew what the problems were.

> Okay. Wordpress is notorious in the web development community for
> its security blunders.

See, that? That's a good reason. Now that I have learned that, I'm
looking for an alternative.

>> may eventually result in a software fork. But in the absence of
>> a better alternative, I don't see a reason to not start with the
>> available software off the shelf.

> Are you judging "better" just by the sheer number of bloggers that
> use wordpress, versus the <500 people who run git-backed hardware
> hosting sites?

Is git, in fact, a better alternative to wordpress? I know it as
a revision-control tool only; it could be applied to revisions of
a website, but it seems like it would take a lot more "glue" than
that to duplicate what I see as the basic desired functionality
for this role - A bloggish posting, followed by open discussion,
per page, joined to older/newer postings in the "same channel" or
from the "same source" by newer/older links.

>> 0) A channel for news, announcements, and project updates, with
>> backchannels for discussion-of and feedback-to. This is the role
>> I'd been considering WordPress a good fit for. Each

> Having a place to post RSS isn't a big issue these days. If you
> were to release a website with just this feature, it wouldn't have
> much of anything to do with hardware.

Again, the basic functionality desired for this role isn't anything
to do with hardware. It's a post plus open discussion per page, of
information relating to projects, policy, admin, etc. If RSS is
dog-easy now, I won't mention it much, but it's important that
people should be able to subscribe and get updates on particular
issues.

>> 1) Mailing lists with webby archives, and a web-form that allows

> I agree mailing lists are nice things.

>> 2) Open Discussion Forums. For support and user discussion

> What is the difference to a mailing list?

Mailing lists are for members and seek the members out via email
when discussions are happening. They're for discussions and
decisions that affect many projects, and for members who have a
need to be there because they are responsible for or directly
affected by decisions or policies made by that mailing list.
Open discussion forums are open (to everybody, not just members),
allow the creation of new threads of discussion by anybody, and
if you ignore their webpage they don't exist for you.

For example, if you wanted to join a discussion on, say, how to
express materials requirements in build plans, or the basic
architecture of $NEXTVERSION 3d printer, or some other standard
that potentially affects a lot of projects down the line, I
would expect you to be participating on a mailing list and
cooperating with other people who would eventually hammer out a
draft standard and post it on a "bloggish" page - ie, a serial
page associated with the group or person doing the work - and
have people comment on and react to it in the comments section
below. You'd be participating in any revisions to that standard
for as long as you remained a part of that working group or
responsible for that particular project, and people interested
in that standard or that project would be "subscribed" to that
channel.

If you wanted to ask how to procure a supply of M4 nuts in
Cincinnati, or whether anybody else is having this weird problem
with vibration in their heated bed, or a calibration problem you
were having with a new "touch" tool for deriving a 3d model from
an existing object mounted on your print bed, etc, I'd expect you
to go to the forum page, look for a relevant discussion, and
start one if it doesn't exist already. If other people show up
and browse the topic lists or search and find your topic, they
will discuss it with you - but there's not a set of members who
will automatically see it just because you posted it, and there's
not an expectation that it affects many other projects yet to be.

Also, on a mailing list, if anybody posted spam I'd expect to
just dump that member like a rock and consider the problem solved,
since it would (I would MAKE it) take noticeable human effort
and time, as well as a valid email account, to set up a login.
On a web forum, logins are a dime a dozen, maybe subject to
an email exchange or two and CAPTCHA or something similarly weak,
and de-spamming would therefore be an ongoing chore.

>> 3) A wiki-ish repository of information. I imagine each project

> How about just put the wiki in a repository, like all the other
> sane version-controlled wikis? ikiwiki comes to mind, but github
> wiki pages are also in a repository. Or, erm, at least, bitbucket's
> wikis are.

I haven't administered wikis before - I had always more or less
assumed that their native version control was accomplished via
a revision-control system somewhere behind them anyway. As I
said before, that's a completely natural integration and leveraging
it for build plan projects is reasonable. Sorry if I gave the
impression that I wanted to have multiple revision control systems
working on the site - I don't need that additional headache.

>> 4) Revision control -- git is certainly a lead contender but not
>> the only contender.

> Wordpress doesn't offer that.

Uh, what? Unless I'm missing something fundamental here, which is
certainly possible given that I'm inexperienced as a web admin,
that's like saying there aren't any Fords with concrete sidewalks and
clay tile roofs. I didn't expect the revision control to have
anything to do with the blogging software, and anyway what would
be the advantage if it did? And, um, are there "Chevys" with concrete
sidewalks and clay tile roofs, and if so what do they use them for?

>> 5) Bug database -- needs to be integrated with source control,
>> wiki, and mailing lists, but also have its own face. This is
>> probably the most challenging part of the web design.

> Why not use github issues? (Actually, a few years ago I would have
> recommended bugseverywhere, except development stopped, and for
> some reason nobody other than me cares about tracking issues inside
> your version control repository.)

I certainly haven't proposed any reasons to not use github issues.
Does it integrate well with source control, etc?

>> The problem with that approach is "lock-in"; if you change a
>> component, all the extant URLs that point at pages generated by
>> that component no longer work, because the new component is
>> unlikely to generate the same set of URLs.

> That's not a problem because of server-side URL rewriting. Just
> make sure you document the before/after URLs when you are making
> big changes.

Ah, good, it looks like a standard approach to this has evolved
while I was looking elsewhere. Thanks for mentioning it! Now I
need to learn how to use it. :-)

Bear
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[Cassandra Brockett]

On Saturday, September 22, 2012 5:15:39 PM UTC-7, Ray Dillinger wrote:

Wednesday evenings are difficult for me as I work midnight to 8AM
during the week, but I will make an effort to be there.

Well, I'll be there pretty much up until 11:30pm-ish most likely, please do drop by if you can, if not, happy to arrange another time at MP or SJ, I don't get up to SF all that much (I don't like the city, too crowded for me).

 

What I would really like to do, then, is sit next to your elbow and
take notes while you go through the process of setting it up.  But
me taking notes and asking questions may slow the whole thing down by
a factor of 2 or so.  I can bring a machine with preinstalled software
to configure.

 

I have some static IP addresses at home; I've set up webservers, mail
servers, etc, in the past but I've never administered content on
colocated servers. We could provide some redundancy between your colo
and my static uplink by having ".com" hosted in one place and ".org"
hosted from the other.

If we hosted stuff at the colo, it'd be a VM on the systems there.  It's best with something like this to do at least dev and production anyhow (stage is good, but more of something to get going after the site gets up and running)...  So, given that, to be done right for the production would take a lot of sitting down and doing doco anyhow (which is something I actually do rather well, at least, so I'm told).

 

I have decent tech skills, but I haven't done much "web" - I'm a
programmer who mostly hacks compilers, development tools, and natural
language systems rather than websites.

Okay, I normally toolsmith alongside my regular sysadmin stuff, but I also DB and run production user-facing systems as regular work.  Unfortunately this often involves dealing with helping marketing people get websites together and stuff like that.

We'd be better off figuring out what we want as the core things first, and from there adding in the extra features.

From what I can see, here's the feature "list"

1. Blog System
2. Wiki
3. Mailing List Server
4. Forums
5. Revision Control System with Bug Management System (Yep, these are two items, not seperate, they might be seperate software, but no point implementing one without the other).

Might I also suggest one other item?  I saw it mentioned an open-source hardware agregator, that way we could drop 5 for now, and just include everything as links off the wiki as an initial run through and get things going, and then work on making a reasonable system to do real aggregation, then we could snap in the revision system (ugh, almost said RCS... anyone old enough to have actually used that, HI!  *waves*)

If we ignore item 5, we could have something up in a few hours.