Managing Our Domain [WAS: Re: [nairobilug/nairobilug.or.ke] Generating an RSS feed (Issue #200)]

[Munyoki Kilyungi]

[[[ Sorry for the repost. I forgot to send this
to the main mailing list ]]]

Hi all. This is a cross-post between GH and our
mailing list.

@Neville, mucho thanks for creating this issue.
That said ...

Neville <notifi...@github.com> aliandika:

> It would be nice to have an RSS feed for the website.
>
> `make publish` and `publish.conf` generate the RSS feed. IIUC, [the Github Action](https://github.com/nairobilug/nairobilug.or.ke/blob/e221c4403fa28d9b21e4a8c11bf2212a5007ad71/.github/workflows/updatewebsite.yml#L27) does not use the _publish_ config and thus the feed is not available.

... let's first work out the domain business
first. I suggest that you create a separate issue
for this.

> I also found old PRs that seem to add icons and links for the RSS feeds: https://github.com/nairobilug/nairobilug.or.ke/pull/17 and https://github.com/nairobilug/nairobilug.or.ke/pull/24.
>
> Since the website is down, I can't conclusively tell whether the feed is available.

I reckon this was solved. Eebrah has been
gracious enough to help out with the domain all
these years at his expense. Much thanks for this!
You are an OG \m/\m/. That said, for most of the
older generation members, the band-width to manage
some of the LUG stuff may be demanding and as a
consequence we've had several down-times this year
that have either gone (a) un-noticed or (b)
un-attended to. As a work-around, here's what I
propose:

- Let's work out a way to transfer the domain from
Eebrah to nairobilug[at]gmail[dot]com.
Currently, the domain IIUC is hosted on
eacdirectory; I don't know how easy it is to
make the transfer, but I bet it's do-able. With
regards to financing the domain renewal, I
wouldn't mind taking that responsibility. Any
one else interested can chip in.

- Document, probably in an authors/contribs.md or
some similar file, which maintainers have access
to what, and their gpg public keys. The most
relevant resources I can think of at this time
are: twitter a/c, and gmail a/c. We could
reduce the bus-factor in maintaining these a/c
and also breathe in some life in to them. On
this note, I would like to request access to the
gmail and twitter a/c if the core guys are
down with it. My gpg keys can be found in my
mail signature.

- Should ownership change hands, we could rotate
passwords for the relevant a/c.

- Set up a cheap monitor for the site.
UptimerRobot should work well.

Other ideas that have been proposed in the past:

- Set up a public ledger and host it somewhere.
Track all contribs there. HLedger works well.
It has a nice web-ui. This is not a low-hanging
fruit, so we can ignore this. Perhaps re-visit
this later.

What y'all think? How do we get the ball rolling?
All opinions are welcome.

PS: I've Cc'ed most of the folks who I recall
being really active in the LUG. If it's spammy,
please let me know, I'll remove you off the Cc in
future threads.

--
(Life is like a pencil that will surely run out,
but will leave the beautiful writing of life.)
(D4F09EB110177E03C28E2FE1F5BBAE1E0392253F
(hkp://keys.openpgp.org))

[Benson Muite]

Happy to help with domain. Most registrars will allow two people, one
owner and an administrator. There does need to be an owner that is a
legal entity.

Adding some information in the repo, and possibly also the site about
who does what is a good idea. Adding forwarding addresses on the domain
would also be great, for example w...@nairobilug.or.ke

[Munyoki Kilyungi]

Benson Muite <benson...@emailplus.org>
aliandika:

> Happy to help with domain. Most registrars will allow two people, one
> owner and an administrator.

TIL!

> There does need to be an owner that is a legal entity.

I reckon it's easier to just have a volunteer be
that legal entity.

> Adding some information in the repo, and possibly also the site about
> who does what is a good idea. Adding forwarding addresses on the domain
> would also be great, for example w...@nairobilug.or.ke

These are solid ideas.

I'll see who I can ping to get things rolling.

[Benson Muite]

On 11/21/22 11:21, Munyoki Kilyungi wrote:
> Benson Muite <benson...@emailplus.org>
> aliandika:
>
>> Happy to help with domain. Most registrars will allow two people, one
>> owner and an administrator.
>
> TIL!
>
>> There does need to be an owner that is a legal entity.
>
> I reckon it's easier to just have a volunteer be
> that legal entity.

Maybe registering within the next year is a good idea. Groups such as
Codeberg e.v. [1] set a good example. The structure allows
experimentation with different technologies.

However, being similar to[2] is also ok - at least the page loads quickly.

Eebrah - thanks for keeping the domain going. Let me know if you would
like an embroidered shirt with your GitHub avatar.

1)
https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg/#what-is-codeberg-e.v.%3F
2) https://gslug.org

[Munyoki Kilyungi]

Benson Muite <benson...@emailplus.org>
aliandika:

[...]

>> I reckon it's easier to just have a volunteer be
>> that legal entity.
> Maybe registering within the next year is a good idea. Groups such as
> Codeberg e.v. [1] set a good example. The structure allows
> experimentation with different technologies.

I really love:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

[...] This has led to the paradox that literally
millions of volunteers create, collect, and
maintain invaluable knowledge, documentation, and
software, to feed closed platforms driven by
commercial interests, whose program is neither
visible nor controllable from outside. Considering
the fate of formerly successful startups like
SourceForge, we need to break the circle and avoid
history repeating

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

This sounds good with me. But first things first,
we need to have our DNS issues resolved:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│ # $ curl -o - https://nairobilug.or.ke/
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│ echo curl: (6) Could not resolve host: nairobilug.or.ke
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Also, codeberg and ...

> However, being similar to[2] is also ok - at least the page loads quickly.

... this implies moving away from GitHub; or at
the very least having a mirror in GitHub, and the
main repo else (Srchut, codeberg, etc etc).
Unless there's a way of automating syncing between
the various mirrors, I don't think it's worth the
effort(?). Also, given that [IMHO] the
entry-level contributor has strongly associated
Git with GitHub, I would suggest that we stick
with GH for the time being. Over time, we could
move elsewhere to more "freedom-respecting"
platforms. On that regard, I strongly lean
towards SourceHut because it offers a nice
sweet-spot between Mailing Lists per repo and
having a UI for people who are not comfortable
with mail patches.

> Eebrah - thanks for keeping the domain going. Let me know if you would
> like an embroidered shirt with your GitHub avatar.
>
> 1)
> https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg/#what-is-codeberg-e.v.%3F
> 2) https://gslug.org

Thanks for the links!

[Benson Muite]

On 11/23/22 16:10, Munyoki Kilyungi wrote:
> Benson Muite <benson...@emailplus.org>
> aliandika:

>

> ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> │ # $ curl -o - https://nairobilug.or.ke/
> ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
> │ echo curl: (6) Could not resolve host: nairobilug.or.ke
> └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
>

If this is problematic, we can register something new.

> Also, codeberg and ...
>
>> However, being similar to[2] is also ok - at least the page loads quickly.
>
> ... this implies moving away from GitHub; or at
> the very least having a mirror in GitHub, and the

The aim is to enable innovation and collaboration around open source.
A repository is one thing. Hosting for a bot relaying messages between
different services. A bank account may also be helpful - domain cost is
one expense. Other interesting things include Voip solutions, game
servers etc.
Other examples LUG type sites:
https://www.mscc.mu/lugm/
https://lugm.org/
https://cyberstorm.mu/

[Munyoki Kilyungi]

Hi @Christine. I hope this isn't spammy to you;
but I reckon you would find this conversation
interesting. Some of the crux of it is figuring
out how to manage some of our Nairobi Linux Users
Group's resources. There's some interesting
conversations regarding first setting up some
financial thing-a-magic to handle server, domain
costs etc; and I thought that "Hyptis: Distributed
Finance" listed in Spritely Goblins would be a
good community project (in the long-tnerm). I
can't speak for the community on what they think,
but for one, some members here find distributed
systems interesting.

Benson Muite <benson...@emailplus.org>
aliandika:

> On 11/23/22 16:10, Munyoki Kilyungi wrote:
>> Benson Muite <benson...@emailplus.org>
>> aliandika:
>
>>
>> ┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
>> │ # $ curl -o - https://nairobilug.or.ke/
>> ├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
>> │ echo curl: (6) Could not resolve host: nairobilug.or.ke
>> └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
>>
> If this is problematic, we can register something new.

I agree. Though why register something new and we
can, in principle, have that domain? Over the
weekend, I'll try to hit Eebrah up and see if we
can have this sorted. Fingers crossed \m/\m/.

>> Also, codeberg and ...
>>
>>> However, being similar to[2] is also ok - at least the page loads quickly.
>>
>> ... this implies moving away from GitHub; or at
>> the very least having a mirror in GitHub, and the
>
> The aim is to enable innovation and collaboration around open source.

+1 for this. My question is: seems we've "lost"
velocity in a sense as a community. How would we
get things rolling? More so, in a way that makes
new Linux users not "feel intimidated", but
instead, inspire curiosity to "hack" and just
"have fun"?

> A repository is one thing. Hosting for a bot relaying messages between
> different services.

Yeah; this sounds like a cool project to
undertake. Hmmm, we really need a way to track
all these ideas. I'll think of some accessible
way to do this. Ideas are welcome. Speaking off,
I'm yet to update our guix channel wut! [This chat
just reminded me of that; man-dem needs to pull up
his socks!]

> A bank account may also be helpful - domain cost is

Perhaps use something like LiberaPay or something
similar: <https://liberapay.com/>. Even better
yet, Christine has a yet-to-be-implemented(?)
project called "Hyptis: Distributed Finance."
(<https://spritelyproject.org/>) If that's
something people are interested in, we could reach
out to her and see if she's game and make that a
community project? She's already made some really
significant progress with CapTP here:
<https://spritely.institute/goblins/>; and Hyptis
would be a possible fun community project(?).
What do y'all think?

> one expense. Other interesting things include Voip solutions, game
> servers etc.
> Other examples LUG type sites:
> https://www.mscc.mu/lugm/

I really like how these guys run things. Perhaps
we could borrow a thing or 2 from them?

> https://lugm.org/
> https://cyberstorm.mu/

These links are dope. Thanks for the share! I
reckon, once we have the website running, I'll do
more outreach-y activities [and probably be more
active on IRC if I'll have the band-width]?

>>> Eebrah - thanks for keeping the domain going. Let me know if you would
>>> like an embroidered shirt with your GitHub avatar.
>>>
>>> 1)
>>> https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg/#what-is-codeberg-e.v.%3F
>>> 2) https://gslug.org
>>
>> Thanks for the links!
>>
>