[Qgis-developer] Cloudflare for qgis.org sites

[Larry Shaffer]

Hi,

On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 1:55 AM, Alessandro Pasotti <apasotti at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2012/10/29 Larry Shaffer <larrys at dakotacarto.com>:
>> Hi,
>>
>> The recent downtime of qgis.org sites reminds me of several corporate
>> websites I've worked with that, due to design requirements, needed to
>> remain with older server software and code base. The older sites could
>> not handle the bot traffic, and needed extra up-front security and a
>> cdn system to remain viable as their traffic grew.
>>
>> I've been involved with Cloudflare.com shortly after its inception
>
>
> Hi,
>
> It sounds very very interesting but unfortunately they run closed
> source proprietary software, even if is SAAS I would stay away from
> that.

Alessandro,I don't understand what you mean 'unfortunately' here. If
their service is non-FOSS, what bearing does this have on the project?
I don't see how it would create any licensing issues, either.

The service they provide is a global internet utility, like the
proprietary software on much of Cisco's hardware, or storage solutions
like Amazon S3. While I fully understand the desire to be 100% FOSS,
I'm not sure users of the sites will care, if the sites stay up; or,
that a FOSS alternative can even approach what Cloudflare (or another
commercial solution) has built.

What's wrong with paying for (or possibly getting for free) a
proprietary product if it provides a solid solution on top of existing
infrastructure?

Larry

> Does anything similar exists in the FOSS world?
>
> BTW, yesterday I saw from "top" peaks of 6 to 12 load average,
> probably caused by a combination of C++ code compilation, dpkg
> packaging, a couple of bots indexing content and ruby/python web apps
> running, probably too much for a VPS, but the website has been running
> without major downtimes during the past 2 years.
>
> Let's see if we can do some further caching/optimization and if the
> renice of packaging has any effect. If the problem persists we must
> obviously find a solution.
>
> --
> Alessandro Pasotti
> w3:   www.itopen.it