[SAC] Direction, budgeting, and resources

[Frank Warmerdam]

Howard Butler wrote:
> I think we should back up and discuss some of the assertions I made in 
> my email.  First, are we at any sort of exhaustion point for volunteer 
> resources?

Howard,

I think there are limits with regard to volunteers and making some kinds
of progress.  I and others hesitate to step forward to take on new
responsibilities - especially stuff that seems quite technically challenging.

Here I'm thinking of resolving our LDAP problems, and hooking more services
up to it. Also a few other tough problems on osgeo1 that seem hard to solve
partly because we have a small pool of folks with "primary administrator"
access.

I'm also concerned that our approach to backup and recovery on osgeo1
services are lackadasical.  We are lucky our ability to recover has not
been tested, but I suspect if they were, we would discover quite a few
holes in our backup strategy.

 > Are SAC tickets not picked up because of an unclear
> responsibility chain, or because of the labor required to complete 
> tasks.  

A bit of both, but also some SAC tickets are basically asking for new
services and there just isn't any volunteer who wants to do it.  In
cases like this I wish we had a better process of getting back to the
originator to indicate it is unlikely anything will happen.

 > If we were to mix in paid or in-kind resources into SAC for
> completing some long-standing tasks, do you see it as being a net 
> benefit?  Would it hurt SAC's prospects for long-term sustainability?

I would like to see some paid system administration time available as
long as it isn't too expensive.  I would like to see this used to roll
out some new services, review existing security and perhaps lift some
existing routine work off volunteers (I really wouldn't mind someone
else being mailman-man!).

> Does SAC just need hard resources (bandwidth, CPU, disk) moving forward, 
> or should we attempt to procure soft resources (paid or in-kind 
> manpower) as well?  Which would be the priority?  Am I correct in 
> stating that we need more of either?  Are we happy with our current 
> situation, and do you feel that hosting, hardware, and administration 
> are sustainable long term?

I think there is a danger in getting hardware resources without a corresponding
plan or manpower to effect a plan.

Things I'd like to see SAC do:

  o Establish more and better resourced buildbot slaves - especially a
    SAC administered windows slave or two.

  o Get more stuff operating off our LDAP server.  At least the wiki, but
    also potentially "telascience blade" user accounts, and make it possible
    for services hosted elsewhere to use our LDAP for authentication by
    special arrangement.

  o Segregate the SVN+Trac services from the rest of our services, as they
    seem to be the source of performance problems that are debilitating to
    other services.

  o Drop our contract for osgeo2 as a cost saving measure (currently it is
    mainly hosting wiki.osgeo.org, and some backups).

I think our current hosting, hardware and administration are operating
adequately, but that we are not well prepared for disaster, and we are
having problems improving our services due to lack of hardware, expertise
and manpower.

PS. the mapguide folks are basically setting up their own build farm
because SAC wasn't able to offer them a reasonable home.  I think that's
a pity.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent