[ Summary: Placenet is likely to donate a machine to the GNU project, hosted in Paris. One declared purpose of this machine is to keep an rsync mirror of Savannah. This may happen this summer. No action required on our part before Placenet sends a warning that the machine is ready.
The primary contact is Frederic Cella (frederic@placenet.org) for Placenet and Guillaume Morin for GNU (gmorin@gnu.org). I act as a backup for Guillaume, if needs be. ]
Hi,
I just talked to Frederic Cella (frederic@placenet.org). He proposes that Placenet donates a machine to the GNU project and hosts it. I explained him what it means for a machine to be part of the GNU project (technically, philosophically and socially). The machine will be owned by placenet.
On the technical side, it will be installed with a stable Debian and Frederic will provide access to the terminal controller to access the EMP port of the machine. From this point the GNU volunteers are welcome to take over. He proposes that the machine uses the file server for storage and that Placenet takes care of the backups. The communication between the storage and the machine uses coda. Frederic agrees that if nobody in the GNU volunteers feel comfortable with coda, the machine can be installed stand-alone with 40Gb of disk. I know nothing about coda, maybe someone else does.
On the philosophical side, the donation of this machine to the GNU project is done because Frederic is a long time defender of the Free Software movement and a friend of rms. This makes me confident on the fact that once the machine is in place we can count on the support of Frederic. Another important aspect that motivates Frederic decision is to mirror Savannah on a daily basis outside the US, just in case the US government decides to take over. Although it is an unlikely event, I see this as a good motive. A wish of Frederic is that among other things this machine keeps an up-to-date mirror of the Savannah machine (rsync of all file systems will do the job). If no volunteer of the GNU project is willing to take the task, a technical guy from placenet is likely to postulate for membership in the GNU project to take care of this aspect. For various reasons too long to explain here, Placenet and Gitoyen (the ISP Placenet builds with other non-profit associations and companies in Paris and who is likely to open its doors in the weeks to come) is a political project before being a technical project.
On the social side Frederic understands that donating a machine to the GNU project only works if the GNU volunteers are willing to accept it and use it. This acceptance is determined by two factors. The GNU volunteers must believe that the machine will not vanish in 6 month time and in that respect the long time support of Frederic to Free Software is a good guarantee to me. Maybe other GNU volunteers who happen to know Frederic can speak up on this subject. Additionally full technical control must be available and a dedicated machine, with access to the EMP port gives this. Finally Placenet must be trusted to provide a reliable network access and hosting conditions that do not imply power failure every week. There is no guarantee for this, experience will give the answer.
At that point no action is required from us. Frederic will get back to us when he is about to install the machine. This may happen this summer. If someone see a problem, please express yourself.
Cheers,