On 23/05/16 16:17, Paul Hänsch wrote: > On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 06:08:12PM +0100, amunizp wrote: >> That is exactly the reasoning for fsf using civicrm [1]. Other >> not-for-profits or charities also use it. They also did a >> crowdfunding for mediagoblin a couple of times. > > Hold on for or moment. > > We just handed administration of our _Wordpress_ installation over > to a volunteer team, because we could not keep up with the > maintenance. This is certainly not the time to discuss deployment > of another high maintenance software product. > > IT infrastructure includes Mail routing, DNS, server deployment, > virtualisation, documentation, just to name a few. We were able to > hand over administration of the blogs, because we put a great level > of trust into Florian and his team. Maintaining this service, even > on a distinct VServer, requires access to the login database, mail > domains, SSL ceritificates and possibly more. If we want to > encourage Fellows to run Services in the name of FSFE, we need to > find a strategie for dividing ressources and permissions > accordingly. Being able to distinguish only between absolutely > trusted access and no access at all, puts us system-hackers in a > bottle-neck position regarding any effort of Fellows to help us out > on the technical site. > > If we _were_ in a position to run Drupal/CiviCRM, would we then > replace our mailinglists with it? Would we let a single service > replace our wiki, our website, our user database, blogs, file > services? Having all this in one system, without possible division > of roles for anyone who maintains the web server behind it is, I > think, quite the opposite of what we are aiming at. Would we not go > the whole way to make said services subject to CiviCRM, then would > the remaining features aid us in handling our technical > infrastructure? > > To put this in context with Daniels questions: > > I do not put a priority on FSFEs infrastructure being easy to > replicate by other organisations.
How do other people feel about that point? FSFE's "About" page says the organization's mission is to empower users. Personally, I feel that setting an example that other organizations can replicate will help achieve that goal and doing things that other people can easily copy is a powerful form of leadership. > However I do care that it can be easily understood by people > joining any maintenance team. While an all-in-one service like > CiviCRM might serve the former purpose, it is detrimental to the > latter. Components are easy to understand and to maintain when they > interface little with other components, when they use well known > standards where they do interface (i.e. in contrast to shared > database tables and internal APIs), and when they are deployed with > little local modifications. Admittedly, running multiple services > requires more set up work than running one service. Hence it is > harder to replicate. This cost is set off by better being able to > share maintenance work, by better being able to change parts of the > setup, and by easyer maintenance through lack of interdependencies. > The initial cost of setup pays out fast and massively. > > I could not find material that gives explicit numbers or examples > of organisations, that are small, non-profit, and use a > volunteer-run CiviCRM inside volunteer-run infrastructure. To me it > is unclear from the website, to what degree organisations use > CiviCRM only as a hosted service. Because of CiviCRMs close > relation to core tasks like fund raising and member listing, I > imagine it hard to run as volunteer service, or to have modules on > top of it maintained by persons who are not core members of the > organisation running it. > I notice you only commented on CiviCRM, how do you feel about the other solutions I mentioned, ClearOS and TurnKey Linux? I'm not suggesting that any of these is a silver bullet, nonetheless, if people contribute effort to making bespoke solutions for FSFE then their work will only benefit FSFE. If they are willing to contribute their effort to a large project (any of those mentioned) then their work will be useful to other organizations who want to run free software too. Regards, Daniel _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
