Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 3:33 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: Actually when I talked to freenode staff, there were quite interested in this. They don't have so many servers and wikimedia is well known project with established technical infrastructure. Even if they needed root, they could use puppet to set up the system to their needs and there are many folks around, who would be happy to help them do that. If there were some technical resources we could offer them, it's definitely worth of asking. Being a donor of servers means, wikimedia project would be listed together with our logo on their donor page as a top donor and that would improve the overall look of our project which is heavily using their network. You still have to demonstrate how the technical community will deal with a 3 months 25 to 75 Mbps DDoS attack targetted to IRC facilities. It's the kind of attack waves who made 3 universities, one residential ISP and one dedicated servers provider (which is by the way one of the first in Europe, it's OVH) to leave UnderNet 10 years ago. I'm aware Freenode isn't currently the preferred attack playground but I'm not comfortable to excessively affect our network strength. To be an operator on one server is different to have to manage the issues at an upstream NOC level. -- Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson http://www.dereckson.be/ ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
In worst case our server can be delinked for that time. I believe that wikipedia is attacked way more often than IRC networks and we are able to resist that. (There are experts in staff, be sure) On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 8:35 AM, Sébastien Santoro dereck...@espace-win.org wrote: On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 3:33 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: Actually when I talked to freenode staff, there were quite interested in this. They don't have so many servers and wikimedia is well known project with established technical infrastructure. Even if they needed root, they could use puppet to set up the system to their needs and there are many folks around, who would be happy to help them do that. If there were some technical resources we could offer them, it's definitely worth of asking. Being a donor of servers means, wikimedia project would be listed together with our logo on their donor page as a top donor and that would improve the overall look of our project which is heavily using their network. You still have to demonstrate how the technical community will deal with a 3 months 25 to 75 Mbps DDoS attack targetted to IRC facilities. It's the kind of attack waves who made 3 universities, one residential ISP and one dedicated servers provider (which is by the way one of the first in Europe, it's OVH) to leave UnderNet 10 years ago. I'm aware Freenode isn't currently the preferred attack playground but I'm not comfortable to excessively affect our network strength. To be an operator on one server is different to have to manage the issues at an upstream NOC level. -- Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson http://www.dereckson.be/ ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
Also, giving up and leave the hackers win (despite they didn't even start attacking us) is not really brave solution :-) On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: In worst case our server can be delinked for that time. I believe that wikipedia is attacked way more often than IRC networks and we are able to resist that. (There are experts in staff, be sure) On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 8:35 AM, Sébastien Santoro dereck...@espace-win.org wrote: On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 3:33 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: Actually when I talked to freenode staff, there were quite interested in this. They don't have so many servers and wikimedia is well known project with established technical infrastructure. Even if they needed root, they could use puppet to set up the system to their needs and there are many folks around, who would be happy to help them do that. If there were some technical resources we could offer them, it's definitely worth of asking. Being a donor of servers means, wikimedia project would be listed together with our logo on their donor page as a top donor and that would improve the overall look of our project which is heavily using their network. You still have to demonstrate how the technical community will deal with a 3 months 25 to 75 Mbps DDoS attack targetted to IRC facilities. It's the kind of attack waves who made 3 universities, one residential ISP and one dedicated servers provider (which is by the way one of the first in Europe, it's OVH) to leave UnderNet 10 years ago. I'm aware Freenode isn't currently the preferred attack playground but I'm not comfortable to excessively affect our network strength. To be an operator on one server is different to have to manage the issues at an upstream NOC level. -- Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson http://www.dereckson.be/ ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: In worst case our server can be delinked for that time. I believe that wikipedia is attacked way more often than IRC networks and we are able to resist that. (There are experts in staff, be sure) Also, giving up and leave the hackers win (despite they didn't even start attacking us) is not really brave solution :-) I agree we can't leave the pirates and script kiddies win the IRC war, but I'm not comfortable with the hit run strategy. I had a dedicated hosting company and it required some weeks 10-15 hours at 2 people dedicated to contact the attacking providers, arrange throttling, adjust the QoS, it were very strained. Yes, they already attacked Freenode: http://blog.freenode.net/2009/12/december-15th-ddos/ We are currently experiencing heavy DDoS against several locations at which some of our servers are hosted. The attack is ongoing and cause a lot of disruption, both to users of the network and unfortunately to projects/companies/individuals whose infrastructure is hosted at the same locations as us. Our sponsors and our sponsors’ upstreams are working hard to try curb the attacks as best they can. -- Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson http://www.dereckson.be/ ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
This is not my strategy but worst case scenario. They attacked IRC providers, they will likely attack them again, just as they can attack wikipedia any time. That shouldn't be excuse to stop extending the infrastructure or cooperation with other similar projects. On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 9:08 AM, Sébastien Santoro dereck...@espace-win.org wrote: On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 8:59 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: In worst case our server can be delinked for that time. I believe that wikipedia is attacked way more often than IRC networks and we are able to resist that. (There are experts in staff, be sure) Also, giving up and leave the hackers win (despite they didn't even start attacking us) is not really brave solution :-) I agree we can't leave the pirates and script kiddies win the IRC war, but I'm not comfortable with the hit run strategy. I had a dedicated hosting company and it required some weeks 10-15 hours at 2 people dedicated to contact the attacking providers, arrange throttling, adjust the QoS, it were very strained. Yes, they already attacked Freenode: http://blog.freenode.net/2009/12/december-15th-ddos/ We are currently experiencing heavy DDoS against several locations at which some of our servers are hosted. The attack is ongoing and cause a lot of disruption, both to users of the network and unfortunately to projects/companies/individuals whose infrastructure is hosted at the same locations as us. Our sponsors and our sponsors’ upstreams are working hard to try curb the attacks as best they can. -- Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson http://www.dereckson.be/ ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 11:35 PM, Sébastien Santoro dereck...@espace-win.org wrote: On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 3:33 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: Actually when I talked to freenode staff, there were quite interested in this. They don't have so many servers and wikimedia is well known project with established technical infrastructure. Even if they needed root, they could use puppet to set up the system to their needs and there are many folks around, who would be happy to help them do that. If there were some technical resources we could offer them, it's definitely worth of asking. Being a donor of servers means, wikimedia project would be listed together with our logo on their donor page as a top donor and that would improve the overall look of our project which is heavily using their network. You still have to demonstrate how the technical community will deal with a 3 months 25 to 75 Mbps DDoS attack targetted to IRC facilities. While I am not speaking for server hardening, our network can handle an extra 75 Mbps without a problem. However, this is a moot point if the community decides we want to talk, we in Operations can talk with freenode operations people and see what is safely mutually possible. Leslie It's the kind of attack waves who made 3 universities, one residential ISP and one dedicated servers provider (which is by the way one of the first in Europe, it's OVH) to leave UnderNet 10 years ago. I'm aware Freenode isn't currently the preferred attack playground but I'm not comfortable to excessively affect our network strength. To be an operator on one server is different to have to manage the issues at an upstream NOC level. -- Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson http://www.dereckson.be/ ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l -- Leslie Carr Wikimedia Foundation AS 14907, 43821 http://as14907.peeringdb.com/ ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
On 22 June 2012 18:47, Leslie Carr lc...@wikimedia.org wrote: While I am not speaking for server hardening, our network can handle an extra 75 Mbps without a problem. However, this is a moot point if the community decides we want to talk, we in Operations can talk with freenode operations people and see what is safely mutually possible. The nuts'n'bolts of running an IRC server is not our strength. However, WMF has donated money to Freenode before because we use it so much. Would giving them money to use be a helpful substitute for providing a box and bandwidth? - d. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
The nuts'n'bolts of running an IRC server is not our strength. I can't say I have much of an opinion either way in this discussion right now, but I would like to point out that this need not be our strength. Didn't someone mention earlier that we would not have to run the server, but that Operations at Freenode would manage it. They just want the box and the bandwith. In fact, I believe it was mentioned that they don't even require root. Although, if they are to manage it, it might be best to give them that. Thank you, Derric Atzrott ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
Good morning, On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, One developer recently complained about some freenode policies, specifically that wiki projects (wikipedia etc has some kind of exception) are no longer allowed to be hosted on freenode network, which is supposed to host only opensource projects. It's fact that as the wikimedia project is becoming more large the freenode is getting less and less suitable. You have the right to say anything, you've the duty to prove it. Could you support your three claims: (i) only open source projects are allowed on Freenode (ii) Wikimedia has an exception (iii) Freenode can't scale with Wikimedia projects growth According http://freenode.net/policy.shtml, are accepted: Non-Software-Related Peer-Directed Project. Per the PDPC charter, channels which serve projects combining open, informal participation and broadly-licensed, widely-disseminated creative output are considered to be on-topic. If you believe your non-software project may meet the criteria for a non-software peer-directed project, please consult a staffer or email support at freenode dot net. (...) I would like to propose another idea, and that is, instead of leaving freenode, to improve the relations with the freenode staff and eventually ask them to change some of the restrictions to fit better to our needs Please provide us a list of issues we currently have and the solutions. I fear you're doing a bold move made under false assumptions. Our relations with the Freenode staff seems to be rather good and the current statu quo works well. On other hand we could offer them various services in return, for example the wikimedia foundation has made few donations to freenode in past. If we consider the amount of hardware resources we have, it shouldn't be problem to offer freenode for example a dedicated or virtual server running on our cluster, which could host one or more of their ircd servers (our technical / operation community is far larger than freenode's so there should be absolutely no problem setting this up and keeping it maintained). Do you have any idea how much maintenance requires an IRC server? Do you have any idea of the impact (DDoS flood for example) an IRC server have to a network? Do you have any idea of the skills, the time, the social contacts and the energy required to maintain an IRC server? Do you know how many corporates, universities linked to networks like UnderNet, EFnet, IRCNet and Dalnet decided to not fight anymore those battles and canceled their support? I know we're on Freenode, a quieter network, but still... these are experiences to take in account to avoid to find problems. of long term support to freenode network in return for their services they offer to wikimedia project and it could eventually improve the relations with freenode so they would allow to improve some of their policies, specifically: - The wiki-projects (which are often related to mediawiki software or developers, even some other companies / projects are affiliated with MW development) should be allowed to be hosted on freenode, so that the community of these projects shouldn't find it so hard to reach the technical support of mediawiki (right now they would have to be on multiple networks given that #mediawiki is hosted on freenode, but wiki projects in general are not allowed to be hosted there) Please give us two samples of wiki projects who wanted to be on Freenode but couldn't. Please back your claim with prove people from any wiki would want: (i) to be on IRC (ii) to have a regular channel (iii) to have this regular channel on the Freenode network (iv) don't already have it / be denied / etc. - There is a limit defined by freenode to have maximal number of 4 Group contacts, who are people dealing with cloaks and various staff related issues. The wikimedia project currently have 4 Group contacts, so it's quite impossible to enlarge this team. Right now it takes some time for cloak requests to be processed and in future this number of people could not be sufficient. Freenode should make it possible for large projects like wikimedia to have some better options. What the IRC Group think about that? - Technical channels have lot of services like nagios bots, these bots are getting often killed for flooding, because they need to send a lot of text in short time, it should be possible to define exceptions for these services to allow sending bigger amount of data in channels They're automatically killed or by ircops? If it's the first, we should configure them correctly, as it's an issue. For example, look the eggdrop source code.There are 3 messages queues, one quick processing virtually immediately, the serv as a regular rate and the help which is throttled to avoid flood. Those settings work since 1996. We could go read them, test them and recommend them as best practices. -- Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
Hi, thanks for your response! First of all, I am not the guy who complained regarding the fact wikis are not accepted, I am just proposing another idea, but here are answers: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:03 AM, Sébastien Santoro dereck...@espace-win.org wrote: Good morning, On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, One developer recently complained about some freenode policies, specifically that wiki projects (wikipedia etc has some kind of exception) are no longer allowed to be hosted on freenode network, which is supposed to host only opensource projects. It's fact that as the wikimedia project is becoming more large the freenode is getting less and less suitable. You have the right to say anything, you've the duty to prove it. Could you support your three claims: (i) only open source projects are allowed on Freenode (ii) Wikimedia has an exception (iii) Freenode can't scale with Wikimedia projects growth 1: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Hosts#See_also there is a reference 2: Wikipedia channels are allowed, the mere fact that others are not makes it an exception 3: I never said that According http://freenode.net/policy.shtml, are accepted: Non-Software-Related Peer-Directed Project. Per the PDPC charter, channels which serve projects combining open, informal participation and broadly-licensed, widely-disseminated creative output are considered to be on-topic. If you believe your non-software project may meet the criteria for a non-software peer-directed project, please consult a staffer or email support at freenode dot net. (...) I would like to propose another idea, and that is, instead of leaving freenode, to improve the relations with the freenode staff and eventually ask them to change some of the restrictions to fit better to our needs Please provide us a list of issues we currently have and the solutions. I fear you're doing a bold move made under false assumptions. Our relations with the Freenode staff seems to be rather good and the current statu quo works well. I already provided this list, just read either the https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Hosts#See_also or the previous e-mail On other hand we could offer them various services in return, for example the wikimedia foundation has made few donations to freenode in past. If we consider the amount of hardware resources we have, it shouldn't be problem to offer freenode for example a dedicated or virtual server running on our cluster, which could host one or more of their ircd servers (our technical / operation community is far larger than freenode's so there should be absolutely no problem setting this up and keeping it maintained). Do you have any idea how much maintenance requires an IRC server? Yes, I am an irc operator on one Do you have any idea of the impact (DDoS flood for example) an IRC server have to a network? Yes Do you have any idea of the skills, the time, the social contacts and the energy required to maintain an IRC server? Yes Do you know how many corporates, universities linked to networks like UnderNet, EFnet, IRCNet and Dalnet decided to not fight anymore those battles and canceled their support? No, neither I understand why you ask that I know we're on Freenode, a quieter network, but still... these are experiences to take in account to avoid to find problems. of long term support to freenode network in return for their services they offer to wikimedia project and it could eventually improve the relations with freenode so they would allow to improve some of their policies, specifically: - The wiki-projects (which are often related to mediawiki software or developers, even some other companies / projects are affiliated with MW development) should be allowed to be hosted on freenode, so that the community of these projects shouldn't find it so hard to reach the technical support of mediawiki (right now they would have to be on multiple networks given that #mediawiki is hosted on freenode, but wiki projects in general are not allowed to be hosted there) Please give us two samples of wiki projects who wanted to be on Freenode but couldn't. Again, I am not the guy complaining about this, I just come with another idea than proposed on wiki page, ask the guy who had troubles registering their project on freenode. Please back your claim with prove people from any wiki would want: (i) to be on IRC (ii) to have a regular channel (iii) to have this regular channel on the Freenode network (iv) don't already have it / be denied / etc. - There is a limit defined by freenode to have maximal number of 4 Group contacts, who are people dealing with cloaks and various staff related issues. The wikimedia project currently have 4 Group contacts, so it's quite impossible to enlarge this team. Right now it takes some time for cloak requests to be processed and in future this number of people could not be
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 09:35:56AM +0200, Petr Bena wrote: One developer recently complained about some freenode policies, specifically that wiki projects (wikipedia etc has some kind of exception) are no longer allowed to be hosted on freenode network, which is supposed to host only opensource projects. It's fact that as the wikimedia project is becoming more large the freenode is getting less and less suitable. Right now there is a page [1] where are discussed other options for IRC. One of the options is to leave freenode and set up own wikimedia IRC network, which has lot of benefits but also lot of issues (moving to another network is complicated given to number of channels and users). Setting up and properly maintaining an IRC network is extremely complicated. We really *really* shouldn't do that, esp. since there is no reason for us to do so, when there are other open networks around. Even if the situation with freenode doesn't work out (which I think it will), we could perhaps reach out to OFTC, an alternative IRC network where some free software projects have fled to (there was discussions in the past to merge freenode/OFTC but those proved to be unfruitful)a. Regards, Faidon ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
But I am not talking about creating a new network, but providing some of our resources to freenode. They would likely operate and manage it without assistance from wmf ops. On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Faidon Liambotis fai...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 09:35:56AM +0200, Petr Bena wrote: One developer recently complained about some freenode policies, specifically that wiki projects (wikipedia etc has some kind of exception) are no longer allowed to be hosted on freenode network, which is supposed to host only opensource projects. It's fact that as the wikimedia project is becoming more large the freenode is getting less and less suitable. Right now there is a page [1] where are discussed other options for IRC. One of the options is to leave freenode and set up own wikimedia IRC network, which has lot of benefits but also lot of issues (moving to another network is complicated given to number of channels and users). Setting up and properly maintaining an IRC network is extremely complicated. We really *really* shouldn't do that, esp. since there is no reason for us to do so, when there are other open networks around. Even if the situation with freenode doesn't work out (which I think it will), we could perhaps reach out to OFTC, an alternative IRC network where some free software projects have fled to (there was discussions in the past to merge freenode/OFTC but those proved to be unfruitful)a. Regards, Faidon ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
On other hand I disagree that maintaining an irc network is so complicated, given that we have so many volunteers who would eventually help with that. But staying on freenode would make it easier for us, that's true. On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Faidon Liambotis fai...@wikimedia.org wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 09:35:56AM +0200, Petr Bena wrote: One developer recently complained about some freenode policies, specifically that wiki projects (wikipedia etc has some kind of exception) are no longer allowed to be hosted on freenode network, which is supposed to host only opensource projects. It's fact that as the wikimedia project is becoming more large the freenode is getting less and less suitable. Right now there is a page [1] where are discussed other options for IRC. One of the options is to leave freenode and set up own wikimedia IRC network, which has lot of benefits but also lot of issues (moving to another network is complicated given to number of channels and users). Setting up and properly maintaining an IRC network is extremely complicated. We really *really* shouldn't do that, esp. since there is no reason for us to do so, when there are other open networks around. Even if the situation with freenode doesn't work out (which I think it will), we could perhaps reach out to OFTC, an alternative IRC network where some free software projects have fled to (there was discussions in the past to merge freenode/OFTC but those proved to be unfruitful)a. Regards, Faidon ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:08 PM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: But I am not talking about creating a new network, but providing some of our resources to freenode. They would likely operate and manage it without assistance from wmf ops. (Last I saw) Freenode wants full root access on the boxes, Something that ops more than likely won't want to do if its sitting on our networks. On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:11 PM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: On other hand I disagree that maintaining an irc network is so complicated, given that we have so many volunteers who would eventually help with that. But staying on freenode would make it easier for us, that's true. One of the reason the ops (Tim S. especially) like our current IRC setup is because its turn on and forget about it for a few years, That would more than likely not be if the case if we started opening up for people to talk on it and etc, where as we currently have a fully functioning and fine system operating system (which no one has really given any reasons against really, apart from the group contacts thing, which i see as a non issue at current). ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
How many users does wikimedia's channels represent ? It becomes more complicated to manage an IRC Network when it's necessary to multiply servers but it's not Le 21 juin 2012 à 14:24, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com a écrit : On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:08 PM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: But I am not talking about creating a new network, but providing some of our resources to freenode. They would likely operate and manage it without assistance from wmf ops. (Last I saw) Freenode wants full root access on the boxes, Something that ops more than likely won't want to do if its sitting on our networks. On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:11 PM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: On other hand I disagree that maintaining an irc network is so complicated, given that we have so many volunteers who would eventually help with that. But staying on freenode would make it easier for us, that's true. One of the reason the ops (Tim S. especially) like our current IRC setup is because its turn on and forget about it for a few years, That would more than likely not be if the case if we started opening up for people to talk on it and etc, where as we currently have a fully functioning and fine system operating system (which no one has really given any reasons against really, apart from the group contacts thing, which i see as a non issue at current). ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
Petr Bena wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:03 AM, Sébastien Santoro dereck...@espace-win.org wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: One developer recently complained about some freenode policies, specifically that wiki projects (wikipedia etc has some kind of exception) are no longer allowed to be hosted on freenode network, which is supposed to host only opensource projects. It's fact that as the wikimedia project is becoming more large the freenode is getting less and less suitable. You have the right to say anything, you've the duty to prove it. Could you support your three claims: (i) only open source projects are allowed on Freenode (ii) Wikimedia has an exception (iii) Freenode can't scale with Wikimedia projects growth 1: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Hosts#See_also there is a reference 2: Wikipedia channels are allowed, the mere fact that others are not makes it an exception 3: I never said that Regarding that Meta-Wiki link, you're referencing a footnote that reads: --- Recent rejection email sent to a wiki project: Whilst I'm sure that your project has many admirable goals, it does not appear to be centric to the concepts of free software, and so is not topical for our network. We are imposing stricter criteria on new project registrations lately due to some other registered groups having to be recinded. With this in mind, I'm afraid we will need to reject this grf, and if you wish to use freenode for your IRC channel, suggest that you take the ## channel instead. --- This may be true, but even if so, I don't think it's really relevant. As I understand it, freenode has no issue hosting Wikimedia channels (and actively encourages it, even). Back when Rob was alive, he offered Tim an o line to try to get _more_ of Wikimedia's channels (in particular, the RC feeds that live on irc.wikimedia.org) on freenode. This particular discussion (regarding using irc.wikimedia.org for chat) has come up a few times and isn't really worth re-hashing, I don't think. MZMcBride ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
Sorry, typing error. Suite inline. Le 21 juin 2012 à 14:41, Emeric Vallespi emeric.valle...@gmail.com a écrit : How many users does wikimedia's channels represent ? It becomes more complicated to manage an IRC Network when it's necessary to multiply servers however it's not very complicated but resource and time intensive. -- Emeric Le 21 juin 2012 à 14:24, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com a écrit : On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:08 PM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: But I am not talking about creating a new network, but providing some of our resources to freenode. They would likely operate and manage it without assistance from wmf ops. (Last I saw) Freenode wants full root access on the boxes, Something that ops more than likely won't want to do if its sitting on our networks. On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:11 PM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: On other hand I disagree that maintaining an irc network is so complicated, given that we have so many volunteers who would eventually help with that. But staying on freenode would make it easier for us, that's true. One of the reason the ops (Tim S. especially) like our current IRC setup is because its turn on and forget about it for a few years, That would more than likely not be if the case if we started opening up for people to talk on it and etc, where as we currently have a fully functioning and fine system operating system (which no one has really given any reasons against really, apart from the group contacts thing, which i see as a non issue at current). ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
I wasn't talking about wikimedia channels but wiki projects (non wikimedia) in relation with recent complaint from someone else (mediawiki dev who wanted to open a channel for his wiki on freenode) On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 2:55 PM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Petr Bena wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:03 AM, Sébastien Santoro dereck...@espace-win.org wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: One developer recently complained about some freenode policies, specifically that wiki projects (wikipedia etc has some kind of exception) are no longer allowed to be hosted on freenode network, which is supposed to host only opensource projects. It's fact that as the wikimedia project is becoming more large the freenode is getting less and less suitable. You have the right to say anything, you've the duty to prove it. Could you support your three claims: (i) only open source projects are allowed on Freenode (ii) Wikimedia has an exception (iii) Freenode can't scale with Wikimedia projects growth 1: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Hosts#See_also there is a reference 2: Wikipedia channels are allowed, the mere fact that others are not makes it an exception 3: I never said that Regarding that Meta-Wiki link, you're referencing a footnote that reads: --- Recent rejection email sent to a wiki project: Whilst I'm sure that your project has many admirable goals, it does not appear to be centric to the concepts of free software, and so is not topical for our network. We are imposing stricter criteria on new project registrations lately due to some other registered groups having to be recinded. With this in mind, I'm afraid we will need to reject this grf, and if you wish to use freenode for your IRC channel, suggest that you take the ## channel instead. --- This may be true, but even if so, I don't think it's really relevant. As I understand it, freenode has no issue hosting Wikimedia channels (and actively encourages it, even). Back when Rob was alive, he offered Tim an o line to try to get _more_ of Wikimedia's channels (in particular, the RC feeds that live on irc.wikimedia.org) on freenode. This particular discussion (regarding using irc.wikimedia.org for chat) has come up a few times and isn't really worth re-hashing, I don't think. MZMcBride ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
Definitely it would be a bad idea to merge RC feed irc with some irc for people. If there was any new network it would be probably configured from scratch and unrelated to ratircd RC feed run on. Anyway I don't think that would happen. This isn't even discussion about that. We are discussing option to donate server to freenode here :-) On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 2:24 PM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:08 PM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: But I am not talking about creating a new network, but providing some of our resources to freenode. They would likely operate and manage it without assistance from wmf ops. (Last I saw) Freenode wants full root access on the boxes, Something that ops more than likely won't want to do if its sitting on our networks. On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:11 PM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: On other hand I disagree that maintaining an irc network is so complicated, given that we have so many volunteers who would eventually help with that. But staying on freenode would make it easier for us, that's true. One of the reason the ops (Tim S. especially) like our current IRC setup is because its turn on and forget about it for a few years, That would more than likely not be if the case if we started opening up for people to talk on it and etc, where as we currently have a fully functioning and fine system operating system (which no one has really given any reasons against really, apart from the group contacts thing, which i see as a non issue at current). ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
Obviously some developers do feel that it's worth discussing. Not sure that we need to stop them (Lord knows we discuss other topics to great lengths). However I invite you to sit this one out if you disagree. Just don't cut others off in the process. As a good steward of the wiki community I think we as Wikimedia should care if Freenode no longer supports wikis. Before I posted the page on meta there was discussion of a mtg during unconference at Wikimania. That was because of bot issues - which wm does care about - the wiki rejections was an additional catalyst. I'm waiting for confirmation on if they are indeed no longer accepting wikis or if there was just confusion with some apps. Although I'm hearing others are having problems as well. Also, my understanding is they don't see wikimedia channels as an exception but rather allowed because of MediaWiki being wm's qualifying open source software project. So our status as an exception depends on if you're in the camp that says MediaWiki is core to WM's work or not. I'm not sure it's in Freenodes best interest to grow to Wikimedia's needs or requests - but I'd be thrilled if they did and am optimistic they may if we ask and explain why. I'm also not yet sold on WM having their own as being the best solution - but I think it's worth discussing. Is there documentation of the last several discussions that apparently took place on this topic which folks can look over? Adding it to that wiki page may help this from coming up yet again. Either way - I fail to see how it hurts us to discuss this and considering talking to Freenode about our concerns. I can't imagine they'd be hostile to that conversation happening. -Greg Sent from my iPhone. Apologies for any typos. A more detailed response may be sent later. On Jun 21, 2012, at 8:55 AM, MZMcBride z...@mzmcbride.com wrote: Petr Bena wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:03 AM, Sébastien Santoro dereck...@espace-win.org wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: One developer recently complained about some freenode policies, specifically that wiki projects (wikipedia etc has some kind of exception) are no longer allowed to be hosted on freenode network, which is supposed to host only opensource projects. It's fact that as the wikimedia project is becoming more large the freenode is getting less and less suitable. You have the right to say anything, you've the duty to prove it. Could you support your three claims: (i) only open source projects are allowed on Freenode (ii) Wikimedia has an exception (iii) Freenode can't scale with Wikimedia projects growth 1: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC/Hosts#See_also there is a reference 2: Wikipedia channels are allowed, the mere fact that others are not makes it an exception 3: I never said that Regarding that Meta-Wiki link, you're referencing a footnote that reads: --- Recent rejection email sent to a wiki project: Whilst I'm sure that your project has many admirable goals, it does not appear to be centric to the concepts of free software, and so is not topical for our network. We are imposing stricter criteria on new project registrations lately due to some other registered groups having to be recinded. With this in mind, I'm afraid we will need to reject this grf, and if you wish to use freenode for your IRC channel, suggest that you take the ## channel instead. --- This may be true, but even if so, I don't think it's really relevant. As I understand it, freenode has no issue hosting Wikimedia channels (and actively encourages it, even). Back when Rob was alive, he offered Tim an o line to try to get _more_ of Wikimedia's channels (in particular, the RC feeds that live on irc.wikimedia.org) on freenode. This particular discussion (regarding using irc.wikimedia.org for chat) has come up a few times and isn't really worth re-hashing, I don't think. MZMcBride ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
Is anyone from Freenode on this list or able to respond? I feel like they'd be open to the conversation and hearing general thoughts from a designated group even before we know what carrot we'll offer. If any requests are a non-starter then it may not matter if we can offer resources or not. I think investigating networks more receptive both to our bot needs and accepting our partner wikis. -Greg Sent from my iPhone. Apologies for any typos. A more detailed response may be sent later. On Jun 21, 2012, at 9:26 AM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: Definitely it would be a bad idea to merge RC feed irc with some irc for people. If there was any new network it would be probably configured from scratch and unrelated to ratircd RC feed run on. Anyway I don't think that would happen. This isn't even discussion about that. We are discussing option to donate server to freenode here :-) On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 2:24 PM, K. Peachey p858sn...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:08 PM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: But I am not talking about creating a new network, but providing some of our resources to freenode. They would likely operate and manage it without assistance from wmf ops. (Last I saw) Freenode wants full root access on the boxes, Something that ops more than likely won't want to do if its sitting on our networks. On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 10:11 PM, Petr Bena benap...@gmail.com wrote: On other hand I disagree that maintaining an irc network is so complicated, given that we have so many volunteers who would eventually help with that. But staying on freenode would make it easier for us, that's true. One of the reason the ops (Tim S. especially) like our current IRC setup is because its turn on and forget about it for a few years, That would more than likely not be if the case if we started opening up for people to talk on it and etc, where as we currently have a fully functioning and fine system operating system (which no one has really given any reasons against really, apart from the group contacts thing, which i see as a non issue at current). ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 3:07 PM, Mr. Gregory Varnum gregory.var...@gmail.com wrote: Is anyone from Freenode on this list or able to respond? I feel like they'd be open to the conversation and hearing general thoughts from a designated group even before we know what carrot we'll offer. If any requests are a non-starter then it may not matter if we can offer resources or not. I think investigating networks more receptive both to our bot needs and accepting our partner wikis. Also, I think there's some larger implications to such a decision and wikitech-l isn't really the forum for that. Perhaps meta or foundation-l would be more appropriate. wikitech-l only would need to be involved once a decisions's been made and there's technical details to work out. -Chad ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
Good point. There's a page on meta already / might be helpful for folks to post there. -Greg Sent from my iPhone. Apologies for any typos. A more detailed response may be sent later. On Jun 21, 2012, at 3:12 PM, Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 3:07 PM, Mr. Gregory Varnum gregory.var...@gmail.com wrote: Is anyone from Freenode on this list or able to respond? I feel like they'd be open to the conversation and hearing general thoughts from a designated group even before we know what carrot we'll offer. If any requests are a non-starter then it may not matter if we can offer resources or not. I think investigating networks more receptive both to our bot needs and accepting our partner wikis. Also, I think there's some larger implications to such a decision and wikitech-l isn't really the forum for that. Perhaps meta or foundation-l would be more appropriate. wikitech-l only would need to be involved once a decisions's been made and there's technical details to work out. -Chad ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:47 PM, Mr. Gregory Varnum gregory.var...@gmail.com wrote: Is anyone from Freenode on this list or able to respond? I feel like they'd be open to the conversation and hearing general thoughts from a designated group even before we know what carrot we'll offer. If any requests are a non-starter then it may not matter if we can offer resources or not. I think investigating networks more receptive both to our bot needs and accepting our partner wikis. I don't understand why the wikiqueer community couldn't have its channel while there are already communities channels like #gaygeeks and #gaygeeks-fr. Were it a channel problem (ie you can't have your channel on our network) or a group registration issue (ie you can't have a group, with cloaks)? -- Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson http://www.dereckson.be/ ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
Okay - just had a long chat with some staffers in #Freenode. Here's what I've come away with.. Essentially folks are right that this policy is very much in flux. Which leads me to believe that some nudging from Wikimedia would be well timed. They have agreed to reconsider WikiQueer's app - but that whole process has been shut down while they review this policy - so that could be a few months. Personally I take that as a good sign. I think they're just not really clear how wiki communities work - so are not sure which are within their scope and which are not. There is also a lot of internal debate over what their founding documents mean. Some say they include open-content projects and other say that was meant to mean open-source software only. They were generally uninformed and unaware of how wikis operate - and were surprised that there were Wikipedia like wikis beyond the Wikimedia umbrella. Which implies to me a basic cultural misunderstanding that could be addressed. I'd suggest we pursue the initial idea from Petr as a good first step. We should be good stewards and outreach to their staff about our bot and tech related concerns - offer some thoughts on if or how wikis fit into Freenode's mission - and find out what resources they're in need of. I'm not sure if that should come from a WMF staffer, one of the existing FN contacts for WM, a coalition of the willing, an owl with a note, or.. -greg On 21 Jun, 2012, at 5:04 PM, Sébastien Santoro dereck...@espace-win.org wrote: On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:47 PM, Mr. Gregory Varnum gregory.var...@gmail.com wrote: Is anyone from Freenode on this list or able to respond? I feel like they'd be open to the conversation and hearing general thoughts from a designated group even before we know what carrot we'll offer. If any requests are a non-starter then it may not matter if we can offer resources or not. I think investigating networks more receptive both to our bot needs and accepting our partner wikis. I don't understand why the wikiqueer community couldn't have its channel while there are already communities channels like #gaygeeks and #gaygeeks-fr. Were it a channel problem (ie you can't have your channel on our network) or a group registration issue (ie you can't have a group, with cloaks)? -- Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson http://www.dereckson.be/ ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
Faidon wrote: Setting up and properly maintaining an IRC network is extremely complicated. We really *really* shouldn't do that, esp. since there is no reason for us to do so, when there are other open networks around. freenode servers are hosted, not maintained. Which means, they want the server (and its bandwidth), not that the hoster maintains the irc network. On 21/06/12 14:24, K. Peachey wrote: (Last I saw) Freenode wants full root access on the boxes, Something that ops more than likely won't want to do if its sitting on our networks. Not exactly, they would like it, but it's not a requirement. Where possible we look for dedicated machines with root access, however, we will consider different set-ups too. http://freenode.net/hosting_ircd.shtml The requisites are pretty basic, and seem easy to fulfill. The only complexity would come because ops would probably want to isolate that server from the rest of the network. The rest is just donating hardware and bandwidth. Which given by the service provided by freenode to the wikimedia community, seems justified. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Relations with freenode and wikimedia
Actually when I talked to freenode staff, there were quite interested in this. They don't have so many servers and wikimedia is well known project with established technical infrastructure. Even if they needed root, they could use puppet to set up the system to their needs and there are many folks around, who would be happy to help them do that. If there were some technical resources we could offer them, it's definitely worth of asking. Being a donor of servers means, wikimedia project would be listed together with our logo on their donor page as a top donor and that would improve the overall look of our project which is heavily using their network. On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 1:15 AM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote: Faidon wrote: Setting up and properly maintaining an IRC network is extremely complicated. We really *really* shouldn't do that, esp. since there is no reason for us to do so, when there are other open networks around. freenode servers are hosted, not maintained. Which means, they want the server (and its bandwidth), not that the hoster maintains the irc network. On 21/06/12 14:24, K. Peachey wrote: (Last I saw) Freenode wants full root access on the boxes, Something that ops more than likely won't want to do if its sitting on our networks. Not exactly, they would like it, but it's not a requirement. Where possible we look for dedicated machines with root access, however, we will consider different set-ups too. http://freenode.net/hosting_ircd.shtml The requisites are pretty basic, and seem easy to fulfill. The only complexity would come because ops would probably want to isolate that server from the rest of the network. The rest is just donating hardware and bandwidth. Which given by the service provided by freenode to the wikimedia community, seems justified. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
