[Members] IM Observatory

[Peter Saint-Andre]

On 2/9/17 2:07 PM, Guus der Kinderen wrote:
> Isn't it pretty much unmaintained as-is?

Thijs and Tobias and I do a bit of work on it, but not as much as it 
deserves. For instance, I'm woefully behind on the queue of new servers.

> By moving it to the XSF, there
> at least is a bigger pool of people to draw maintainers from.

That was my thought, yes.

> I've read various complaints (from members) over the past year about
> "third party" services like these that were poorly maintained -
> supposedly, at least those members would pitch in if they had the
> opportunity / ability to do so?

Although I've traditionally been opposed to centralizing everything 
within the XSF (we *do* have a federated communications network, after 
all!), the IM Observatory seems like a good thing for the XSF to run.

As to other "third party services", I'm not sure what people have in 
mind and I think we'd need to look at those on a case-by-case basis.

Peter

>
> On 9 February 2017 at 21:59, Kevin Smith <kevin.smith at isode.com
> <mailto:kevin.smith at isode.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 9 Feb 2017, at 20:27, Guus der Kinderen
>     <guus.der.kinderen at gmail.com <mailto:guus.der.kinderen at gmail.com>>
>     wrote:
>     > What are the reasons for the XSF not providing for services like these?
>
>     My concern with these things is not so much that the XSF shouldn’t
>     do them, but in terms of volunteers to work on them. It’s too easy
>     for us to grab something excitedly, then for it to be silently
>     abandoned for other people to pick up the pieces. I’ve always been
>     keen that the iteam doesn’t end up fighting fires because stuff
>     needs doing and it’s been abandoned.
>
>     That said, the observatory *is* an interesting thing for the XSF to
>     host, if people are willing to maintain the code.
>
>     /K
>
>     >
>     > On 9 February 2017 at 21:12, Dave Cridland <dave at cridland.net
>     <mailto:dave at cridland.net>> wrote:
>     > On 9 February 2017 at 17:13, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter at stpeter.im
>     <mailto:stpeter at stpeter.im>> wrote:
>     > > Kev's message just now reminds me that it would be good to
>     discuss the
>     > > future of the IM Observatory service at xmpp.net <http://xmpp.net>.
>     > >
>     > > Thijs Alkemade has put a lot of work into this and deserves our
>     thanks.
>     > > However, he is just one very busy person, so to make it viable
>     long-term I'm
>     > > wondering if the XSF might want to turn it into an open-source
>     project
>     > > running on a dedicated machine (and ideally able to be mirrored
>     and also run
>     > > locally). Granted, there would be quite a bit of project management
>     > > required, but it seems like a worthy initiative.
>     >
>     > I have, previously, suggested that the XSF can and should act as the
>     > natural home for services such as these, and been repeatedly shot
>     > down. My view hasn't changed, though - I'd be very happy with the XSF
>     > adopting the domain and services comprising the IM Observatory if it
>     > were offered, and I'd suggest Board simply forms a Work Team and hands
>     > it to them to run.
>     >
>     > As for the software, that's more or less entirely up to Thijs. I would
>     > recommend moving it to github, and I'd approach other similar projects
>     > to try to pool resources (I think Daniel Gultsch has some work in a
>     > similar space).
>     >
>     > Dave.
>     >
>
>