[Savannah-hackers] new machine france.fsfeurope.org (aka fr.fsf.org)

[loic]

        Hi,

        The FSF France chapter of FSF Europe will be created Thursday
20.  I installed a machine for what is becoming the FSF & GNU project
presence in France. It will also be used for FSF Europe needs in
general but is primarily targeted for projects specific to the
activity of the FSF Europe in France. The domain name was blessed by
RMS but that's far from enough to make it a usable resource of the GNU
project ;-)

        When setting up the machine I followed the guidelines in use
for all other machines of the GNU project. After recent discussions
with devnull I realized that I should have bought an EMP port manager
in addition.  That's a mistake I won't do next time and I'll try to
fix it asap. The situation is not critical since the machine is hosted
at a place where we have many friends who are willing to DTRT if and
when the machine crashes.

        The accounts of the fr.fsf.org machine are handled by Savannah
thru the http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/fsffr/ : every member has a
ssh + public key shell account. More information about this at
http://fr.fsf.org/server/. The list of sysadmin related tasks for the
machines are listed at
https://savannah.gnu.org/pm/task.php?group_project_id=37&group_id=53&func=browse
whith Sysadmin: in the header.

        The machine was installed last Thursday and the only thing it 
contains at present it the france.fsfeurope.org web. The www.fsfeurope.org
web will be migrated there as soon as the FSF Europe webmasters find time
to do it. 

        All this is at a pretty early stage and it strikes me as
particularily important that we don't start to re-implement facilities
that are already existing in the GNU project such as DNS hosting,
mailing lists, Savannah etc. I'd rather like that we re-use these
facilities, re-use the guidelines and help maintaining them and mofifying
them to better fit the needs of the GNU project. In other words, the
fr.fsf.org machine should contribute to and use the GNU project instead
of being a completly separate spinof that only has a domain name in 
common with the GNU project.

        Since I'm already deep in the GNU project this cooperation is
already in effect. However I felt it was necessary to state it
clearly. My personal opinion is that starting on the right foot in this
matter will bring more manpower to the GNU project. Many people I know
in France think of the GNU project as a mythical beast that can't be
approached. Having a machine in France truly integrated to the GNU
project and contributing to it and the fact that people you know have 
access to the machine and work to grow and enhance the GNU project 
will act as powerful incentive. 

        Finaly, I feel that this machine needs your blessing and/or
criticisms before it can claim to be part of the GNU project. I hope
your opinion will be that it will help that it won't be a burden, but
only you can tell this.

        Cheers,

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  address@hidden
24 av Secretan         http://www.senga.org/      address@hidden
75019    Paris         Tel: 33 1 42 45 09 16        address@hidden
        GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt