[Rule] Possible merger between RULE and Ubuntulite Project

[M. Fioretti]

This document contains emails sent between Marco Fioretti, RULE
Coordinator Manager, and Shae Smittle, Ubuntulite Project Manager,
concerning the merger of the two communities.  This was discussed and
pondered in private to prevent any fiasco if it did not seem possible,
but it does.  We both agree that the joining of our communities and
projects into one would be the best for both communities.  Thus we
submit to you, our communities, the thoughs and discussions we had
concerning such a merger for scrutiny and consideration by you. We
hope that you voice your opinions and concerns through the appropriate
channels. As the plan evolves through your input, we hope to forge
ahead in our attempts to make the RULE project and Ubuntulite project
the best we can.  Discussion will last three weeks and then the
decission to merge or not will be made.

Marco and Shae

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Emails: 

<From Marco Fioretti to Shae Smittle>

Shae,

thanks for your interest in discussing this. Basically, here at RULE
we've been idle for quite a long time and then started to discuss what
we should do, since being based on Fedora makes less sense than one or
two years ago and we haven't resources anyway.

In those recent talks I've commented several times that "hey, guys,
all this thread seems to say "we need/want to do a minimal version of
Ubuntu, but Ubuntu-lite already exists (or existed)".

RULE is not tied to a specific distro. Many of the things we'd like to
do or see done aren't distro specific in and by themselves, like
trimming KDE down (see http://www.rule-project.org/?q=node/6
). Probably we would also have no problems to host files, pages or
another mailing list on our server (even if the combined peak traffic
of rule and ubuntu-lite, to which I'm subscribed, has always been so
low that merging would almost go unnoticed, alas).

Basically, our main goals is that it becomes as easy as possible for
non-hackers to find and use up to date, widely supported whatever
Linux desktops on recycled/donated computers. Offering a distro or an
alternative way to install it is only part of the task. The main bloat
has never been in the distro. In this context, keeping an Ubuntu-lite
identity, that is saying "Ubuntu-lite" is now (the main) part of RULE,
or a total merging, or any combination, are all possible solutions.

Certainly it seems a waste, especially while we're losing reasons to
focus on Fedora, that Ubuntu-liters and RULErs talk of the same
problems in two separate places. I have summarized the above and other
RULE goals and hopes in several recent threads. To have an idea, see:

what's next?
Summary/random thoughts on RULE
Re: Whither RULE?

and my other contribution in those threads at

http://lists.hellug.gr/pipermail/rule-list/2007/author.html

Looking forward to your opinion!

Ciao,
        Marco


<From Shae Smittle to Marco Fioretti>

Marco,

Ubuntulite too was rather idle after it was abandoned by its creator; however, I am in the process of getting things going again and building the team.

One of your major concerns as it seems to me is the feeling that Ubuntulite is tied to only Ubuntu , but in some ways it is not.  While we might be based on Ubuntu, the idea of building a light desktop is everywhere.  Our package selections are public.  Anyone who is building a light distro can look towards Ubuntulite for package choices much as I have looked at several different distros for choices.  Ultimately though we are limited to the packages in Ubuntu.  We are not a separate distro.  The Ubuntulite repository contains selected backports to fix bugs and to add options as well as the meta-packages that will hopefully help Ubuntulite become a more polished product, but most packages just come from Ubuntu.  

As Liam Proven pointed out, I am very excited at the prospect of RULE and Ubuntulite cooperating or merging.  Why you may ask?  The main weakness of the project right now is that it is a more or less a one-man-show right now.  I do not want that at all.  Anything that introduces new people to the aims of Ubuntulite may bring someone interested in contributing to it. 

I would like to make remarks on one of your statements.  You said, "Basically, our main goals is that it becomes as easy as possible for non-hackers to find and use up to date, widely supported whatever Linux desktops on recycled/donated computers."  To me you are concerned that I am not interested in finding ways to make packages lighter.  This could not be further from the truth.  I am familiar with your trimming of KDE and koffice.  The thought of not only using lighter defaults but also working towards making programs lighter is an amazing prospect.  Any project that results from cooperation or a merger should have a page about how it was done, the source code would be available, and as many binary packages that can be reasonably maintained should be made available. 

Now what do we do from here?  This should be thoroughly discussed by us.  Then we should announce the possibilities to our respective communities.  I am not opposed to anything from informal cooperation to total merger of the two projects.  But I ask myself what is best for our goals.  This we must discuss. 

Another concern the RULE project seems to have is frequency of releases.  Ubuntu is released every 6 months; however, porting older packages to new is usually as easy as recompiling them, if needed.  Since most of the packages are made by Ubuntu itself, usually it is not much of a problem.  But this might become more of a problem as Ubuntulite becomes more complex. 

By the way, tinyx/kdrive was dropped out of xfree86 after 4.3 if I recall correctly.  I am currently working on some way to create packages that can be installed for Ubuntulite.

I question I have is what would you like to work on if you were to become a member of the Ubuntulite project? 

Sorry for taking so long for my reply.





<From Marco Fioretti to Shae Smittle>

On Mon, Oct 01, 2007 00:19:11 AM -0500, Shae Smittle
 starfall87 at gmail.com  wrote:

> One of your major concerns as it seems to me is the feeling that Ubuntulite is
> tied to only Ubuntu , but in some ways it is not.

Great! Just like RULE, which started on RH/Fedora, but almost by chance.

> Ultimately though we are limited to the packages in Ubuntu.  We are
> not a separate distro.

Neither we are, and never were. We don't want to. Because as long as
what is done is mainly providing alternate install methods of widely
used packages, and wisely chosing them for people who aren't Linux
experts, we can send them to the official mailing list of the main
distro when they've got started thanks to our work. Not being a
separate distro (never mind what the distro is) is A Good Thing (TM)
for two reasons:

1) there is infinitely much less work to do. Somebody else packages,
   issues security advisories, write documentation...

2) there must be no digital ghettos, ie "special needs" forums. FOSS
   as I see it is about inclusion, not exclusion. I really dislike the
   idea of telling people "you can't hang around where the same folks
   who can afford a new PC are".

I call all this "the beauty and power of NOT being another linux
distro".

> As Liam Proven pointed out, I am very excited at the prospect of RULE and
> Ubuntulite cooperating or merging.  Why you may ask?  The main weakness of the
> project right now is that it is a more or less a one-man-show right now.

I could have written the same words about RULE, and since the aims
seem to overlap so much, I look even more favourably to doing stuff together.

> I would like to make remarks on one of your statements.  You said, "Basically,
> our main goals is that it becomes as easy as possible for non-hackers to find
> and use up to date, widely supported whatever Linux desktops on recycled/
> donated computers."  To me you are concerned that I am not interested in
> finding ways to make packages lighter.

No, sorry if I gave this impression!

> Now what do we do from here?  This should be thoroughly discussed by
> us.  Then we should announce the possibilities to our respective
> communities.  I am not opposed to anything from informal cooperation
> to total merger of the two projects.  But I ask myself what is best
> for our goals.  This we must discuss.

I believe a merger would be a good thing. What about creating an
Ubuntu-lite repository /website area at rule-project.org? I have the
_feeling_ that it _may_ be advisable to keep RULE as the main
"project/community" name and Ubuntu-lite as the main "product" name
for these clarity reasons:

1) Ubuntu-lite is reassuring and gives people a good idea of what they
   are getting, but

2) a distro-less project name stresses the concept that the distro (or
   software in general, we may say) is just a means to a better world,
   not an end in itself. Or, more practically, that we also study (and
   seek cooperation for) ways to make the upstream packages lighter,
   no matter which distros eventually include them.

but this is just an idea off the top of my head, absolutely open to
discussion.

Another thing is I feel if we merge, no matter how, it is much better
to have one mailing list. Volume is so low, and we want to build _one_
larger community, don't we?

> I question I have is what would you like to work on if you were to
> become a member of the Ubuntulite project?

At the end of the list of reasons why I think a merger is a good
thing, there is the fact that, sadly, I have no time these days to
work actively on these things. In the last years, in RULE, I've simply
been the coordinator and resident story-teller, that is the guy who
has the Drupal and ssh password, explains newcomers why the project
was born, etc...

This said, my main interest if I found the time would remain a
mini-kde environment: figure out and document in full detail how to
massage the official packages, icons/themes and configuration files of
Qt, kdebase, koffice, kdepim... so that you get a GUI desktop which
does imap, digital signatures, HTML4, OpenDocument... in the smallest
possible amount of RAM and disk space.

Looking forward to hear from you. Probably the best thing is to mull
it over a bit more among us, and then send a joint proposal to our
respective mailing lists.

Ciao,
                Marco





<From Shae Smittle to Marco Fioretti>

   I am not very comfortable with your merger plans.  But I am also not sure of any alternative. I think it might be too great a hit to the image of Ubuntulite, though I am not sure.  I still want to think about this one.  You?

On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 19:54:08 PM -0500, Shae Smittle  starfall87 at gmail.com  wrote:

> I am not very comfortable with your merger plans.  But I am also not
> sure of any alternative.  I think it might be too great a hit to the
> image of Ubuntulite, though I am not sure.  I still want to think
> about this one.  You?





<From Marco Fioretti to Shae Smittle>

Shae,

I understand your concerns. With respect to the image of Ubuntulite, I
have no problem at all if it remains a distinct project with you as
_the_ leader. As the 23 days it took before I could find one moment to
answer you prove, I have no time at all these days to do anything
meaningful about RULE and related projects, so I'd be a fool if I
thought or tried that I could ever "steal" Ubuntulite, or that such an
action could be beneficial to anybody, even if it were possible.

My proposals may be summarized in this way:

1) Since (as a concept) RULE is more general than Ubuntulite (which is
providing a specific distro, even if much of the work can be reapplied
elsewhere, it feels more natural, to me at least, to imagine and
present Ubuntulite as part of RULE than the opposite. This would also
allow folks who prefer not to use Ubuntu* for any reason, but may
contribute with work on mini-kde, X.org or anything else to find a
place and support inside RULE.  This WITHOUT stepping at all on your
work: Ubuntulite remains something over which you have control. I have
no time to do anything more than minimal maintenance on the website
and contributing to some mailing list thread anyway, and I have no
problem to declare it publicly, really. Think of RULE like JUST one
common home and forum for different, _independent_ projects?

2) moving the source code, ISO, subversion and similar to the current
RULE server is just a proposal, really. If these things remain as they
are today, leaving complete control and autonomy of how to set them up
to you and also constituting less work for me and the sysadmin in
Athens, that's really fine with me.

3) The exception to 2) are the mailing list and documentation. By this
I mean that, no matters how all the rest is agreed on, I believe it
would be essential to:

 - present to all users ONE single mailing list where they can come
   for support or exchanging ideas. We both know that the traffic on
   the current two mailing lists is so low that it could be
   embarassing and counterproductive to keep them separate if we
   officially declare we want to work together, or have common goals,
   or anything of the sort.

 - consolidate all the documentation in one place, with one coherent
   structure, and keep all of it interlinked, for the same reason as
   above: if we say we want to work together, but don't unify the
   docs, people will be confused, if not pissed. Again, this wouldn't
   create conflicts, as I see it, since everybody would keep the
   responsibility of his or her documents. We'd just have to work out
   all together, on the ONE mailing list, what should be written and who
   would write it.

In a nutshell: if we are to cooperate, and I DO hope we will do it
because I can't do almost anything by myself, nor can the other RULE
veterans, I believe we have to present to the public ONE "interface",
that is have or arrive to one public forum (from the beginning) and
(asap) one single website, even if reorganized in very distinct
sections, with one interlinked set of user and developer
documentation.

Everything else could be arranged really flexibly, I believe, but
failing on those two issues may really backfire on us or, worse, on
both Ubuntulite and RULE.

What do you think?





<From Shae Smittle to Marco Fioretti>

I think we are about ready to pose this to our respective communities.  This is what I think about your proposal.

1)  We should not try to run completely independent projects.  I personally hope to build KDE-lite for Ubuntulite and use it eventually.  I only think that Ubuntulite should have its own separate look for a web site.  This is possible to run multiple websites with one drupal installation I believe so I do not think that will be a problem.  We should try to make clear the relationship between the two names where possible.  In terms of having different sites, I mean they should be arranged the exact same, but just offer a different look (color/logo) when appropriate.  Of course on the Ubuntulite pages we would have the RULE logo displayed saying we are a rule project.  This is really up to change.  I do not see having a single look on our site to be as important as having one organization theme and flawless interlinking.  If at all possible, perhaps the top page of the ubuntulite stuff should be www.rule-project.org/ubuntulite?

2)  I would have no problem with moving all the files into one place, if I am given FTP access to it so that I can update the files under my purview. 

3)  I would like to agree to this to some extent.  I think sharing one mailing list is a perfect idea and as soon as we present this to our community and it is scrutinized, we need to get this going right away.  As for documentation I feel that we should maintain a unified structure.  But the idea of anyone having access to altering it is somewhat concerning to me.  

4)  Perhaps we should set something up like a RULE wiki to store both documentation?

5)  I will certainly be willing to help with building and maintaining the webpage, including the look if needed.  

 So these are just some of my thinkings.  What do you think about them?  Also, if you want to make this much smoother, perhaps you should set up the /ubuntulite section and let me start building it so when we do finalize the plan we will have that part of the site put together.  Anyways I really want to see the two projects merge and any of these things can be wiggled around to help make that happen.  This is just some of my thoughts.  Perhaps we should start drafting a joint announcement.





<From Marco Fioretti to Shae Smittle>

Shae,

sorry for the delay

> I only think that Ubuntulite should have its own separate look for a
> web site. This is possible to run multiple websites with one drupal
> installation I believe so I do not think that will be a problem.

Running multiple websites with one drupal is certainly possible, but
maybe isn't necessary if the only need is to have different themes for
different sections of the website. This is not a "political/PR" issue,
we just need to be sure we don't forget any technical detail. A
problem with setting up (drupal-wise) multiple websites, for example,
is that I don't personally know how to make them have a single set of
users.

I'd like to be able to log-in once, and be able to add or edit pages
where I have permission but also to add or read comments from other
registered users anywhere, participate in any ubuntulite or rule forum
if we'll ever set them up, have only _one_ tracking page which lists
all the private messages and/or watched threads, makes me manage all
the ubuntulite or rule Rss feeds, etc..

In a nutshell: different theming is OK, it's both absolutely due and
intrinsically good to maintain Ubuntulite identity, keeping just the
RULE logo as common denominator as you suggest below,etc... But I have
the feeling it's much simpler administration and better for end users
if we can do it with theming rather than separate installs.

> We should try to make clear the relationship between the two names
> where possible.  In terms of having different sites, I mean they
> should be arranged the exact same, but just offer a different look
> (color/logo) when appropriate.

OK

> Of course on the Ubuntulite pages we would have the RULE logo
> displayed saying we are a rule project.

OK

> This is really up to change.

sorry, not being a native speaker I ask: do you mean "there is no
problem to do this"?

> I do not see having a single look on our site to be as important as
> having one organization theme and flawless interlinking.

I agree. As long as all links are in place and the structure is
consistant, that is one menu system one support link, theming is good.

> If at all possible, perhaps the top page of the ubuntulite stuff
> should be www.rule-project.org/ ubuntulite?

or ubuntulite.rule-project.org ? OK both ways for me, as long as the
maintenance/usability issues above are taken care of. And somebody
more competent with Apache and Drupal than I am explains how to
configure them to handle these aliases properly.

> 2)  I would have no problem with moving all the files into one place, if I am
> given FTP access to it so that I can update the files under my purview.

it would be scp/ssh because the server sysadmin doesn't allow ftp but
you'll of course have access. This goes without saying, sorry if it
wasn't clear from the start.

> As for documentation I feel that we should maintain a unified
> structure. But the idea of anyone having access to altering it is
> somewhat concerning to me.

I don't want that either, I have fundamental issues with unregulated
wikis and similar systems. I too want that official documentation has
well defined responsibles. Only registered users can edit or add
content, and this is limited anyway. Drupal pages are owned by who
created them, and other registered users can add comments, but not
alter the actual text.

> 4)  Perhaps we should set something up like a RULE wiki to store both
> documentation?

You mean Drupal stores all official documentation and a separate wiki
is for draft? It can be done, but maybe this isn't necessary, at least
from the start, for these reasons:

1) more work, both for us sysadmins and for contributors, to do to
   keep official pages in sync

2) there is so little traffic on the combined mailing lists that
   posting and discussing drafts there would be, aq least at the
   beginning, a stimulus to all the lurkers to get active.

to put it another way, our problem is not that we have so much
activity that we need a full blown wiki to regulate it, is that we
have too little :-(

> 5)  I will certainly be willing to help with building and maintaining the
> webpage, including the look if needed.

I count on that! Just let me know which user name you want and I'll
enable it. Actually, the version of Drupal now running RULE is old, I
should really try to update it. This could also make easier to have a
private ubuntulite section until it's time to announce it.

> Anyways I really want to see the two projects merge and any of these
> things can be wiggled around to help make that happen.

Same here. Do you already have a draft announcement by chance? I think
it should be a reformatted version of the first messages that we
exchanged. I'll try to rehash them and send you a draft this weekend
if you haven't one already.


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