Missing update announcements

[Mike A. Harris]

Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> On 5/6/05, Mike A. Harris <mharris at www.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> 
>>Call me crazy, I don't know where I managed to get all these
>>ideas from, but it all just came together in my mind
>>somehow.[1]  Now that there is at least one theoretical
>>solution to the problem, if this solution were to be considered,
>>we need the following:
>>
>>1) Someone to design the detailed solution
>>
>>2) Someone to implement the design and test it
>>
>>3) Put the new system in place and start using it.
>>
>>In #1 and #2 above, "someone" could be either a Red Hat employee
>>voluntarily taking on the task on their personal time, or it
>>could be a Red Hat employee taking on the task under work time,
>>or it could be a person in the community taking on the task.
> 
> 
> While I think outside volunteers could take a crack at implementing
> and testing a prototype solution outside the RedHat fenceline, some
> requirements as to specific implementation details would need to be
> communicated from inside the RedHat fenceline before anyone started
> working on this.

Indeed.  I accounted for that in my original wording, without
being detailed or specific.

> Especially if at the end of the day this service
> needs to be migrated back onto RedHat controlled infrastructure.

That's pretty much an absolute must IMHO, for security reasons, as
well as infrastructural reasons, availability, etc.

> If RedHat wants to avoid a php based solution for example, that should
 > be communicated up-front when Fedora leadership communicates the task
> proposal.

While I can't speak for Fedora leadership, I personally think the
choice of implementation language doesn't matter much, as long as
it isn't something obscure.  Red Hat has a strong internal preference
for python, but if we're not implementing it, I can't see us rejecting
something written in perl or php if it is well written code, as both
are commonly used for such purposes.  My own personal preference if
I were to be touching the code at all (which I probably wont, but hey..)
would be perl.  ;o)

(I'm currently in a perl fetish mode)

> If however Fedora Core leadership is okay with a helper
> service that lives outside the RedHat fenceline on a community managed
> server then implementation requirements probably aren't as tight as
> long as Fedora leadership is confident in the ability of the community
> involved in maintaining the service.

I'm making an assumption here, which is not authoritative, but I believe
any solution would have to sit on Red Hat internal machines, within the
corporate firewall in order to satisfy the SEC, legal, and whatever 
other 3 letter agencies out there - at least for Fedora Core most
likely.  For Fedora Extras, the same system could be used however, and
it might be acceptable and useful to have that on external machines
perhaps?  That way the code can be easily tested, updated, etc. without
legal mumbo jumbo and other things getting in the way during
development.

Just some random thoughts anyway.