Re: New Theme proposal & other stuff

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

[I started this long ago, and since then people have sent
some responses. I'll finish this up and then respond to some
later ones.]

> http://www.best.com/~aturner/LKB/rhlufaq5.jpg

Looks good. Given that I know nothing about graphics, I asked
some people nearby. Suggestions were
* highlight some of the lines
* make a path that goes off into the distance.

I dunno. Run with it. Or don't.
 
> Hold on while I get into my flame-proof suit....  ok.

Hope your suit is high-quality. Actually, I'm not going to argue
the big picture yet. I don't have enough arguments yet that you'll
find reasonable. For now, I will just shoot down some of your arguments,
and let the other people dispute the big picture (which they seem to be
doing).
 
> On thing I should add is we need to decide on a non-popular subject that
> will impact the design.  Ad banners or no ad banners?  I know no one
> *likes* banners, but $$$ is a good thing when you want more hardware.  
> VAR and other corporate supporters won't always be so ready to give
> something for virutally nothing. Having $$$ in the bank *before* we need

We don't need corporate sponsors for this. What we need, plain and
simple, is programmers and content contributors. That's it.

> it is a good thing.  I for one don't have extra cash laying around that I
> can dontate to the site.  Setting up a not for profit org isn't that
> difficult.  Also, a lot of Linux/OSS related sites now have ads: lwn.net,
> Linux Today, Linux World, slashdot.org etc.

The ads for lwn.net at least are to help pay the workers. Not to pay for
the site. They've had many offers from people willing to host their site;
what they wanted was some direct remuneration for their work (which is
fine. They do excellent work.)
 
> No ad banners means we have to make space on the site for a VA Research
> logo and a NaviSite logo on the main page- neither of which we will make
> any $$$ on.

I don't see why we need to put the logos on, unless we've agreed that
we will. But in any case, I don't mind doing that. "This site hosted
by foo and bar." on the bottom. Along with the webmaster email address.
 
> Remember if the site is sucessful, we will have a powerful way to make
> money for the good of Linux/OSS.  We would be able to purchase hardware so
> we could mirror/host other projects which need server space/bandwidth.  
> There seems to be an enormous need right now for this sort of thing.
> (kernel.org and the GGI-project are two examples in the past two days)

There is not an "enormous need" for this sort of thing. There are
organizations out there like spi and seul that are happy to support
projects based on their merit. I will grant you that kernel.org is a
bit large for that sort of support. In those cases, there are places
like VAR and especially Redhat, which have time and time again demonstrated
their commitment to the Linux community. There are political issues with
putting such a crucial site as kernel.org under the "control" of Redhat;
but in any case there is no shortage of actual hardware and connectivity.
I'm very confident that the Linux-relying companies would do the right
thing if the kernel dev project suddenly needed more support.
 
> Also, I would not expect that NaviSite will give us unlimited bandwidth
> forever.  If we start using significant bandwidth they will expect us to
> help offset their costs in the matter- my wheeling and dealing can only
> get us so far for so long. 

If we start using significant bandwidth, it will be because we have
become popular. If we have become popular, there will be plenty of
sites willing to host us for free. The KB project doesn't really
use that much, in terms of processing power and space. Have a bunch
of stuff in the database, regenerate it nightly into new static html
pages, provide search on those. That's maybe a couple hundred megs.
And the database can live offline for all I care, as long as it connects
every few days to transfer the new static html. I could fit that on
belegost, or moria, or cran, or tolkien, without even noticing. Even
with 50000 hits a day.

And you say, "But having a really expensive machine on somebody else's
network makes things easier and more reliable." I would argue about the
'more reliable' part (belegost has been reliably up and on the net for the
past 3 years, with maybe 48 hours downtime total), but I ask you: is
having it slightly easier (yes, only slightly -- we still have to solve
most of the problems that we had to solve before) worth getting entangled
in the world of corporate sponsorship and expected return? There *are*
other solutions.

--Roger