[Imc-summaries] IMC-Tech Summary For September 6th 2001

[evan@protest.net]

Summary Non-Code Issues:
	Restarting the imc-tech summary
	IMC-Tech Meeting Minutes/Logs
	HAL 2001 - Hackers At Large Meeting
	Interesting Papers/Articles By Imcistas
	New Dev & Mail Servers! Kropotikin & Sarai
	Wireless Discussions
	Server Issues
	Donating Network Capacity?

Code Updates:
	IMCSlash Beta Released
	MIR - The German Code
	Active XML-RPC v0.90

Addendums & Postscripts:
	Why mailinglist summaries
	Getting Involved in IMC-Tech

------------------------NON-CODE-ISSUES-------------------

Restarting the imc-tech summary
	There hasn't been an imc-tech summary since July 22nd. 
	This has meant that many of you are probally not
	sure what's been happening in imc-tech land.

	Most interesting in this update are the "Interesting
	Papers/Articles by IMCistas" which has some people
	talking about future tech vision, and the Code Updates.

	Also read the appeal, "Why mailinglist summaries"


HAL 2001 - Hackers At Large Meeting
        August 10-12th in Holland marked the great hackers
	camp out HAL 2001. It's a once every 4 years event
	and many imc-techies came from the US, Australia, and
	Europe. We also met with cool hacker comrades and 
	had a riotous good time. All the HAL staff had
	"State Smashing Anarchist" shirts which we tried to
	get with only mixed success. Also discussed was
	getting European imc servers up, the german mir code
	and the existence of the  imc-tech-europa list. 
	Gilad took notes of our meetings. 
	http://www.cat.org.au/lists/webcoders/msg02132.html


Interesting Papers/Articles by Imcistas
	Decisions and diversity
	http://www.cat.org.au/maffew/decisions.html
	 
	Open Publishing == Free Software
	http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~matthewa/catk/openpub.html

	Three Proposals For Open Publishing
	http://dru.ca/imc/open_pub.html
	 
	Full Coverage For The People
	http://dru.ca/design/fullcoverageforthepeople.html

        Media Tools / Media Analysis
	http://monkeyfist.com/kendall/media-tools.txt
	 
        Participatory Media Networks
        http://chris.shumway.tripod.com/pmn.htm


New Dev & Mail Servers! Kropotkin & Sarai!
        The two new servers are here! Kropotkin is our new
	development server which will be used to play with
	all the various versions of indycode and explore new
	projects without endangering the live servers.
	Sarai is the new mail server to replace turtle. It's
	long over due, turtle is the box we setup in the wee
	hours of the morning November 30th 1999 in Seattle.
	Sarai (Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Turkish, etc) is an
	enclosed space in a city, or, besides a highway where
	travellers can find shelter. Sarai.net is a cool
	newmedia / community media project in New Delhi, India.


Wireless Discussions
	More wireless discussions have taken place both
	on imc-tech and on imc-wireless in prep for DC.
	

Donating Network Capacity
        Several people have written to offer to donate
	network capacity and nobody followed up on it.
	http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-tech/2001-July/004752.html


Server Issues
        Post Genoa we've had some persistent server issues.
	There have been a few meetings and some code
	improvements. Still needed is somebody to tune 
	squid.
	http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-tech/2001-August/004940.html



-------------------------CODE UPDATES----------------------

IMC Slash Beta Released
         John Duda's been working on taking the philly code
	 and making it in to a full release of the IMCslash.
	 It's basically the active functionality added
	 to slash, with some other new interesting addons.
	 http://indymedia.sourceforge.net


MIR - The German Code
         During the HAL 2001 conference many imc-techies met
	 to discuss the state of active and look at updates
	 or alternatives. Idefix from the de imc and Nadir.org
	 showed us the german code. People were generally
	 impressed. There is an effort to add features to the
	 german code, which had it's name changed from 
	 indy-prodsystem to mir. There is a mir-coders list
	 and cvs setup for the mir development. Mir is in
	 java and uses templating. It also generates a static
	 html version of the site for serving pages, this
	 helps with server load.
	 http://mir.indymedia.de/


Active XML-RPC Update
         Idanso reports that the Israeli code which is based
	 on python/java and xml-rpc is coming along.
	 "Going quite well. Most of the bugs from the java 
	 implementation publish queue(the mirroring subsystem) 
	 have been squashed. I have more or less working 
	 front-end using Zope and Squid, with most of the 
	 features of the backend supported(but the interface 
	 is ugly if to be honest)
	 http://tech.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=264


----------------ADDENDUMS-&-POSTSCRIPT---------------

Why mailinglist summaries:
         So you say you want a revolution?
	 
	 Not like the revolutions of old, but one which is democratic,
radical, egalitarian, anti-authoritarian, participatory, and decentralized
by it's very nature. To build that revolution we have counter institutions
like indymedia. We have the potential to use indymedia to construct a new
society while dismantling the old. This kind of change doesn't happen by
accident or without work. Mailinglists are elitist and easily devolve in
to a dictatorship of the people with the most time and patience. To
counter the info-glut we need mailinglist and working group summaries!
Every week the indymedia mail server sends over 1 million internal
indymedia emails.* Without summarizing and making our conversations
accessible there is no way we can function going forward.

	 The same goes for local projects. How are people in the Brasil
IMC going to know what the Finnish IMC is doing and how they deal with
issues that come up if we don't make our organization truly open to
ourselves. It is insane to ask people to watch every list. Everybody has a
right to easily know what the global finance or news blast groups are
doing. The only way that is going to happen is if people stand up and
start writing summaries of their activities. Send those summaries to the
imc-summaries@indymedia.org list. Appoint your self, or discuss it on your
list. It's indymedia, if you wait to be assigned a job it'll never happen.

	 If we want to avoid having an inner core, then this is the work
that needs to be done. Now! 


Getting Involved in IMC-Tech
	 We need your help! If you're a techie or not, indymedia
	 is a project that cannot survive without your help.
	 If you have a local IMC, contact them, I'm SURE
	 they could use your help. If you don't, then sign
	 up to the imc-tech list (maybe in digest form). Read
	 through http://tech.indymedia.org/ and stop by for a
	 chat at irc.indymedia.org in the #tech channel. If 
	 we seem busy and distracted, it isn't that we don't
	 want your help, you just need to push a little and
	 find a project that you can take on or join in on.
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-tech/2001-July/004721.html



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The IMC-Tech summary is a semi-regular update on the activities
of the amorphous global imc-tech collective. By presenting a summary
of some of the discussions and activities of imc-tech we hope to inform
the larger indymedia community of our activities. This will help
promote transparency and lubercate the gears of our internal democratic
processes. All IMC mailinglists and working groups should be producing
regular summaries of their activities!




* That's an approximation of the number of emails per week as of a couple
of months ago, it's probally higher. It's not that there are one million
emails written about indymedia every week, but that each mail sent to a
mailinglist goes out to each person on that list. The combined total of
emails to the lists and subscribers means that little ole' turtle pumps
out more than a million emails a week.