[Imc-drupal-dev] [IMC-Tech] grant, small clarification

Wed Oct 29 13:08:48 PDT 2008

hi toya,

I don't want to speak for the whole drupal working group, but I can give you some background info...  Our purpose was not to be exclusive. I'm not a techie either... Your questions seem super important and should be posed to the drupal tech list, though... (I think Ben just did!) 

So a week and a half ago, Boston Imc contacted Belgium Imc to ask them about their Drupal site because we were really impressed with what we saw (http://www.indymedia.be). Boston Imc has been "working" on switching to Drupal for the past 3 years, with 3 different developers... Our audio, video, comments, and Other Press are currently not working. It's always been a challenge to find someone with the time to do it...

Our current drupal tech mentioned the NewsChallenge proposal and Belgium then mentioned they had been thinking about applying as well (applied last year and didn't get it). This is, 1.5 weeks before deadline. Then we thought, "wow, wouldn't it be cool if we built a Drupal distribution for all Imcs?" (I've been corrected that "prototype" is not the right term).  We contacted a tech at Indybay and another at UK Indymedia (Indybay has NOT decided as a group to move to Drupal, and therefore is not listed. One of their volunteers is interested in the project, though). This all happened off-list.

We then moved to the Drupal Imc list and contacted also Bolivia Imc and Urbana-Champaign. We found out UC Imc had also been planning to apply for the newschallenge grant...  We started the wiki documentation. Since then, several Imcs working on or wanting to move to Drupal have joined as co-sponsors and we're working on a joint proposal.

Venezuela, and Germany are not officially co-sponsoring. One of their volunteers is interested in the project, though.

I think deep inside we realize that getting a grant like this is like opening a can of worms at the Imc. But all I can say is that we have the best intentions at heart.

Bolivia Imc, for example, just proposed adding translations to Drupal for minority languages such as Quechua and Aymara and that to me is just amazing... Makes me wish I was techie. :)

peace,
Sofia

----- Original Message ----
From: "toya at riseup" <toya at riseup.net>
To: Sofia JarrinT <sofiajt at yahoo.com>
Cc: imc-tech at lists.indymedia.org
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 2:46:43 PM
Subject: Re: [IMC-Tech] grant, small clarification

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Hi sofia and all,

I am very surprised to see such proposal. Did this group of indymedia
collective ever included on their discussion the new-cms project?
I mean we have being working on it for 3 years, we spend thousand of
dollars from our own pocket to get developers to meet each others and
to continue the project and discussions. We have sent a lot of
announces to this list and communication list as well, in an attempt
to involve more collectives on the process.

We aren't  just thinking of getting a new software for indymedia, but
also including very important changes on how indymedia sotware should
work to prevent data retention and also to prevent that we fall into
the same problem we have right now, lack of hosting spaces, lack of
bandwidth, lack of people to do administration of boxes, law
enforcement & corporate server seizures, take-down orders,
geographically-distributed data redundancy and a lot of other security
issues -- so not only a new software but an entirely new architecture
that would make the indymedia network impervious to all of these
problems.

I am saying all that because I believe we should unity our efforts
instant of having less and less unity on our network like we are
having right now. The new cms group has tried to do that, we invited,
many times, other groups which shared the same initiative (i.e. imc
alternatives), the people who are participating on this proposal are
the same ones who have maintained the  softwares we have used for all
the past 8 years on our network and the same  ones who have being
responsible for hosting space etc for all those years. I believe it
should be included on the discussion what this group is doing and the
reasons why they decided for the new cms approach.

Also I would like to remind that the migration of the bolivia site to
drupal was a very problematic migration which affect a lot the network
of indymedia collectives from Bolivia. They had to deal with  the
problems created by the migration for over an year and just now they
are finally resolving  them. Also venezuela haven't migrate their
site, and as far as I know (since I host their site) there is no plans
on doing so. Maybe you are talking about the other venezuela indymedia
collective here. Not the one that was first created in the country.

But those are problems that are not directly related to what I am
talking about here, but are things that shows to us how we are not
unity in the global indymedia network and how all this just weak us
more and more.

I would like to raise some questions, since you guys requesting money
and everything to do such a project:

1. How this proposal will address data retention problems and the
others examples of data security problems I listed above?
2. How this proposal will address lack of hosting spaces, bandwidth
and system administration  people?
3. Is there a way to build a geographically-distributed data
redundancy out of this  solution?
4. Who will be the maintainer  of this new solution? Update the code,
look for security holes etc.
5. How could this solution work together with the new-cms project?

thanks
toya

Sofia JarrinT wrote:
> hi, It was pointed out to me that "all Indymedias" might've sounded
> as if we've all decided on consensus to run on Drupal. That's not
> the case. I meant to say, all Indymedias who would want to or are
> already switching to Drupal. Here's a list of the currently
> participating Indymedias on this proposal, so far:
>
> * Boston Imc * Belgium Imc * UK Imc * St. Louis Imc * Columbus Imc
>  * Scotland Imc * Arizona Imc * Bolivia Imc * Germany Imc (not
> officially) * Los Angeles Imc * Linksunten (South-west Germany) Imc
>  * Venezuela Imc (not officially) * Urbana Champaign Imc (as fiscal
> sponsor) * Australia Imc * Austria Imc We don't mean to be
> exclusive of other cms... :(  There's just seems to be a lot of us
> working on drupal, that's all.
>
> peace, Sofia
>
>
> ----- Original Message ---- From: Sofia JarrinT <sofiajt at yahoo.com>
>  To: imc-tech at lists.indymedia.org Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008
> 1:11:05 PM Subject: Knight Foundation Grant for Drupal IMC
>
> hi!
>
> For disclosure purposes, please be informed that in the past couple
> of weeks, we created a loose coalition of Indymedia people to apply
> for a Knight Foundation grant (http://www.newschallenge.org/) to
> build an Indymedia Drupal prototype for ALL Indymedias (which will
> include, among other things, an Indymedia install profile)...  The
> deadline is November 1st.
>
> The idea developed originally from Belgium and Boston Imc and since
> then has snowballed to include many other IMCs.
>
> The goals so far on how exactly to use the money or manage it, if
> we get it, are a bit up in the air.  But there's a feeling of
> urgency that if we don't, this will take too long to get done, and
> Imcs continue to close down because of tech difficulties. Techs
> lack the time and the money should hopefully give them the space to
> allocate that time. One idea is to allocate $ to local Indymedias
> through the global fund, so they in turn could "hire" a tech to
> help them...
>
> Most documentation can be found here:
>
> http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/ImcDrupalDev
>
> And we're using this channel to communicate:
>
> imc-drupal-dev at lists.indymedia.org
>
> peace, Sofia Boston Imc
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________ imc-tech mailing
> list imc-tech at lists.indymedia.org
> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-tech

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