| koolhead17 | hi all | 03:40 |
|---|---|---|
| joerg | hi | 16:54 |
| vmlintu | hi | 16:59 |
| vmlintu | joerg: have you been working on the portal project you mentioned some time ago? | 16:59 |
| joerg | sure :) | 17:00 |
| joerg | hi | 17:00 |
| joerg | vmlintu, I am just working on it right now.... the thing is, I somehow need more developers and more motivation. | 17:01 |
| joerg | a project like that is quite hard in the beginning. | 17:01 |
| joerg | I have written some specs, you know - but they don't attract anybody.... | 17:02 |
| joerg | I guess people want a demo / see some code. | 17:02 |
| alkisg | Development is the best motivation for the open source world :) | 17:02 |
| vmlintu | joerg: www.myserv-project.org ? | 17:03 |
| joerg | yes | 17:03 |
| alkisg | I've seen many, many many specs in #edubuntu the last years - only 1 or 2 of them got implemented.. | 17:03 |
| joerg | hehe | 17:03 |
| joerg | alkisg, I am developing for some time now, but it is really hard | 17:03 |
| joerg | if I had an active community around it, I'd be really motivated and be twice as fast I guess. | 17:04 |
| alkisg | As sbalneav says, each one scratches his own back... e.g. I'm developing "school-scripts" because I need them, to use them in my classroom | 17:05 |
| alkisg | So even if I had to do it on my own, I'd still do it | 17:05 |
| joerg | I need people telling me that they need my work, people who challenge me with new things etc. | 17:05 |
| alkisg | Did you send an announcment on the mailing list? | 17:05 |
| joerg | yes......that's different | 17:05 |
| joerg | I am doing that because I have a vision | 17:05 |
| joerg | I am not a teacher or a student | 17:06 |
| joerg | I am just enthusiast :P | 17:06 |
| alkisg | If you did, and people didn't respond, are you sure that your project fits some existing need? | 17:06 |
| vmlintu | joerg: I've checked the site a couple of times, but as it uses python, I really cannot say much.. | 17:06 |
| joerg | alkisg, well, ages ago I posted a rough draft..... | 17:07 |
| joerg | and people like vmlintu responded :) | 17:07 |
| joerg | but at that stage it was still too early | 17:07 |
| joerg | vmlintu, you should learn python :) not only to contribute to that project ;) but to make your daily life easier. | 17:08 |
| vmlintu | I'm more into ruby | 17:08 |
| vmlintu | joerg: We've been working on a new version of the ldap based user management tool we've been using for schools | 17:12 |
| joerg | vmlintu, is that web based | 17:12 |
| joerg | ? | 17:12 |
| vmlintu | joerg: yep | 17:12 |
| vmlintu | joerg: hopefully we get it out before lucid | 17:13 |
| joerg | that is php based? | 17:13 |
| vmlintu | ruby on rails | 17:13 |
| joerg | good | 17:14 |
| joerg | that should mean it has a clear MVC structure and is easy to extend ;) | 17:14 |
| joerg | in contrast to these php things which do great things but mostly have bad code | 17:15 |
| vmlintu | we have an old perl catalyst based tool for user management that is now replaced with this | 17:15 |
| vmlintu | We be using it to handle some hundred schools with 25-30k users | 17:16 |
| vmlintu | we'll | 17:16 |
| vmlintu | by default it'll be using openldap + mit kerberos as databases | 17:18 |
| joerg | is there a demo/preview of it? | 17:19 |
| vmlintu | there's no public demo yet | 17:19 |
| joerg | vmlintu, ok....anyway, I am quite sure that we could integrate it in myserv somehow.... | 17:23 |
| joerg | if we extend it to authenticate using CAS, we could load it in an iframe and we'd be done | 17:24 |
| joerg | that's what I am doing with roundcube webmail at the moment | 17:25 |
| vmlintu | we are now running rubycas-server with kerberos to provide cas | 17:25 |
| vmlintu | we've been doing some testing with oauth to provide rest+oauth api for external applications to fetch user information | 17:27 |
| joerg | vmlintu, why do external apps need to talk to your user management tool? :P | 17:28 |
| vmlintu | There are some educational applications running in the web that need user information like class level, pupil/teacher, groups.. now they need to import the data using files or setup ldap connections that require firewall changes.. | 17:30 |
| joerg | opensocial is the way to go :P | 17:30 |
| vmlintu | opensocial uses rest+oauth :) | 17:30 |
| joerg | yes | 17:30 |
| vmlintu | implementing opensocial is just 100x more work than simple rest+oauth api | 17:31 |
| joerg | no, it is not. | 17:31 |
| joerg | it is 100x less work | 17:31 |
| vmlintu | ? | 17:31 |
| vmlintu | rest+oauth was like 30 lines of code with ror | 17:31 |
| joerg | because the os rest api is well documented and tested - and there are lots of apps already implementing it. | 17:32 |
| joerg | well, and? | 17:32 |
| joerg | don't reinvent the wheel :P | 17:32 |
| joerg | use the structure/methods that opensocial uses | 17:33 |
| joerg | in your rest api | 17:33 |
| joerg | choose the methods (e.g. to retrieve user/group info) and implement them in your rest api | 17:33 |
| joerg | you don't have to fully implement open social | 17:34 |
| vmlintu | that's what we pretty much did | 17:34 |
| joerg | yeah, then it is fine. | 17:34 |
| vmlintu | I just wouldn't call it opensocial unless it's the whole thing | 17:34 |
| joerg | ok | 17:34 |
| vmlintu | the user management tool won't implement any of these, anyway | 17:35 |
| joerg | and I just wanted to say: don't invent another api :P | 17:35 |
| vmlintu | If we do any of that, it'll be a separate application | 17:35 |
| vmlintu | google's using saml and that's way more requested feature than opensocial | 17:36 |
| joerg | sure | 17:37 |
| joerg | but I am not sure if it takes care of all the other nice things | 17:37 |
| joerg | like user/app data | 17:38 |
| joerg | friendships / pictures etc. | 17:38 |
| joerg | myserv is using it to provide a way to integrate gadgets | 17:39 |
| vmlintu | friendships are not on our agenda really | 17:39 |
| joerg | using javascript / iframes | 17:39 |
| joerg | he he | 17:39 |
| joerg | well, I have implemented friendships | 17:39 |
| joerg | because I think it can be helpful | 17:40 |
| joerg | if you can share files and/or collaborate with a group of people you trust. | 17:40 |
| vmlintu | we are focusing on the k12 segment, so especially the grades 0-6 don't really benefit from that | 17:42 |
| vmlintu | we have been thinking about "pre-defined friendships" that would be defined by teachers instead of pupils | 17:43 |
| vmlintu | harassment by excluding people from group is a real problem in schools, so the tools need to address that | 17:44 |
| joerg | hmm | 17:49 |
| vmlintu | Or maybe a facebook application could be used to take care of all that.. Everyone's using it anyway, so bringing information from school to it would be probably easiest.. | 17:49 |
| joerg | you don't have to be friends with everybody, right? :) | 17:49 |
| joerg | maybe finland is a bit more socialistic :) | 17:49 |
| vmlintu | in class setting everyone should get along with others, I think | 17:50 |
| joerg | yes | 17:51 |
| joerg | so there is a group called "class 5a" | 17:51 |
| joerg | but if lisa is closer friends with alice and linda it is perfectly okay, isn't it? | 17:52 |
| vmlintu | I've talked about that here and the opinion seems to be that in that case they are most probably already using facebook or something else for their own stuff | 17:53 |
| vmlintu | and nobody is going to trust a school-run system for their personal stuff | 17:53 |
| vmlintu | but like I said, we don't have real plans for this.. | 17:54 |
| joerg | why not? | 17:54 |
| joerg | my idea in the long run is to replace facebook and all that stuff | 17:54 |
| vmlintu | you mean trust? | 17:54 |
| joerg | students have an account at their school | 17:55 |
| joerg | they need it anyway | 17:55 |
| joerg | they usually have their friends at the school | 17:55 |
| joerg | why can't they share (private) stuff there? | 17:55 |
| joerg | e.g. fotos | 17:55 |
| vmlintu | not all their friends are in the same school | 17:55 |
| joerg | I want ppl to say: well, I have a great tool at school, why do I need facebook? :) | 17:56 |
| joerg | that's true | 17:56 |
| joerg | but for those who are I want to be better than facebook | 17:57 |
| vmlintu | it'd most probably work for school related stuff, but I really have doubts about private stuff | 17:57 |
| vmlintu | (actually here facebook is not dominating, but an older local competitor) | 17:57 |
| joerg | because I think if a web portal (run by the school) get's a social meeting point for the students, it means that they identify a lot more with school | 17:58 |
| vmlintu | that thinking is loosing ground over here - the new thinking is that everybody should be able to use their own tools and the school's system should be able to collect the information from all over the net | 17:59 |
| vmlintu | meaning that if someone wants to use blogger for bloggin and someone else uses facebook for blogging, it should work | 18:00 |
| vmlintu | personal learning environments are something in that direction | 18:01 |
| joerg | lool | 18:04 |
| joerg | a lesson has 45 minutes here | 18:04 |
| joerg | if the project is to write a blog about something and people are using 5-10 different tools | 18:05 |
| joerg | and the teacher only knows one of them | 18:05 |
| joerg | that means 2/3 of the time will be wasted on technical stuff | 18:05 |
| joerg | instead of producing content. | 18:06 |
| joerg | we have had that issue a lot of times. | 18:06 |
| joerg | it doesn't work. | 18:06 |
| joerg | that's why most of the schools tell their students and teachers: | 18:06 |
| joerg | we have ONE tool to make a presentation and that is called openoffice.org impress | 18:07 |
| Ahmuck | i agree. setting the tools for an organization is the only way to go | 18:07 |
| joerg | and if people don't have it at home, they can get a copy of it at school | 18:07 |
| joerg | on their flash drive | 18:07 |
| joerg | and if they prefer powerpoint | 18:07 |
| joerg | they can use it at home | 18:07 |
| vmlintu | the idea behind ple's is that the platform aggregates the content using rss/atom/whatever.. | 18:08 |
| joerg | and it is their responsability that it runs with openoffice | 18:08 |
| joerg | yes, I understand. | 18:08 |
| joerg | maybe in finland things are different. | 18:08 |
| alkisg | joerg: where is that? | 18:08 |
| joerg | but here, teachers are happy if they more or less know ONE tool | 18:09 |
| joerg | there is no money for system administration and maintenance | 18:09 |
| joerg | and teachers are not educated in IT concepts | 18:09 |
| joerg | alkisg, germany | 18:09 |
| alkisg | Nice, I didn't know openoffice was so widespread there... | 18:10 |
| joerg | alkisg, I don't say it is wide spread | 18:11 |
| joerg | it is up to the school | 18:12 |
| joerg | I am freelancing for an organization that takes care of the IT infrastructure of 200 schools here | 18:13 |
| joerg | the townships usually have contracts with us | 18:13 |
| joerg | and they pay a certain amount per student/per year to us | 18:13 |
| joerg | of course schools can buy a MS office license from microsoft | 18:14 |
| joerg | that's up to them. | 18:14 |
| joerg | but we don't spend a single cent on proprietary software we provide to the schools | 18:15 |
| joerg | open office is good enough. | 18:15 |
| joerg | and everybody can have it | 18:15 |
| joerg | no matter if daddy is a rich manager or a poor worker :P | 18:15 |
| joerg | and well, the PLE stuff is nice | 18:17 |
| joerg | but that would mean students and teachers (!) would need to have an understanding of the technologies. | 18:17 |
| vmlintu | ok, I'm back.. | 18:25 |
| vmlintu | over here quite a few schools are using moodle, but not all.. some use blogger or other blogging services and some use other learning environments | 18:26 |
| vmlintu | and I've been hearing people talking about mahara lately | 18:27 |
| vmlintu | that means that if we provide schools a portal, it'll be definitely different from the tools they are already using and the next school won't agree with the tools anyway | 18:27 |
| vmlintu | that's why we are not doing any end-user services, but only administration tools and backend services for the actualy tools used by the end-users | 18:28 |
| vmlintu | an aggregator that would collect content from different tools could be a solution here | 18:30 |
| vmlintu | So basically the solution would be that the school has a default set of tools (for example moodle + blogger + teachertube) that is taught, but you can use other tools if you know them already | 18:31 |
| joerg | hehe | 18:33 |
| joerg | schools here never heard of moodle mostly :P | 18:33 |
| joerg | apart from that, moodle speaks CAS and can use an ldap db | 18:33 |
| joerg | so wouldn't be a problem to integrate that in a myserv portal | 18:33 |
| vmlintu | moodle is not exactly that great tool, imho | 18:36 |
| vmlintu | it's better than the old competitors that it replaced, but it's way too teacher-centric | 18:37 |
| joerg | most of that stuff is simply overkill for our schools | 18:40 |
| joerg | they want to upload files somewhere | 18:40 |
| joerg | and they want to write e-mails | 18:40 |
| vmlintu | here some are starting to use dropbox to upload files | 18:41 |
| joerg | and the very advanced users use a wiki to collect results | 18:41 |
| joerg | one out of 50 teachers :D | 18:41 |
| joerg | you can do that | 18:41 |
| joerg | if you have enough bandwidth | 18:41 |
| vmlintu | what kind of connections the schools have there? | 18:42 |
| joerg | with an ISDN line or a slow DSL you know what happens | 18:42 |
| joerg | if 25 users upload their documents | 18:42 |
| joerg | you have to ask people to start uploading 30 minutes before the lesson ends ;) | 18:42 |
| joerg | some still have ISDN (128k up/dn) | 18:43 |
| vmlintu | that can be a problem then.. I thought that 2/1 adsl is bad.. | 18:43 |
| joerg | DSL 2048k dn/196k up | 18:43 |
| joerg | schools having 512k up are very lucky | 18:44 |
| vmlintu | here many of the schools have 100Mbps fiber to city network that has 10 or 20Mbps internet connection | 18:46 |
| vmlintu | some have 100Mbps internet | 18:46 |
| vmlintu | it seems like the background is quite different - we have tons of existing tools that should be supported and more bandwidth - you have no existing tools and less bandwidth | 18:47 |
| vmlintu | there are already schools that are using google apps for all their classroom work.. | 18:47 |
| joerg | vmlintu, anyway....we more or less have the same concept | 19:26 |
| joerg | but we focus on both local and external services | 19:26 |
| vmlintu | yes, the basic concept is pretty much the same | 19:26 |
| joerg | I see the myserv portal as the integrator: it provides a CAS auth server, users can create a profile there, users can found groups | 19:26 |
| joerg | and in their user and groups profiles they can do "things" | 19:27 |
| joerg | like adding one of the apps you mentioned | 19:27 |
| joerg | like an externally hosted blog | 19:27 |
| joerg | or wiki | 19:27 |
| joerg | or a vocabulary trainer | 19:28 |
| joerg | whatever. | 19:28 |
| vmlintu | who creates the user accounts? | 19:28 |
| joerg | the only important thing is that the app "speaks" oauth/cas and opensocial | 19:28 |
| joerg | if it wants to retrieve information about anything | 19:29 |
| joerg | the admins do | 19:29 |
| joerg | django has a nice admin interface | 19:30 |
| joerg | if the users are in ldap, we don't have a solution yet. | 19:30 |
| joerg | they would need to use whatever ldap user management tool | 19:30 |
| joerg | a primary school won't need ldap | 19:31 |
| joerg | that's why I don't want to marry ldap :P but only provide is as an option. | 19:32 |
| vmlintu | we are using ldap for every single school | 19:32 |
| joerg | lol | 19:32 |
| joerg | we have primary schools with ten user accounts here | 19:32 |
| joerg | for what reason should they run ldap? | 19:32 |
| vmlintu | setting up a system without ldap takes way more time than with it | 19:32 |
| vmlintu | as all schools use the same user management tool, we can support them better | 19:33 |
| === joerg__ is now known as joerg | ||
| joerg | sorry | 19:45 |
| joerg | vmlintu, we don't have resources to support schools managing users :P | 19:46 |
| joerg | and if they have ten users and only use that web app | 19:46 |
| joerg | we won't run and maintain an ldap installation for them | 19:47 |
| joerg | it is just another thing to maintain and keep running | 19:47 |
| joerg | and another DB to backup | 19:47 |
| joerg | and the advantage is: none | 19:48 |
| vmlintu | we are actually taking care of all the server management, so the schools don't even have to know that they have ldap.. | 19:48 |
| joerg | yeah | 19:49 |
| joerg | exactly | 19:49 |
| vmlintu | and training for user management tools is part of the service.. and helpdesk they can call | 19:49 |
| joerg | they won't know it | 19:50 |
| joerg | so there is no need to do that additional work | 19:50 |
| joerg | will not be of any use for them. | 19:50 |
| joerg | the web portal has user and group management in the postgres DB | 19:50 |
| vmlintu | what additional work do you mean? | 19:50 |
| joerg | that's perfectly ok for a system with ten users and no additional services | 19:50 |
| joerg | additional work means: setting up slapd, running slapd, backing up slapd | 19:51 |
| vmlintu | yes, in some cases ldap does not bring any features that would be needed, but in our case running some systems without ldap would make everything much harder | 19:52 |
| joerg | hmm | 19:52 |
| vmlintu | Now we have tons of identical servers that can be managed exactly the same way | 19:52 |
| vmlintu | and slapd installation is fully automated with everything else | 19:53 |
| joerg | and we will have 10-20 servers with a big ldap DB | 19:53 |
| joerg | and 130 servers with just the webapp | 19:53 |
| joerg | and a DB to backup | 19:53 |
| vmlintu | we are using the same backup system for all the servers with identical settings | 19:54 |
| joerg | probably these 130 servers will just be one or two big root servers in some data center | 19:54 |
| vmlintu | and now that I remember, we need to be running kerberos anyway for the desktop, so ldap comes with it | 19:55 |
| joerg | finland must be a rich country :P | 19:56 |
| joerg | how many schools do you support? | 19:56 |
| vmlintu | over 100 now | 19:57 |
| joerg | ok. how many full time jobs do you have for that? | 19:57 |
| vmlintu | setting up a server with automatic tools takes about 30 minutes now.. with ldap+kerberos+web tools+desktop+ltsp | 19:58 |
| joerg | ok | 19:59 |
| joerg | mostly you just enter the domain name and a root password :D | 19:59 |
| vmlintu | we install also the networks and thin clients and give training to teachers and pupils | 20:00 |
| joerg | just tell me how many full time jobs you have to support these 100 schools. | 20:00 |
| vmlintu | 5 | 20:01 |
| joerg | you see | 20:01 |
| joerg | we have 200 schools and two. | 20:01 |
| joerg | actually 150 over years | 20:02 |
| vmlintu | what I'm trying to say is that if some of the servers didn't have ldap, we'd need one or two more to support all.. | 20:02 |
| joerg | but now there's a new contract with some townships | 20:02 |
| joerg | and we will have 200 very soon | 20:02 |
| joerg | because that's the only way to hold the 2nd full time job. | 20:02 |
| vmlintu | what are the thing you charge for? | 20:03 |
| vmlintu | things | 20:03 |
| vmlintu | I've understood that you don't provide the desktop itself? | 20:04 |
| joerg | put a hard disk image on and old computer | 20:04 |
| joerg | driving there | 20:04 |
| joerg | setup the "server" there | 20:04 |
| joerg | driving away and hoping that the hard disk will never fail :) | 20:04 |
| joerg | it's basically just setting up a filtered proxy, mail, file and print server | 20:05 |
| joerg | and taking that machine and bring it there. | 20:05 |
| joerg | no clients :P | 20:06 |
| vmlintu | ok, that's quite different from what we do.. we don't provide mail and pretty much nobody wants filtering | 20:06 |
| joerg | lol? | 20:06 |
| vmlintu | linux thin client desktops are the main thing | 20:06 |
| joerg | so people are allowed to download porn and so on? :D | 20:06 |
| joerg | we MUST filter the internet, because law requires that. | 20:08 |
| vmlintu | I think the reason is that all the filters are so bad that they just encourage the kids to find ways around them.. | 20:08 |
| joerg | absolutely true | 20:08 |
| joerg | we use squidguard with blacklists | 20:09 |
| joerg | it is not that bad | 20:09 |
| vmlintu | all the blacklists we have tried also give a lot of false positives | 20:09 |
| joerg | why? | 20:10 |
| vmlintu | teaching russian is not fun when half of the sites are blocked.. | 20:10 |
| joerg | hmm | 20:10 |
| vmlintu | a lot of video and image sites are also listed | 20:10 |
| joerg | nobody teaches russian here ^^ | 20:10 |
| vmlintu | we need to support russian keyboards on most systems.. | 20:10 |
| joerg | didn't know that there's such a deep "friendship" between finnish and russians ^^ | 20:11 |
| joerg | I thought you hate them | 20:12 |
| vmlintu | and one of the worst filters filtered all the sites that had "sex" in the name.. it just means number 6 in swedish.. | 20:12 |
| joerg | I know | 20:14 |
| joerg | that's why we just use these blacklists and that's it | 20:14 |
| joerg | we are not filtering for any keywords or so | 20:15 |
| vmlintu | we have now more or less working blacklist for the ones who want it, but most schools have unfiltered access | 20:17 |
| vmlintu | btw, have you checked the tools like elgg or buddypress? | 20:18 |
| joerg | well | 20:19 |
| joerg | elgg yes | 20:19 |
| joerg | didn't like the code | 20:20 |
| joerg | didn't know how to make that run opensocial apps | 20:20 |
| joerg | auth with CAS | 20:20 |
| joerg | and stuff | 20:20 |
| joerg | these tools all don't provide that pluggable concept | 20:24 |
| joerg | the idea of a big integrator portal | 20:24 |
| joerg | I want to be able to say: today we are running our photo blogging app locally, tomorrow we have enough bandwidth and it will be hosted externally without the users noticing anything. | 20:26 |
| joerg | these tools are all very nice as a standalone solution. | 20:26 |
| vmlintu | what's your plan, do you plan on supporting multiple schools/organisations from a single installation? | 20:27 |
| joerg | but they don't provide the flexiblity of being the portal that is like a bolt tying all these already existing apps together | 20:28 |
| joerg | yes, that might happen in the future. | 20:28 |
| joerg | but not for now. | 20:29 |
| vmlintu | ok | 20:29 |
| joerg | but I could imagine that there's a library app for example hosted centrally | 20:29 |
| joerg | there are a lot of good open source opac / library tools | 20:29 |
| joerg | that could be on a central server | 20:30 |
| joerg | only one instance | 20:30 |
| vmlintu | I mean the portal - if you are going to run single instance to run the different portals for 100 schools if the network allows it | 20:30 |
| joerg | using oauth/cas they'd be logged in automatically | 20:30 |
| joerg | and could manage their books there | 20:30 |
| joerg | thinking that's "their" library | 20:30 |
| joerg | but in fact, they are just feeding a big catalogue. | 20:31 |
| joerg | yes, as I said. | 20:31 |
| joerg | we gonna do that | 20:31 |
| joerg | as long as the bandwidth is so bad that we have to run local servers. | 20:31 |
| joerg | if it is getting better the school will simply have a VPN router and that's it. | 20:32 |
| vmlintu | ok, it sounds like the "portal" part that connects the applications is the same for both.. | 20:39 |
| vmlintu | user management is different | 20:39 |
| vmlintu | providing any end-user services is not in our interest, so having the other portal features is not something we need | 20:41 |
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