[Dextrose] Sugar Server project initiation announce

[Aleksey Lim]

Hi all,

In fact, the project started three weeks ago but for now some of its core
purposes became more clear, ie, ready for announcing.

Some of major ideas:

* Common project within Sugar Labs to keep core development process
  in one place;
* It is not about configuring and supporting the whole server at school
  from scratch but about having a set of tough, local, doing its job well
  modules that might be included/excluded in downstream solutions;
* Friendly support of customization on purpose in downstream products:
  * Modularizing, when components might be included on purpose to fulfill
    local needs,
  * Not patching in downstream but supplementing the upstream, e.g.,
    install upstream packages and just add new packages with local
    customization or overrides (but not overriding installed files to let
    PMS work smooth) of upstream,
  * Provide useful API for components;
* Be a GNU/Linux distribution agnostic, different deployment might
  decide to use different GNU/Linux distributions.
* It is not only about supporting XO laptops but about any Sugar based
  environments;
* Up to 1000 students per server.

Why not improving existed OLPC XS:

* its functionality is scattered among several projects and many of
  shell and python scripts
* some of architectural decisions make XS not localized app on the
  server, e.g., using incron, external httpd (for not too high load),
  creating local users for handling backups
* Sugar Server is not about configuring servers from scratch, but about
  having smart and local tools that might be used in downstream on
  purpose, eg, moodle and puppet are not a core of Sugar Server

More info about Sugar Server architectural ideas might be find here:

    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Server/Architecture

The home page is:

    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Server

Current plans are:

    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Server/1/Roadmap
    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Server/1/Todo
    http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Server/1/Components

Source on git.sugarlabs.org:

    http://git.sugarlabs.org/server

If you share the same vision on core purposes behind Sugar Server,
you are welcome!

-- 
Aleksey