Subject: Re: [vserver] Roadmap and Future ...
From: Ed W <lists@wildgooses.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:57:54 +0000



Herbert Poetzl wrote:
> One proposal I have (which was actually tested over
> the years, and seems to work - at least for me) would
> be that Companies using Linux-VServer get some kind
> of 'Service Contract' with a Developer (which is a
> good thing anyway), ranging between a single hour 
> per month up to a day per week, for, let's say 100 
> EUR per hour, which can be consumed or not, where in
> the latter case, this time will be spent on general
> Linux-VServer development and testing. (if you like
> that idea, please contact me and I'm certain we can
> arrange something)
>   

I'm a (very small) business using vservers and I am extremely keen to
see this project survive because I really don't want to have to switch
to a different project since I do rather like vserver!!  I think there
are several other businesses using vserver here also who have raised
their heads in the past (obviously many use the project, but don't read
the mailing list!)

I will happily buy a Service Contract.  However, I think you need to do
a little more work as to how this is all going to work. 

In the past I have tried to get a few other people to bulk buy work and
the issue I think is that businesses (and individuals) really have to
define exactly what they are getting when they spend some money (at
least anything over pocket money prices). 

Also in general it's also a better plan to "pick pockets" for pennies
and pickup lots of pennies than it is to look for a few large sponsors. 
Which is to say that perhaps IBM will buy you tomorrow, but until then
my personal pain threshold might be very much somewhere between 100 -
1000EU/year, so you really need more than just *my* money to make this
work.  Please think about what you can "sell" me that I can put down on
my books and capitalise in some way as "goodwill" or "research" or
whatever.  Also think about how you can interest the 100x as many
smaller users to contribute as well as the mega businesses?

Also I think this is a good time for vserver to come out and start to
look like a really professional project.  That's not a critique of
anything specific, just a call for:
* Can someone on the list help theme the website and make it look even
more spiffy? (Click into virtualbox/vmware/xen, etc website and they
look pretty professional. Vserver has great content, but could benefit
from a slick front page to sell "the brand")
* Some additional high level "What is this project" would be desirable. 
Remember this is for the PHB types, not for "me"
* Mythtv - http://www.mythtv.org/ - seems to be an example of a fairly
big project which has managed to gather some community help to get that
"corporate look" front website and still have a decent documentation
wiki behind the scenes
* Documentation path for the newer users to get started.  Which is to
say there are some REALLY great docs on the wiki, but they aren't always
joined together in a nice path to lead the user down the getting started
process.  Again, this hopefully is a volunteer project?



If I were "sponsoring" something then I would personally like to see
more of the following:

- List of sub projects on the go and their progress.  (Some ability to
vote on their priority would be nice also)
- Bug tracker (however, this can be a lot of work to manage, so need to
give some thought on efficient process)
- Git (or similar distributed VCS repo) which is the primary source for
latest patches (I must not have given this enough thought because I
still can't see why a DVCS of some sort wouldn't help you do the magic
that you do?!)
- Dedication to pushing parts of vserver "upstream" and transparency on
how that's working out(!)  It might not be easy or even possible, but I
think it really needs to be a goal nonetheless?
- Defined prices for "premium support". Right now we get such excellent
support on the mailing list that it's hard to imagine what you could do
here..?

I'm not too sure what I would actually want to "buy" (as opposed to
"sponsor") right now.  I don't have a regular need for "support", other
than discovering one off issues that I need help with (likely only at
the point of purchase of a new machine / new setup, etc)?


> I think what we need most in the near future is a
> new, well tested stable release, which can be adopted
> by distributions and which will be maintained for
> a reasonable amount of time, and that's actually what
> I'm working on whenever time permits.
>   

Tick - works for me.  Also the more "professional" the whole project
looks the more likely distros are to use it.  Equally the more distros
offer it the more likely it is to snowball and increase in popularity, etc

> New features will mainly include adaptations of 'old'
> features, lost and forgotten over time, and improve-
> ments on the mainline integration (like cgroups and
> such), as well as some virtualizations to simplify
> handling and make it more guest friendly.
>   

Can I recommend a "baseline" set of features which are well documented
in an objective kind of way.

So for example if we were to boldly assume one service per vserver then
we could have a documented setup per service.  Given that the creation
of vservers is largely scriptable, this could also lead to some sort of
automated testing for for some of the more problematic features?

I'm not critiquing the docs here.  The point is more that as a technical
user I can read the "flower page", figure out what I need to get
something done and apply it.  However, less technical people just want
to know, "set the IP here, set the netmask here, start it up by running XYZ"

> One upcoming mainline feature which I will try to
> integrate as soon as it is available is the check-
> pointing and resume functionality.
>   

Oh, cool!

On the other hand, can you describe what this does that LVM snapshots
don't do? 

> I also plan to do a web frontend to control basic
> functionality and a minimalistic host distribution
> to run Linux-VServer Guests on, but I have no idea 
> when I will find time for that.
>   

Sounds like a good project to give some space to on the website and let
people contribute?  I recently found Balsamiq Mockups -
http://www.balsamiq.com/ - and quite like it for quick sketches of
interfaces.

Please definitely consider shoving it up on github or similar though.  I
find it *sooo* helpful to be able to fork these web projects and apply
my own customisations whilst still being able to track mainline

> Finally, as usual, input here is welcome, so if you
> have an isolation feature you want to see really soon,
>   

For the simple level I use it for, vserver is just pefect already!  Only
get something out which is "stable" in the sense that you call it that!


Thanks for everything vserver!!

Ed W