Re: mlton.org server

One benefit of registering as a non-profit is that you could use the
full Google Apps suite for free. With it you get email and Google
Groups at the @mlton.org domain (and docs, sites, calendar, xmpp,
etc). Without having non-profit status, you are limited to 10 users
and can't create public mailing lists @mlton.org (it has to be at the
generic @googlegroups.com domain, or elsewhere if you don't want to
use Google's mailing list system).

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/nonprofit/index.html


Adam


On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 09:48, Matthew Fluet <[email protected]> wrote:
> Steve,
>
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Steve Sims <[email protected]> wrote:
>> As you both know, MLton is very important to our company, so if there is
>> anything we can do to assist with some of these logistical issues we would
>> be happy to.  This might be in the form of work on tasks we might be able to
>> perform such as work on the website or financial contributions if you decide
>> to go with paid services rather than something free such as SourceForge.
>
> Thanks for the vote of support!
>
>> I guess these changes would have a couple of primary goals in my mind:
>> 1)  Remove administration burdens from MLton developers so the time they
>> have can be focused on the fun stuff of actually working on the compiler.
>> 2)  Better promote MLton so that more people learn about it, try it, use it,
>> and want to contribute to it.
>
> I think that the goal is more heavily weighted toward (1) than (2),
> though anything that contributes towards (2) would be good.
>
>> I do not have first hand experience as a user or administrator of
>> SourceForge, so if you have used it and liked it then most likely it would
>> be good for goal 1 above.  I'm not sure about goal 2 however.  It has always
>> been my impression that SourceForge is so focused on developers that it does
>> not present well to the outside world.  My perception is that a project has
>> more credibility if it has its own website (e.g. mlton.org) verses a project
>> page on SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/mlton/).  Perhaps I
>> just do not understand how it works though.  Is there some way to use
>> SourceForge to stealthily host mlton.org as opposed to appearing as a
>> project within SourceForge?
>
> I believe so.  Indeed, as you noted, Stephen moved his homepage to
> Google sites, yet it advertises itself on the URL bar as "sweeks.com".
>  But, your point is well taken.
>
> A little history: Prior to 2002, MLton's public presence was hosted
> under sourcelight.com (which was different from the current
> sourcelight.com) and before that under research.nj.nec.com.
> web/cvs/mail moved to SourceForge in April 2002
> (http://mlton.org/pipermail/mlton/2002-April/021730.html); by
> September 2002, web had been moved to another service
> (http://mlton.org/pipermail/mlton/2002-September/022332.html); one
> reason was not being able to get web statistics.  It was in October
> 2003 that web/cvs/mail were moved to a new machine
> (http://mlton.org/pipermail/mlton/2003-October/024493.html); some
> disruptions in cvs and mail services were the motivating factors.
>
> So, it is true that we weren't entirely happy with SourceForge.  And
> it is hard to say whether the situation would be significantly
> improved now.  There haven't been (m)any votes of confidence in
> SourceForge by those who have responded to the thread.
>
>> If you wanted to explore alternatives, the first question would be whether
>> you go with paid services or free services.
>> For free services (web option), Google sites is pretty good.  I see that
>> Stephen is now hosting his personal site there.
>> There are a lot of inexpensive web hosting options also.  If you prefer the
>> content-management-as-a-service route, squarespace.com offers something
>> somewhat like Google sites -- you do all the updating of the website from a
>> web browser.  Alternatively, you can roll-your own.  Our company uses
>> linode.com who offers a linux virtual machine starting at $20.  Under this
>> route you manage the web server yourself.   We of course use SML for our
>> content management :)  We use ML Server pages for our external site
>> (www.reactive-systems.com) and SMLServer for our internal intranet.  Both
>> work great.  Once it is set up, its pretty easy to maintain, and of course
>> it would be good PR to be using SML to implement the site.   I can give more
>> details if you decide to consider this route.  If you do, we could help get
>> it set up and with the porting of the current site (which as Matthew points
>> out is not going to be trivial no matter which new framework you go with).
>> As for svn and email discussion lists, as I said I don't have experience
>> with SourceForge, so that might work fine.  There are commercial
>> alternatives.  We host our own svn repository, but we had done a bit of
>> investigation of companies that offer svn hosting.  There are a bunch of
>> them, some very inexpensive.  For Mailman hosting there seem to be some, but
>> not as many providers.  From some quick Google searching, I could not
>> determine if the hosting services allow you to have the archive on your own
>> site.  In my mind this would be the biggest advantage of such a service over
>> SourceForge.  That is the archive would just appear on mlton.org (as it does
>> now) instead of at SourceForge.
>
> All good points.  I believe that we are essentially in the linux
> virtual machine solution right now, administering our own webserver
> (including wiki), mailing list, and svn.  I don't believe that it was
> difficult to setup, but its the maintenance 8 years later that is
> becoming problematic.  Perhaps its simply that there wasn't enough
> maintenance in the intervening time, but I think that is part of
> Stephen's "5-year timeframe" requirement --- it is hard to predict
> when someone will need to shift focus.
>
> For example, mail right now is the biggest "administration".  Perhaps
> it made sense at the time, but there is a white list between the
> {mlton,mlton-user}@mlton.org addresses and the mailman queues.  That's
> why you have occasionally seen "Resent by:" e-mails from me, as I
> discover e-mail addresses that weren't on the white list.  Meanwhile,
> *everything* filtered out by the white list is sent to Stephen and
> myself (for me, to this GMail address), but this has caused GMail's
> spam filter to learn that nearly everything sent to me by way of
> *@mlton.org is spam; as a consequence, I've missed some legitimate
> e-mails and requests.  And as much overhead as that is, it seems to
> pale in comparison to deciphering the mlton.org mail setup and
> changing it.  In any case, my vote going forward is to switch the
> mailing lists to subscriber-only posting.  I think the anyone allowed
> to post decision was motivated by the fact that we ask bug reports to
> be sent to [email protected], so it made sense to make sure that such
> reports were received and not bounced back.  That would suggest that
> we also go to an issue tracker of some form.
>
> Also, I do think the mail archives are important.  Very often, I point
> back at old mail discussions to explain/justify design decisions.
> Though, if we weren't happy with the web-archive of a mailing list
> service, as long as we had access to the raw archive, then we could
> recreate the "http://mlton.org/pipermail/" structure.  Indeed, it
> might be a good idea even if we were happy with the web-archive of a
> mailing list service.
>
> In my mind, another means of reducing administrative overhead is by
> consolidating on one hosting service, rather than distributing around
> over multiple services.
>
>> This topic is related to something I have been thinking about for a while,
>> namely the promotion of Standard ML in general through standardml.org.
>>  Stephen, I see you are listed as project manager there.  Are you at all
>> involved with that any more?   Since it has not been updated recently, I
>> worry that newcomers might mistakenly get the impression that not much is
>> going on with the language any more.  I think that it is really a selling
>> point of MLton that it implements a formally defined language that has a
>> number of high-quality compilers that (more or less) conform to the same
>> standard.  So it seems to me that promotion of Standard ML in general is
>> also good for MLton.
>>
>> Would it ever make sense to form something analogous to the Apache
>> Foundation to promote Standard ML?  Perhaps the "Standard ML Foundation"?
>> The idea would be for it to provide the types of infrastructure support that
>> this thread is discussing for the different SML-related projects (different
>> compilers, standardml.org, etc.).  For each of the services brought up (web,
>> email discussion list, svn), one account would probably be adequate to
>> support a number of different SML projects.   A foundation would provide a
>> vehicle for companies such as ours to cleanly donate towards this type of
>> infrastructure.   The company would give the money to the foundation and
>> then the foundation would purchase the services to support the various
>> activities.  I believe some of the service providers also offer discounts to
>> non-profits.
>
> Certainly an interesting idea.  As much as I appreciate the importance
> of the social/community side of things, I must say that the whole
> engineering of such is a mystery to me.  Not to mention the whole
> legal/logistical side of such a foundation.
>
>> Whatever you guys decide we would like to support you how we can.  We
>> appreciate the work of all the MLton developers.
>
> Thanks.
>
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