COmanage-Dev Call 23-Jan-09
*Attending*
Heather Flanagan, Stanford (chair)
Jim Leous, Penn State
Chris Hubing, Penn State
Digant Kasundra, Stanford
Steven Carmody, Brown
Michael Gettes, MIT
Ann West, EDUCAUSE/Internet2
RL "Bob" Morgan, U. Washington
Ken Klingenstein, Internet2
Renee Frost, Internet2
Steve Olshansky, Internet2
=> Agenda item for next call: Targeted testers for Alpha release
*New Action Items*
[AI] (Digant) will coordinate with Scotty about remaining work to complete for the Alpha release.
*Carry Over Action Items*
[AI] (Ken) will email a draft notification about the release to the COmanage-dev list when the release is ready. (The development team) will verify this draft for accuracy before it is sent to key alpha users/testers.
[AI] (Ken) will talk with Lois about Fluid involvement in improving the COmanage GUI, scheduling it for later in the year.
[AI] (Heather) will develop a COmanage roadmap and place it on the wiki.
[AI] (Chris) will set up two separate instances of a COmanage demo (one for Ken and one for public) and send instructions to the COmanage-dev list on how to operate the demo.
[AI] (SteveO) and (Digant) will work on setting up a subversion repository at Internet2.
[AI] (Chris) will contact Atlassian and try to obtain a timetable for Jira domestication. (Ken) will provide some wording for this communication with Atlassian.
[AI] (Bob) will send links to the group on the invitation problem.
[AI] (Ken) will send a note to his contact at OOI to explore their level interest (after the COmanage alpha is ready).
[AI] (Ken) will ping Frank Siebenlist from Argonne National Laboratory, who is interested in COmanage.
[AI] (Scotty) will send out to the group a list of APIs for the Domestication Guide.
[AI] (Digant) will create COmanage video #2, when the improved Collabmin GUI is available.
Update from Scotty
Heather reported that Scotty has some partially completed work to hand off to Digant.
[AI] (Digant) will coordinate with Scotty about remaining work to complete for the Alpha release.
Design Framework
Digant reviewed the COmanage manifesto, which establishes guiding principles and a broad view and direction for the future.
https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/COmanage/COmanage+Manifesto
Key points:
- COmanage should be somewhat customizable but not 100% customizable.
- A goal should be to make COmanage usable with Red Hat, not just with Debian.
- There should be a repository of domesticated applications. It will require a commitment to keep domesticated applications up to date. Those interested in software will hopefully provide resources.
- Every domesticated application would have its own tab in the UI. A collabmin would be able to configure items specific to that application.
- A hooking mechanism will be provided for non-domesticated applications.
Digant noted that the approach in the manifesto is not a radical change in direction, but it will require much rewriting of code for the Beta version.
Michael suggested that it would be helpful for the manifesto to include diagrams of relationships.
TomB noted that this use of tabs reminds him of Protege, from the Stanford Medical Institute. Bob mentioned a connection with Microsoft SMS snap-in.
It was noted that the Fluid people might have some methodological expertise to offer in designing how the tabs work, in addition to their UI expertise.
Steven asked about installing COmanage on Windows servers; he noted that the Shibboleth project had hired someone to address this.
Steven asked about the process people will use to wire COmanage up to their local infrastructure. Digant answered that much of that would be handled via the tabs in the UI.
Digant noted that the COmanage Alpha release would come with an IDP and SP. There would not be a requirement to use the IDP provided; it would be possible to specify a federation.
Ken: GENI is extremely interested in COmanage. Steven is going next week to Cambridge to talk with the GENI people.
TomB: At U. Chicago, there is a "committee in a box" concept. The 3 most important applications for this are Sympa, Confluence and Microsoft Exchange Calendar. There is a diverse set of start-up provisioning requirements. COmanage development should keep in mind what architecture is needed for interfacing with various applications.
Steven: If the COmanage instance includes Grouper, and COmanage includes hooks that allows Grouper to replicate group definitions into Active Directory, then perhaps the complexity is not that great.
TomB: Groups and users may appear differently in different places. Also, there is an issue of mixing internal identity with federated identity.
Ken: for an inter-institutional "committee in a box," Foodle could be an important application.
Ken: It is likely Sympa developers will be coming to IETF in San Francisco in March. We can try to meet with them there to talk about Sympa domestication.
Completing and Releasing the COmanage Alpha
Bob: The shipping of COmanage 1.0 could be drifting off to the future if we embrace a vast increase in scope. We should focus on exactly what we need to encourage early use. We should defer looking into the Windows interface.
A question was raised on whether today's discussion on the collabmin interface refers to the first semi-usable Alpha release (primarily at testing version) or to a second (Beta) release?
Digant: We are talking about what the next/second release is going look like. We are still trying get Alpha out for testing. Once it's out the door, parts of it will be re-engineered for the next release.
Ken: At CAMP, we should pinpoint test groups for the alpha version.
Next Call: Friday, 6-Feb-09 at 2:00pm ET.