Notes of the UK-tech irc meeting on 4 March 2004

22 people present: AnarchoBabe (Scotland), AnaPena (London), AndiE (London), BarneyLaurance (London), SpaceBunny (Scotland), AntOnis (Leeds), ChipScooter (Sheffield), ChrisC (Sheffield), WikiKes (York), JavierR (London), Jupiter (Cambridge), MaQui (London), SevenR (Sheffield), PlanetMail (London), RichPoon (Cambridge), Poketov (Worthing), Revolt (?), SjCambridge (Cambridge), Virginiaplain (Worthing), YosSarian (Cambridge), ZaK (Cambridge), ZaPata (Mircoder/NL).

Note: this was an extremely long and exhaustive meeting (4 hours 15 minutes), with issues not always entirely tech-related; this was probably due to the fact that there hasn't been a formal irc meeting for ages.

these notes will hopefully identify areas where a more general imc-uk-process meeting is required. and it will hopefully help to clarify the agenda for the next uk-tech meeting on 18 april 2pm, and maybe some other more general meeting...

i opted to quote many opinions on the various points, as with some issues i see the need to not summarize but let the (cleaned-up) speech flow, thus apologies for such a big document - but there were a lot of contentious issues... as usual this is one person's opinionated summary so please edit the twiki on http://docs.indymedia.org/edit/Local/UkIrcMtg20032004Notes if you disagree

the full log of the meeting is at http://docs.indymedia.org/twiki/pub/Local/UkIrcMtg20032004/uk-mtg-21032004.txt

Table of contents

1. [14:29-14:56] Setting up sections for South Coast, Birmingham, Lancaster

SpaceBunny notes the need for good documentation on how to set up a sub page, or new region. the easiest is to take the oxford templates and change colours but the twiki doesn't cover all options; in terms of functionality options it's not clear what is optional or possible. He raises as well the process issue of of moving pages to the live site.
Virginiaplain, speaking from Southcoast, says it would be good to have list of possibilities/functionalities prior to a meeting to speed things up.
ZaK offers a mir installation in Cambridge that can be used for testing any new regions.
PlanetMail and poketov say Southcoast are ready, page design is sorted
AnaPena notes that people came to this meeting to find out concrete steps how to go live and proposes that those who can technically help set up a date and time for work on irc.

Decision: ChrisC and SpaceBunny to sort out access to kosmos, then email the Southcoast list to meet on irc and sort out the tech aspects. [The more general problems with access to changes are adressed in the next agenda points (codecoop and devserver)]

2. [14:57-15:07] The templates, now hosted on codecoop

ChrisC explains that if people need access to the templates please create an account on codecoop.
AndiE says codecoop is a good place to learn and try out - new regions should register here and play with their templates: anything set up in the codecoop needs to be tested on a mir testserver, be it the he devserver (see next agenda point), or a cambridge mirserver ZaK offered.
SpaceBunny wonders about the process of moving stuff from codecoop to the live site.
WikiKes has made small alterations to Leeds templates and would love to try them out.

3. [15:07-15:14] The dev server (still not quite working yet)

The devserver is supposed to be the testing ground for all that is being developed on codecoop - but it isn't ready (stuck on tomcat install). ZaPata and SjCambridge offer to help with tomcat install and asks to set a date for it.
SpaceBunny raises again the process question: if a groups has templates ready in codecoop and tested all fine on the dev server, does a list have to be notified before the section is made live?

Followup: ZaPata, SjCambridge and ChrisC will meet on irc to get tomcat sorted; the 'uk-new-imc-process' (ie: when changes are tested and ready, what steps are required to make them live?) needs to be agreed on the imc-uk-process list.

4. [15:15-15:46] New Mir features / new uk wishes

ZaPata made an article lock (ie: if someone in admin edits an article no one else can edit it), as well as some work on user management (ie: some more information can be stored per user and it can be seen when a user has logged on most recently).
ZaPata asks whether new imc uk wishes regarding mir have come up and suggests that once there's a dev server, it might also be used to test out new mir code / any upgrade to the latest version of code.

What are the development priorities: access levels, video upload or file formats?

Access Levels
AnaPena asks for a timeframe when are access levels technically possible.
ZaPata answers he could do the access levels earlier than previously thought as the rewrite of the big parts will be postponed, and there'll be more continued development on the existing code.
ZaPata stresses however that he needs to be sure that it is important - i.e. more important than other stuff he might do during the same time. So he needs a clear indication of imcuk if access levels is what people want, and what exactly they should consist of.
JavierR says people in london like access levels in order to get new people involved.
AndiE specifies london access level ideas: someone interested in an issue could have access to only that issue; and he'd like a 'newbie access level' for hiding stuff only.
ZaK notes that trouble with having access only to one issue/topic/region etc is that everything also appears on the uk site, so the person is still touching the main page.
ZaK wouldn't want a "newbie" access level to be an additional hurdle for new people - at the moment they only have to take one step to get admin access.
AnaPena notes that this means that we need to reopen the debate on the process list to get a clear idea and consensus. once it's clear what the uk wants re access levels we can come back to ZaPata.

Video Uploads
YosSarian would like to see video and image uploads working well in advance of access levels which he sees little need for. [This was the extensively debated in the next agenda point, and seems to have been sufficiently resolved since.]

File Formats
AnarchoBabe would like to see ogg and png etc working before access levels.

AnaPena proposes that someone should start documentation on what works on the site, and what doesn't; while upload problems get fixed, put documentation in the video page for non-uploading files - for things like radio, put a note on the publish form inviting people to use radio.indymedia.org, then put the link in the article that they post to the indy uk site.

Agreement: we need debate on imcuk-process to decide what the priorities for imcuk's mir-development are.

5. [15:47-16:10] Video uploads problems and possible solutions

We need to find a solution
YosSarian stresses the impact video and other file upload failure has. we will never increase the number of people who post video to the site, currently we have had a single video upload in the last month.
video producers spend hours shooting, editing, and compressing a video and can't upload. this is very discouraging for anyone doing video so our video teams in the uk remain very small (5-7 people!)
we need to sort this out in an open-publishing way so that the average person can upload video and images - we are not developing our capabilities as a network

Possible solution - mir pulls from URl
ChrisC asks if mir could take URIs or vids on publist form and then the server download them?
ZaPata says the core problem is that http doesn't lend itself very well for uploading large files. the url thing is possible but ZaPata's not sure if its the best way. we might just add a list of just uploaded videos or so to the publishing form and allow people to choose from that.
SjCambridge thinks it's a significant problem that a lot of browsers are rather bad at uploading files - if there is an error (which there probably will be for a large file) then they give up.
ChrisC thinks the main problem is POST rather than PUT .
ZaK agrees with ChrisC that PUT is the correct HTTP operation for the job.

Possible solution - Java applet
SjCambridge asks if a Java applet could be used which split a file into chunks and retry uploading them would be a possibility, but the Java security model could get in the way of that
ZaPata says an applet solution will not work (at least not conveniently) due to security restrictions...
SjCambridge says Java could work with a reasonable JVM, it would just be that the user would be presented with a warning.
ZaK suggests to provide a Java ftp client for people who don't want to install one or are using a public access point and can't install stuff on it. if the app is served from the FTP server, the JVM security shouldn't cause a problem (think how mindterm works for java ssh).

Possible solution - ftp
jebba has already set up ftp://uk.indymedia.org with anonymous access.
ZaPata says that ftp access will have problems of its own like script kiddies using the access to share their warez.
YosSarian says ftp is a good solution technically but if somebody needs to ditch out of the browser, email someone to get a password etc then they are unlikely to do that.
ZaK agrees that some kind of FTP-based solution as a fallback since it's a lot more reliable although it might be more cumbersome, not so sure how we should deal with the porn/warez blocking issue though.
ZaPata says the ftp solution can be made reliable and the pains of installing / using such a client might be explained in a howto - people that spend time on shooting / editing will be prepared to do some extra work to upload their hard labor especially if it's described in a accessible help text.
SjCambridge doesn't think that FTP is necessarily better on a protocol level, HTTP has much better facilities for retrying. It's just the good FTP tools are rather better at retrying large files than HTTP upload tools. However there are a lot of bad FTP clients out there.
ZaK says there seems to be a general agreement that providing ftp upload would improve things, even if it's not a perfect solution -- perhap we should think (either here or on the list) about how best to do the security on that so we don't get used as a dumping ground for gigs of crap.

Possible solution - upload unencrypted
ZaK thinks the technical problems are also compounded, at least for IE users, by the use of SSL. for ease of upload, it is important to keep HTTP upload as an option.
AnaPena asks ppl who do video stuff to try and use the unencrypted upload page and report back how it works.
YosSarian tests it straight away with a 18.9 mb file and reports later on [18:04] "video upload problems on the site may be solved; have written a report-back to imc-uk-video, imc-uk-process, and imc-uk-tech".

Follow-up:
ben's proposal to imc-uk-process to have the default upload page unencrypted.

6. [16:10-16:32] Kosmos access

SpaceBunny is desperate about getting kosmos access but worries that if the moving of stuff from the codecoop cvs is just ad hoc the pressure will be high on the few who have kosmos access.
AndiE understands the frustration and pressure on one or two pple who are the only ones having access; but he understands also the security issue with restricting access to a server that handles xx imc's. to take frustration out of the imcuk techie world, priority is to get the codecoop-cvs and the dev server running.
ZaPata points SpaceBunny for kosmos access to the kosmos sysadmin list, or ask idefix directly and explains the idea behind the restriction of access to kosmos: the need for access on kosmos should be reduced altogether - it's only needed to enable template changes, restarting tomcat on hangs etc. these things should not need to be done very frequently.

7. [16:33-16:41] Renaming Leeds to Leeds Bradford

AntOnis announces that leeds is changing its name into leeds bradford so everything on the site, and the link name and the uk main site and all other regional sites should change to that name.
ChrisC wonders what URI? http://leedsbradford.indymedia.org.uk/ ?
WikiKes has already got stuff check out of codecoop and has offered to work with lb imc to change their templates - so it again is a question of how to get the changes onto the site / dev server.
AndiE asks if it's possible for ChrisC to use any stuff that WikiKes did on codecoop and cvs them into kosmos?
ChrisC says yep - but it would be best if we test them first. but if we do it one evening when we have time to fix broken stuff it would probably be ok.

solution:
WikiKes made an appoinment with AntOnis to be at Incitment II on the same evening and they'll discuss specifics.

8. [16:45-17:04] Get a http://cacert.org/ HTTPS certificate for https://publish.indymedia.org.uk

SjCambridge explains that http://cacert.org/ is a certification authority which gives out HTTPS server certificates for free, further info in this mail to uk-tech. If people are happy with it then evilbunny who runs the service would appreciate a link to CACert. evilbunny is trying to get more people to know about the CA Cert so more publicity would be good but it is totally optional.
BarneyLaurance says that Mozilla is soon to ship with CA Cert certificates, otherwise people can just download the root themselves. For added security, the fingerprint of they key could be put on publicity.
ChrisC doesn't think any other browser ships with cacert.org. We should link to a CA root cert so people can import it - this does away with need for fingerprints.
SjCambridge thinks the threat is pretty minor.
BarneyLaurance says that linking online to ca cert doesn't stop a man in the middle atack based near the poster, which is concievable if an indivdual poster is of interest to someone with lots of resources.
ChrisC asks if we do publish the fingerprint wouldn't it also need to be gpg signed since a man in the middle attack could change it?
BarneyLaurance counters that that's difficult if we publish on paper.
ChipScooter wonders the about the likelihood of a man-in-the-middle attack
ZaK says the hope with publishing the fingerprint is that it makes a man-in-the-middle attack harder because someone will notice the fingerprint change over time, eg if they get the fingerprint and then an attack is launched when they post a couple of weeks late. it doesn't do much in the case of someone who's visiting for the first time though. distributing paper copies should mean that there will always be old versions around to refer to, from before the hypothetical attack was launched. ZaK thinks the chances of this style of attack are relatively small though and we could probably spend our resources better than worrying too hard about it.
BarneyLaurance agrees.
ZaK adds that cross-signing with gpg is always worthwhile since there's nothing to lose.

Agreement: All are happy to get a CACert (even if the exact setup might still need some talking

9. [17:06-17:33] ESF report from PlanetMail

Intro PlanetMail and JavierR and brett attended a meeting at Greennet (ISP) to talk about running a euro version of the world forum on communication rights that was run at WSIS in Geneva last year. There were people from APC / Commedia / AMARC / WACC / CRIS / Paul Mobbs of Electro Hippies (free range activism) and others. People are up for running such an event, that's clear; the discussion was about further stuff.
Basically all thought the following should happen: The ESF should have as a theme the strand 'Communication Rights'; this along with war, privatisation etc. People thought one of the two-hour plenaries should be about this and that there should be workshops inside the ESF about these topics. As a whole people thought it would be good to keep the communication rights forum (ECRF) out of the main ESF organising comittee - develop it between our own groups - then take it to the esf to get it included in programme publicity on website etc. The not-indymedia folks were very up for a space which could combine the EFCR together with some media centre / Polymedia Lab to make an all together communications space. 'Communications Rights' is like a meta issue to tie all others up, from immigration / IP / Culture / WTO / WIPO / etc.
There was also discussion about supporting autonomous website / translations systems / email lists etc but this was less well defined. we will write notes up next couple of days and post out venues are being looked into it's bigger that just the ESF cos part of the idea is strengthening UK and EU networks re communications. All thought it very important to include radical autonomous initiatives, as well as training and policy work, and maybe some actions. it's still pretty informal and we can make of it what we want i think this should happen even if the swp try to block / not publicise it (as i expect they would...).

Debate
BarneyLaurance is dubious about the 'rights' model.
PlanetMail agrees 'rights' is not the best label for sure.
ChipScooter wonders if ESF website and their other publicity will be happy to publicise this parallel event ???
JavierR says the ideas are all great, climate of trust, equality among big NGO's and indymedia. He is very positive. Key points are concrete events, things to do which needs a lot of networking; regarding the relation with the ESF itself, the EFCR would be in a very good position - it would not be blocked, just needs to fight over money really.
MaQui wonders if after planet mails report we should have an irc meeting specifically for this comm rights thing.
ChipScooter agrees with MaQui.
YosSarian says Brett, Ionnek and himself had a good talk about the ESF on Friday night when Brett returned to Cambridge. They talked a bit about maybe picking all the good sessions from the "official" ESF programme, then publishing our own catalogue of stuff making our own "alternative" ESF within the structure; It seems there would be little the "official" ESF could do about this and it might be a good way to strengthen anti-authoritarian positions through cooperative effort; then we all looked at each other, scared that we might actually have to do something about this. He's wondering if maybe a lot of people want to do something about the esf but feel like they would have to do everything themselves and whether better coordination and division of tasks wouldn't facilitate better outcomes for all.
PlanetMail says that was one of the main currents at the meeting: How to look at all the possibilities and tasks and then overlap them as much as possible until they fit as tightly (logistics and politics) as possible; so what we propose is practical. The exciting thing was we were talking about something much bigger than just indymedia, a project to bring many groups together.
ChipScooter finds it very inspiring stuff, got him thinking about long-term strategic relationships between indymedia and other groups. but it's difficult to decide if indy will be inside/outside esf; there's logistical problems with organising this event but they're not insurmountable; the relation with the ESF is an issue for everyone there; surprisingly, people from NGO's share our concerns; EFCR could be a space we join, then the EFCR would be in and out of the forum
JavierR says that materialising through different projects, talks, etc, both in and out, it will be important to articulate our politics of organising, and anyway there's bound to be tons of critique of ESF on indymedia, more than anywhere so no one will be in any doubts about the situations :-)
ChipScooter thinks that maybe EFCR could be the formulation required for Indy to be involved with ESF to just the right degree...???

Follow-up
MaQui asks everybody if an IRC meeting specifically abou the ESF and EFCR is needed...

10. [17:34-18:17] @indymedia.org.uk email addresses

Intro
ChrisC explains that individual @indymedia.org.uk addresses have basically been blocked at imc-uk-process so all we can do is agree how we are gonna sort group addresses. He'll do some work on this when i get a chance and get [machine] to set it up; it's all being documented on a wiki page

Debate
ChipScooter would like the issue of individual @indymedia.org be taken to global imc-process so that all personal @indymedia.org aliases should be renounced: there is no technical reason for such aliases. any other reason smacks of, well....
SpaceBunny prefers not to kick off a global debate @indymedia.org addresses as there's better use of time and energy, and it's hard to take away addresses from people that have used them for years.
BarneyLaurance thinks that taking away email addresses that are in use is gonna be disruptive - perhaps encourage people not to give them out and/or set autoresponses with other addreses. Perhaps discuss another time.
JavierR agrees about opposing personal @indymedia.org aliases. The main reasons to be against are lack of process, massive power issues, etc; we could have some process for some email addresses for people but maybe best for rotating jobs like sysadmin@indySTOPSPAM.uk that can be used by different people.
AndiE doesn't like global adresses but thinks this meeting is not the place for discussing it. In the uk-process debate individual adresses are effectively blocked so again this is not the space to argue it. The only reason he could think of that justifies individual addresses is if anyone could have it. That way it might be a good way of anonymising individuals engaging on imcuk - for example for registered wire users via the site. That might be good in any future repression but that's future dreams and would require a lot of mail server capacity.
ChipScooter thinks that what's 'good' for imc-uk applies to imc-global but he won't go further with that; but if it's such a good idea then what about personal domains e.g joe.indymedia.org.uk;

Technical
SpaceBunny asks if we have a machine lined up to handle mx for @indymedia.org.uk and offers his pod-159. he has already set up a nice web interface for a domain that mx is pointed at;
ChrisC re server, bunnies might be better since [machine] seems to be v busy and not around much... we can discuss mail server on tech list
SpaceBunny ok, if people decide to go for address @ indymedia.org.uk on I will sort out with ChrisC to get mx record pointed at my server but I would like to give someone else access to web interface to manage them and not by default be me; also requests for them should go via open lists but perhaps this is all getting ahead of issue as not yet decided
ChipScooter warns that if everyone had an @indymedia.org(.uk) address this leads to a single point of failure with email forwarding if the mail server was rooted. if we are trying to solve a particular tech problem, then fine - but we have no need for sysadmin@indymedia.orgSTOPSPAM.uk at the moment.
ChrisC notes about a single point of failure - it's just a matter of setting up a secondary mail server.
ChipScooter thinks only two points of failure then ;o)
BarneyLaurance wonders if we could set up aliases for the public lists, e.g. tech, that would go to a script to strip out headers and pass on anonymised to the list. Would need to go via mods of course.
SpaceBunny notes that spamassin as used on list serv uses header info.
BarneyLaurance presumes that headers could be striped post-spamassasin.
ChrisC saying to BarneyLaurance: issue of anonomising header should be raised on listwork -- we can't decide anything about there here... regarding which mailer(s) to use unless there is a good reason I think we might as well continue to use [machine]'s mail server.
SpaceBunny asking ChrisC: who has access to set up on machine's machine? I thought machince was too busy to repond to requests...
ChrisC answering SpaceBunny: well we need to ask about this, he might be happy to give several people access and sudo...
ChipScooter do scotland not want a group address?
SpaceBunny please do set up a scotland address to redirect to yet to be set up imc-scotland-contact but we don't need it as we will be avertising scotland@indymediaSTOPSPAM.org on leaflets etc.

Further info
ZaK also thinks that if, instead of personal @indymedia addresses, someone or some people from here set up such a system not in the actual name of indymedia, it might be a useful resource for this community but that would be a discussion to take outside this meeting i think.
AndiE notes that anyone can have 'name@indymail.org'; just mail jebba
JavierR just wondering then.. the indymail is totally external to indymedia the way we see it - do we want to link to it or something? endorse it?

Agreement
ZaK proposes that it seems clear that we're not about to introduce personal aliases. given that, aliases for lists eg london@indymedia.orgSTOPSPAM.uk -> imc-london-contact@lists.indymediaSTOPSPAM.org are still a good idea as they give snappier contact points and are easier for people to remember and to put on fliers
ChrisC saying that he was planning to set up aliases for all groups apart from scotland, see http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/UkEmail

11. [18:18-18:30] Events calendar

AndiE just wants to communicate that the admin interface of imcuk's protest.net calendar is at http://www.protest.net/imcuk/cdm-admin.cgi ; id is "imcuk"; he won't put the pass here but ask ChrisC he knows. but the look is still the one of the old site. it has an unsophisticated interface and only the left column, the head and the bottom can be edited as html. i cld do that if pple want
SpaceBunny noticed that several groups have their own calenders on protest net; Scotland has it's calander on radicalendar.net
ChrisC says we can import protest.net rss feeds of events if we want...
SpaceBunny if other groups would go for the radicalander we could create a uk meta group; also radicalnder produce rss too in some spread calender standard.
ChrisC says there are two way's to do this (import protest.net rss) that have been mailed to the mir admins list...[link?]
SpaceBunny says when I get to work on templates again I was hoping to try stuff with it; on the present calender the old style links redirect thanks ahimsa vhost so not rush. if you are up for redesign go for it.
AndiE is happy to botch sth & thought anyway it's a minor point

12. [18:31-18:46] Next meeting Sunday 18 april 2pm

AndiE asks himself if the next meeting should be about the EFCR.
ChrisC wonders if the next one can be less than 4 1/2 hours but expects that this is kind of unavoidable...
AndiE suggests that we hadn't had a formal meeting for ages so the nxt may be shorter ;)
MaQui says there was lots in the agenda 2day and reckons the next one should have max 3 items.
BarneyLaurance wonders how are we going to chose 3 items - perhaps we could set up subgroups to discuss items at next mtng later on.

all off to the virtual pub.

-- AndiE - 01 Apr 2004
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