| 1 |
GLEP: 30
|
| 2 |
Title: "Planet Gentoo" web log aggregator
|
| 3 |
Version: $Revision: $
|
| 4 |
Last-Modified: $Date: $
|
| 5 |
Author: Daniel Drake <dsd@gentoo.org>
|
| 6 |
Status: Draft
|
| 7 |
Type: Standards Track
|
| 8 |
Content-Type: text/x-rst
|
| 9 |
Created: 24-Oct-2004
|
| 10 |
Post-History: 25-Oct-2004
|
| 11 |
|
| 12 |
Credits
|
| 13 |
=======
|
| 14 |
- `Stuart Herbert`_ for the original idea
|
| 15 |
- `Alexander Plank`_ who also has put effort into promoting this
|
| 16 |
|
| 17 |
Abstract
|
| 18 |
========
|
| 19 |
|
| 20 |
This GLEP proposes the creation of "Planet Gentoo", a new section of the
|
| 21 |
gentoo.org website. It would aggregate weblogs (commonly known as "blogs")
|
| 22 |
written by contributing Gentoo developers onto this single page, available to
|
| 23 |
the public. I will refer to this new website section as "the planet" in this
|
| 24 |
GLEP.
|
| 25 |
We would also provide an installation of a weblog engine for developers that
|
| 26 |
do not currently have their own weblog.
|
| 27 |
|
| 28 |
Motivation
|
| 29 |
==========
|
| 30 |
|
| 31 |
I'm trying to reduce the gap between the Gentoo user and development
|
| 32 |
communities.
|
| 33 |
|
| 34 |
Many large open source projects and software distributors have their own
|
| 35 |
Planet where contributors weblogs are aggregated. See the `Planetplanet`_
|
| 36 |
homepage for a complete listing. These other aggregations appear to be
|
| 37 |
successful and bring their relevant communities together.
|
| 38 |
|
| 39 |
These aggregations are often quite interesting to read, since they contain a
|
| 40 |
variation of topics, not all of which are related to the project.
|
| 41 |
|
| 42 |
The planet would add another method of user interaction with developers, as
|
| 43 |
most weblogs allow readers to post comments.
|
| 44 |
|
| 45 |
Readers would get more interested in the Gentoo project, and would get a feel
|
| 46 |
for the personalities of the contributing developers. Although I am not
|
| 47 |
suggesting this should be used as an announcement tool, developers could also
|
| 48 |
use this to get general messages over to the user community.
|
| 49 |
|
| 50 |
Specification
|
| 51 |
=============
|
| 52 |
|
| 53 |
The proposed design is an installation of Planetplanet at a part of the
|
| 54 |
gentoo.org infrastructure, e.g. http://planet.gentoo.org
|
| 55 |
|
| 56 |
We would also provide an installation of `Wordpress`_ or a similar weblogging
|
| 57 |
engine, for developers that do not have their own weblog or would wish to
|
| 58 |
move their log to an official Gentoo hosted website. This could be provided
|
| 59 |
at (e.g.) http://weblogs.gentoo.org
|
| 60 |
|
| 61 |
Rationale
|
| 62 |
=========
|
| 63 |
|
| 64 |
`Planetplanet`_ is simply a weblog aggregator written in python. It is
|
| 65 |
executed as a cronjob and fetches content from all the weblogs it has been
|
| 66 |
asked to, postprocesses and aggregates them into a single html file (based on
|
| 67 |
a template), and outputs that html content to an area provided by a webserver.
|
| 68 |
This should allow for ease of integration with any existing infrastructure.
|
| 69 |
|
| 70 |
A group of people would be assigned the responsibility/CVS access to maintain
|
| 71 |
the planetplanet configuration file, which lists the developers weblogs to be
|
| 72 |
aggregated. They would also be required to maintain the weblog engine
|
| 73 |
provided, this is done through a web-based administration interface. I would
|
| 74 |
suggest the existing infrastructure team to have this responsibility.
|
| 75 |
|
| 76 |
The planetplanet installation would fetch and aggregate developers weblogs
|
| 77 |
only, we would not accept non-developer logs.
|
| 78 |
|
| 79 |
Developers do not have to host their weblogs with us, practically all blogging
|
| 80 |
packages provide an XML feed (typically RSS) which planetplanet will happily
|
| 81 |
fetch and process. Other feed formats are also accepted, examine the
|
| 82 |
planetplanet documentation for more info.
|
| 83 |
|
| 84 |
It has been suggested that the activity of the planet may be an issue:
|
| 85 |
although a lot of activity would make the planet very successful, it may look
|
| 86 |
bad on us as a whole if the planet is inactive.
|
| 87 |
|
| 88 |
`Alexander Plank`_ started a `gentoo-dev discussion`_ back in August regarding
|
| 89 |
this exact idea. Alexander set up a `Planet Gentoo mini-survey`_ to see which
|
| 90 |
developers have weblogs or would be interested in obtaining one to be
|
| 91 |
aggregated on the planet. At the time of writing, the survey yielded a list
|
| 92 |
of 21 interested developers.
|
| 93 |
|
| 94 |
Looking at the other planets available, a contributor count like this would be
|
| 95 |
more than enough to keep the planet active and interesting. Through my
|
| 96 |
experiments of finding developers existing weblogs through google and
|
| 97 |
aggregating them on my local Planetplanet installation, I have come to the
|
| 98 |
conclusion that just a small quantity of active weblogs is enough to keep the
|
| 99 |
planet going strongly.
|
| 100 |
|
| 101 |
I also note that the list of 21 interested developers was built up over a
|
| 102 |
short space of time, and it was only mentioned once in a rather large thread
|
| 103 |
on the gentoo-dev mailing list. I predict that given more publicity amongst
|
| 104 |
the developers, this idea would be even more popular. I also predict that if
|
| 105 |
such a planet were to go live, other developers would be motivated to join in,
|
| 106 |
and new developers joining the project would be keen on contributing.
|
| 107 |
|
| 108 |
Backwards Compatibility
|
| 109 |
=======================
|
| 110 |
|
| 111 |
No issues.
|
| 112 |
|
| 113 |
Reference Implementation
|
| 114 |
========================
|
| 115 |
|
| 116 |
See `Bug 63160`_ for a template file mimicking the current gentoo.org design
|
| 117 |
plus a sample config file.
|
| 118 |
|
| 119 |
References
|
| 120 |
==========
|
| 121 |
|
| 122 |
.. _Stuart Herbert: stuart@gentoo.org
|
| 123 |
|
| 124 |
.. _Alexander Plank: alexander@gentoo.org
|
| 125 |
|
| 126 |
.. _Planetplanet: http://www.planetplanet.org
|
| 127 |
|
| 128 |
.. _Wordpress: http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=wordpress
|
| 129 |
|
| 130 |
.. _gentoo-dev discussion: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/20480
|
| 131 |
|
| 132 |
.. _Planet Gentoo mini-survey: http://penguincluster.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/BlogInterest
|
| 133 |
|
| 134 |
.. _Bug 63160: http://bugs.gentoo.org/63160
|
| 135 |
|
| 136 |
|
| 137 |
Copyright
|
| 138 |
=========
|
| 139 |
|
| 140 |
This document has been placed in the public domain.
|
| 141 |
|
Parent Directory
| 
Revision Log