COmanage-Dev Call 20-Feb-09
*Attending*
Heather Flanagan, Stanford (chair)
Jim Leous, Penn State
Digant Kasundra, Stanford
Steven Carmody, Brown
Ken Klingenstein, Internet2
Tom Barton, U. of Chicago
Steve Olshansky, Internet2 (scribe)
*New Action Items*
[AI] (Anyone interested) available to assist in early testing contact Heather and Digant.
[AI] (Steven and Jim) will flesh out the existing developer domestication guidelines in the wiki.
[AI] (Digant) will create a simple html mockup of the Beau Jest interface and have it available at the Spring I2MM.
[AI] (Ken) will reach out to potential international developers to participate in early alpha testing
[AI] (SteveO) will procure the vector versions of the logo graphic for Digant.
*Carry Over Action Items*
[AI] (Ken) will ask his contact at the Norwegian Federation about Foodle.
[AI] (Bob) will provide to the list background on user stories.
[AI] (Ken) will talk with Lois about Fluid involvement in improving the COmanage GUI, scheduling it for later in the year.
[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] (Digant) will create COmanage video #2, when the improved Collabmin GUI is available.
*Discussion*
*Update on alpha candidates*
Digant has encountered numerous problems with the prior code. None of the alpha candidates are ready for release. Confluence still needs work, and Digant will be working on this with Chris. Digant setup their VM environment and has been working through the various installation use cases (local IdP, TestShib, federation). Once these are all done then it will be ready for early release, pending the final Drupal, Sympa, and Confluence integration.
ETA roughly 2 more weeks. Early testers will be very helpful.
[AI] (Anyone interested) available to assist in early testing contact Heather and Digant
Q: Will any of the apps in the alpha package be domesticated in terms of groups?
A: Sympa yes, Drupal and Confluence not yet clear.
Q: How much of what we are doing now is hard because we are packaging the apps in the context of the appliance? I.e. without this packaging would the task be easier?
A: Very few of the current problems have to do with packaging. Most of them are due to fixing problems in the prior COmanage codebase Digant inherited from previous Stanford work.
Q: when apps are domesticated, will we be releasing continued appliances, or rather a COmanage (shell) for overlay on existing apps?
A: Unclear at this point. Overlay on existing apps appears at the moment to be a hard problem, pending further work in this area. Managing existing apps by pointing them at the COmanage user and group stores would seem to be more tractable.
Ken reported on his recent interactions with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and their inquiry about Croquet integration. Croquet would seem to be a hard problem at the moment, best left for later attention.
Jim reported that LIGO has expressed interest in Sympa, which is included in the alpha release. Ken noted that key Sympa developers will be at the upcoming IETF/DKIM meeting, which presents a good opportunity for us to meet with them if practical.
Q: if we have interface specs and infrastructure for app integration, what other capabilities will be required for true "domestication"? What other packaging, or what will need to be assumed about an app for integration with COmanage? E.g. config file location(s), web services hooks, etc.?
A: Unclear at this point -- this may be a fairly long way out. We can play a role in terms of providing a spec for how apps could and should behave, and COmanage can certainly help a non-technical manager administer their systems. A consistent GUI (dashboard) for managing multiple key elements of collaborative apps (e.g. groups) is itself a big win.
It was suggested that recording the characteristics that an app should possess (best practices) in order to be "easy to domesticate" as a guide for developers would be useful, e.g. externalizing AuthN, ability to use LDAP for groups management, APIs for external privilege management, etc. Also noting known apps that meet these criteria, or at least have capabilities that make them amenable for integration with COmanage (e.g. Sympa and Confluence), would be useful for reference.
[AI] (Steven and Jim) will flesh out the existing developer domestication guidelines in the wiki.
Q: Would Kuali be domesticate-able as it currently exists?
A: Apparently not...
Q: Will the upcoming alpha release be ready for external users to start working with, e.g. FAS?
A: With the understanding that the potential users fully understand what "alpha" means, yes.
*Review of roadmap*https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/COmanage/COmanage+Product+Roadmap
It was suggested that some explanation would be helpful, e.g. expected use cases for the alpha wrt Shibboleth - standing up as an SP to work with (only) one federation, and invite federation users to become users in the COmanage instance. Shibboleth administration capabilities will be limited in the alpha collabmin interface.
Beau Jest (due Aug. 2009), which will require a substantial rewrite of the existing code base/framework, will add more domesticated apps and management capabilities, e.g. new apps adding a tab to the Collabmin interface (v. an iFrame taking the user to the existing app GUI).
It was suggested that a simple html mockup of the anticipated Beau Jest interface would be a useful thing to show at the Spring I2MM, to help the community conceptualize how they would actually use this.
[AI] (Digant) will create a simple html mockup of the Beau Jest interface and have it available at the Spring I2MM.
Ken noted that many organizations will want to utilize COmanage with more than one federation, and there are international organizations/federations that will likely be able and willing to provide development resources as the project moves along.
[AI] (Ken) will reach out to potential international developers to participate in early alpha testing
[AI] (SteveO) will procure the vector versions of the logo graphic for Digant.