I think suggestions like this would be great. Once I get a SIG Wiki
created, we'll need to figure out how to allow projects to join and get
cycles.
"Trellis" is a cool name, but I'm also wondering if it would be useful
to have a more transparent name. For example, it would be easier to
tell people about the project and get them to donate cycles to it if the
name gave more indication upfront about what the project was (that's why
I used "Fedora@home" in my initial e-mail--so people would instantly
understand what I was proposing). The alternative is that we'd have to
put a lot of marketing effort behind making people aware of a name like
"Trellis."
Bryan
Paul W. Frields wrote:
On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 13:18 -0400, Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
This represents my final report on this matter. My conclusion: it's not
practical to pursue a relationship between Fedora and Google at this time,
for the following reasons:
1. RED HAT BEARS THE LEGAL RISKS FOR FEDORA.
As much as Red Hat has worked to create an independent governance model
for the Fedora Project, in the final analysis, Fedora is a property of Red
Hat. This means that any deal made between Fedora and a third party
*must* be agreed upon by Red Hat legal.
2. THE BOILERPLATE CONTACT FOR GOOGLE'S CUSTOM SEARCH ENGINE (CSE) IS TOO
RISKY FOR RED HAT LEGAL TO ACCEPT.
The terms and conditions for the Google CSE program
(http://www.google.com/coop/docs/cse/tos.html) are pretty onerous. The
biggest sticking point for Red Hat lawyers is Section 5, in which Google
demands unlimited indemnification. Negotiations to resolve this clause
have been unsuccessful.
3. MECHANISMS LIKE THE FIREFOX SEARCH BAR ARE SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDED FROM
THE GOOGLE CSE.
It seems like there are two potential sources of revenue for Fedora in
Firefox: the start page (which would probably be low dollar) and the
search bar (which would probably be high dollar). In actuality, though,
the search bar is *specifically* excluded from the Google CSE agreement,
in section 1.4, Appropriate Conduct. Quote: "You shall not, and shall not
allow any third party to: ... (f) directly or indirectly access, launmch
and/or activate the Service through or from, or otherwise incorporate the
Service in, any Web site or other means other than the Site, and then only
to the extent expressly permitted herein." Which means that unless we
negotiate a deal with Google directly, we can't use the search bar to
generate revenue at all.
So that's it. There are no simple avenues to pursue at this point, which
means that we are now open to pursue other options (wikia, fedorasearch
being the two I like best). We should also consider whether we want to
change the default search to use these, which might require a break from
the Firefox brand.
I like the fact that wikia is all about transparent, open services.
That makes them more like us than Google is. They're also based around
a community contribution model -- people donate spare bandwidth and
cycles to webcrawl for indexing purposes. I don't think wikia is
competitive yet as a search tool from the user's point of view, but we
certainly are in a position to help make them more so.
What if, as part of this new "community grid" project (which I like
calling "Trellis"), we offered people the ability to pitch in with the
web-crawling duties? This is not limited to just Fedora users, but
here's one possibility: Installing user sees firstboot module providing
Trellis. User opts in, then from a menu of system resource donations,
selects either (1) "wikia," or (2) "Fedora, I trust you, use this time
for whatever you like," which maps to a certain proporation of donation
for wikia (published somewhere, with a link).
This isn't purely about CPU cycles anymore, but it's still worth
considering.
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