[xwiki-devs] [Proposal] New free and community-managed farm on xwiki.org?

Hi everyone, Some time back XWiki SAS, the company who started XWiki had a free online farm on xwiki.com. This farm was closed for new projects a few months ago after XWiki SAS realized it didn't have the manpower (or finance) to support it in a professional way. XWiki SAS still has a professional farm offering but it's not a free farm (see http://www.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/Services/#HHosting) . I'd like to discuss with you the idea of offering a free farm managed by the xwiki community and under the xwiki.org umbrella. In essence it means there would be 2 farms available: * a paying one which is on xwiki.com, for professional needs * a free one on xwiki.org for universities, individuals or anyone not requiring guaranteed support/availability at all times Here's how it would work: * No support guarantee. All support done on the xwiki.org user mailing list. * No stability guarantee. We would always install the latest Platform/ XE/XEM version on it and it would serve as a stability test for the xwiki development team. Obviously the community will always try to make it as stable as possible but that's not guaranteed. * There will be several members of the community who'll have admin access on the farm. * We will reduce admin tasks by offering a simple UI on the farm itself (restart, see memory stats, see blocking requests, ban a wiki, etc) * It will be open to anyone. However the target users will be technical people who can support themselves to some extent. We won't control that but it'll be mentioned on the registration page. XWiki SAS would pay for the machine, hosting and the initial installation. I have 2 questions for you: 1) As a user of it, would you be interested by such a farm? Do you think it's interesting for the xwiki project to have such a free farm? 2) As a community member, would you be willing to help administer it/ support it? For this farm to work we need to find several members of the xwiki community willing to help administer it. Here are the tasks I can think of: - work on the welcome page content for the farm - work on the FAQ for the farm (like "what do I do if I've lost my password", etc) - help answer user questions on the list (this can and should be be done by everyone) Thanks -Vincent, with 2 hats: community developer and CTO of XWiki SAS