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  <title>
    Userops: Deployment for the People
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  <meta name="date" contents="2015-03-16 14:12" />
  <meta name="author" contents="Christopher Allan Webber" />
  <meta name="tags" contents="userops, deployment, fosdem" />
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  <p>
    Deb Nicholson and I both recently gave a talk at FOSDEM 2015
    called "Can Distros Make the Link?"  (A recording is
    <a href="http://video.fosdem.org/2015/devroom-distributions/can_distros_make_the_link%3f_lets_package_the_customizable,_free_software_web_of_the_future!_.mp4">here</a>,
    and my slides are
    <a href="http://dustycloud.org/misc/talks/deployment/fosdem_2015/deploying_libreweb.html">here</a>,
    hit "s" for speaker notes or read the
    <a href="http://dustycloud.org/misc/talks/deployment/fosdem_2015/deploying_libreweb.org">org-mode source</a> if
    you prefer.)  The main purpose of the talk was that packaging
    libre network services/applications for distros is important, but
    distros in their present forms aren't really enough to solve the
    deployability problems and pains that anyone trying to run their
    own libre servers knows.  I had a bit of a worry that this thesis
    would upset part of the audience (it was in the distros room,
    after all) but it turns out that everyone seemed to agree and be
    on board.
  </p>

  <p>
    Many audience members even encouraged us that this conversation
    needed to continue beyond FOSDEM, and there was discussion of
    hosting a mailing list to continue the conversation.  As usual,
    everyone had various ideas of where to host it, but the audience
    seemed to feel that MediaGoblin's servers were fairly neutral
    ground, so we announced that we would put up a mailing list and
    announce it here when we got the chance.
  </p>

  <p>
    It's a bit delayed, but I'm happy to announce the launch of the
    <a href="http://lists.mediagoblin.org/listinfo/userops">userops
      mailing list</a>!  If you're interested in talking about making
    deployment easier for every-day users, please consider joining
    the conversation there.  (Oh, and we also have an IRC channel:
    join #userops on irc.freenode.net, if you're the IRC type!)
  </p>

  <p>
    Why the name "userops"?  As you may have guessed, this is a pun on
    the term "devops"; the idea is that we also care about
    configuration management and deployability, but we aim for a
    different audience.  Devops, as the name implies, focuses on
    liberating developers in the world of deployment, particularly
    developers who have to deploy a large number of machines for
    $LARGE_CORPORATION at their job.  Userops, on the other hand, aims
    at liberating users in the world of deployment.  You shouldn't
    have to be a developer to take advantage of network freedoms and
    run network-oriented free software.  After all, the free software
    world generally agrees that it makes sense that users of desktop
    software should not have to be developers, and that "user freedom"
    takes priority over "developer freedom"... the freedom of
    $LARGE_CORPORATION, while not something we object to, is not
    really our primary concern.  (Though of course, if we build
    solutions that are good enough for end-users, corporations will
    probably adopt them, and that is fine!  It just isn't our focus.)
  </p>

  <p>
    (Oh, and in case you stumble upon it, "userops" was originally a
    name I had for one of my personal projects experimenting with
    deployability, but a
    <a href="http://asheesh.org/">friend of mine</a>
    convinced me that the term was too useful to be constrained to one
    particular piece of software, so I've renamed that project!
    Everyone is now free to use the term "userops" to refer to the
    vision described above.)
  </p>

  <p>
    We believe that "userops" is now more important than ever.  These
    days, it is not just enough to use free software network services,
    one must have the ability to deploy and make use of that software.
    (For many of this, the timeliness and urgency of this is seen with
    the turmoil for many free software developers figuring out where
    to go now that the
    <a href="https://about.gitlab.com/2015/03/03/gitlab-acquires-gitorious/">hosted
      version of Gitorious is being shut down</a>.)  And as you may
    have guessed, we're well aware of how true this is not of just
    "all that other libre network services"; MediaGoblin requires
    quite a bit of technical skills and resources to run.  We'd like
    to improve that, but we think there are some real challenges that
    are beyond what MediaGoblin can do as MediaGoblin itself: things
    need to happen on another layer (or layers) too.  Hence "userops"!
  </p>

  <p>
    If this is something you likewise care about, and especially if it's
    something you're working on or thinking about (or would like to),
    consider
    <a href="http://lists.mediagoblin.org/listinfo/userops">joining
      the conversation</a>!
  </p>
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