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<title>EcolNet and the escomposLinux.org project LG #86</title>
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<SMALL>...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I></SMALL>
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<BIG><BIG><STRONG><FONT COLOR="maroon">EcolNet and the escomposLinux.org project</FONT></STRONG></BIG></BIG>
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<STRONG>By <A HREF="../authors/malonda.html">Javier Malonda</A></STRONG>
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<h5>The (not so) brief story.</h5>
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<h3>Why should I be interested in this article?</b></big><br></h3>
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<p>This is an article about the birth, growth
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and everyday life of an Internet community. Why is this Internet community
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so special? See it for yourself.
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<ul>
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<li>It has its <b>very own network</b>. This translates into an independent community,
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only dependent on bandwidth providers (our ISPs). Everything else is maintained by
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its members. </li>
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<li>It's quite <b>big</b>, involving people all around a country, Spain in
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this case. It's interesting to see how people can coordinate, even while
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live far away from each other.</li>
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<li>It's a <b>non profit</b> member-defrayed organization. Each member pays for his own box,
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his Internet connection, and is responsible for the services he has chosen to offer.</li>
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<li>It's a<b> pro-Open Source</b> organization, basically a Linux thing.
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The group hosts many Open-Source projects, providing the needed infrastructure to its
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members.</li>
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<li>It's <b>open to everyone</b> who has something to offer to help spread the Open Source
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gospel. The infrastucture is run by just a bunch of volunteers who pay costs out of their
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pockets, but everyone is invited to contribute in any way: writing code,
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writing documentation, promoting Open Source in any way, etc...</li>
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</ul>
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<p>We're using cable and DSL Internet connections. Most likely
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this community model could be run on more modest bandwidth connections. Of course it can
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be run on better connections, thus offering new possibilities. It's all a matter of
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imagination and motivation. As for the boxes, some of them are pretty old
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for today's standards, but they deal very well with their everyday duties, showing the
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true power of Open Source and being a remarkable example of what can be done with Linux and
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hardware that someone else would consider a piece of junk.
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<p>Following EcolNet's example, bigger or smaller communities
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could be built on the same basis. Keep on reading and see what we have come up with.
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Maybe it will fire your imagination. I hope it does <tt>:)</tt>
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<h3>Some history</h3>
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<p>escomposLinux stands for a "short" name of the
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newsgroups hierarchy es.comp.os.Linux. As you can easily note, this is the root of all
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Linux newsgroups in Spanish and the other languages spoken in Spain. "es" refers to Spain,
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in contrast with "esp" which hosts all the Spanish speaking groups in general.
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<p>The es.comp.os.Linux newsgroup was founded in
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1996, promoted by Pablo Saratxaga. In those days, there was no newsgroup to discuss
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about Linux in Spanish, not even in the esp.* top-level domain noted before. Later, in 1999,
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and due to the incredible increase of traffic, a split of the original es.comp.os.Linux
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was proposed, voted and approved, so four more specific groups were created:
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<ul>
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<li><b>es.comp.os.Linux.instalacion</b>: Installation and
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configuration</font></li>
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<li><b>es.comp.os.Linux.programacion</b>: Programming in
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Linux</font></li>
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<li><b>es.comp.os.Linux.redes</b>: Networking under
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Linux</font></li>
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<li><b>es.comp.os.Linux.misc</b>: Stuff that didn't fit in
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any other place</li>
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</ul>
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<p>This current year saw the birth of <b>es.comp.os.Linux.anuncios</b>
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(announcements) , though it doesn't hold much traffic as of now.
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<p>In the year 2000, some active es.comp.os.Linux users created a
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first version of the escomposLinux web page, hosted at <a
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href="http://www.Linux-es.com/">Linux-es.com</a>. Not long after that, a group of
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five ecol users, bought the escomposLinux.org domain and the web page got moved to its actual
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location, at <a href="http://www.escomposLinux.org">www.escomposLinux.org</a>. Those Linux
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users who were especially active at the newsgroups, received web hosting space and FTP access,
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so they could have a place to display all their Linux documentation and personal projects.
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Everyone interested, can access to a @escomposLinux.org mail account. I'd like to note that,
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in Spain, things were hard even in the year 2000, and having an email account was not as easy
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as it is nowadays.
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<p>These "Five Good Men" started the project writing a manifesto
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about the guidelines to be followed. All initial the costs were assumed by those
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volunteers, who never asked for financial help. Step by step, the escomposLinux.org
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project gets bigger and bigger, as new services are added and more people gets involved.
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Luckily, DSL become relatively affordable. On October 2001, all the services provided at
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the time are moved to machines run and maintained by regular es.comp.os.Linux.* users.
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This is when the escomposLinux.org project becomes EcolNet.
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<h3>What's EcolNet?</h3>
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<p>Technically, EcolNet is the escomposLinux.org network, a bunch
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of computers spread all over the country. EcolNet is run, administered and defrayed by
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volunteers who have in common their passion for Linux and the regular use of the
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es.comp.os.Linux.* groups. We are not "37337 gurus". We enjoy learning how Linux works.
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Plus we are happy to help the Linux community.
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<p><b>What was the motivation behind EcolNet?</b> Basically, the
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terrible management by the Spanish ISPs of the newsgroups, including es.comp.os.Linux.*.
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Slow services, lost messages... We thought we could do better. Also, the first place
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that hosted escomposLinux.org was very resctrictive, data storage was expensive and FTP was
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limited. As soon as we thought we could take care of the services we needed, we moved
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escomposLinux.org to our home servers.
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<p><b>What's EcolNet current goal?</b> When someone wants to start
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a project (say a little program, a big one, a documentation project, a game) he doesn't
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have at hand all the tools he might need. Usually, you'd have your code at
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sourceforge, maybe freshmeat, an IRC channel at openprojects.org, an FTP in some
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university lost in some lost place of the planet, and so on. With EcolNet, s/he who
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starts a project has all the support he may need, and everything centralized: www space,
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FTP, IRC channel, etc. That's basically what EcolNet offers. But of course, EcolNet is
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much more than that. EcolNet is a bunch of people who have become good friends enjoying Linux
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and its philosophy.
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<p><b>Where are the servers located?</b> A map showing these EcolNet
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machines' location is shown here. You can see the machine's name, its IP, the volunteer's
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name, their email address and what kind of Internet connection the box has:
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<A HREF="misc/ecol2/1-ecolnet.png">[Click for image]</A>.
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<p>This is a nice example of what can be done with <a
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href="http://www.lysator.liu.se/%7Ealla/dia/">Dia</a>. You can find more
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details about this diagram in the end of the article if you are interested.
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<p>So the idea is easy: we take a few computers with a relatively
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decent Internet connection and create a network providing services. Adding resources
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and allocating necesities and responsabilities, we have achieved a network which works
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on small computers and basic DSL Internet connections, depending just on ourselves and
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our capability to keep the boxes working. EcolNet also allows us to experiment the
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management of a Linux server, having fun with it, and puts on our shoulders the
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responsability to keep things working, which is sometimes a bit stressing. But that's
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what the root life is like, isn't it? <tt> ;) </tt>
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<h3>What services do you run at EcolNet?</h3>
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<p>The list is quite long. EcolNet offers to the Linux
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community in Spain (completely non profit) the following services:
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<ul>
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<li><b>Electronic mail:</b> POP3 and Webmail access.</li>
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<li><b>Webpage hosting: </b>Actualized via rsync. Anyone who has something
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to offer involving Linux has a place at the ecol project.</li>
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<li><b>Anonymous FTP: </b>To handle large stuff.</li>
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<li><b>Mailing lists:</b> Several mailing lists are run at ecol, the most important ones being the users' list and the admins' list.</li>
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<li><b>News:</b> We offer access to all the es.comp.os.Linux.* newsgroups
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to anyone who wants to read them. That's one of the services we wanted EcolNet
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for, to make sure whoever wanted to read the groups had the chance to have
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a decent service.</li>
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<li><b>IRC:</b> This is one of our favorites. Great fun at IRC.escomposLinux.org
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#escomposLinux, where we meet and chat about our stuff. Always nice to drop
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by.</li>
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<li><b>PGP keys:</b> Here we keep our PGP and GnuPG keys.</li>
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<li><b>Time:</b> At ntp.escomposLinux.org we keep a big clock to know what
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time it is.
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<IMG ALT=":)" SRC="../gx/dennis/smily.gif" WIDTH="20" HEIGHT="24">
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</li>
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<li><b>CVS:</b> Some of our users work on different projects, so CVS is
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a great tool for them.</li>
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<li><b>Wiki: </b>We have a little wiki that we use for different things,
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mainly for writing documentation when you just made someting work and you're
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still feel on fire :)</li>
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</ul>
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<p>Besides those services, www.escomposLinux.org holds a lot of
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information, like Linux related links, book reviews and helpful documentation. And
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constantly growing.
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<p>The services distribution varies from time to time, either
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when some machines join the EcolNet or when someone experiences problems, like too
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much bandwidth consumption or some real tragedy. One of our primary servers had a
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terrible crash featured by the electrical company not long ago. We learnt a few things
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from that.
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<p>We are specially proud of these "Star" features:
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<ul>
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<li><a href="http://libertonia.escomposLinux.org"><b>Libertonia</b></a>: A Linux weblog
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based on K5's Scoop. It started a few months ago and we have over 300 registered
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users today. Libertonia is Spanish for Freedonia, the imaginary country Groucho Marx
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ruled in "Duck Soup". Hence the penguin with a Groucho disguise as the logo. It's quite
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different from all other weblogs around, and this is why:</li>
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<ul>
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<li>Users <b>must</b> be registered to be able to post.</li>
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<li>As in K5, users vote on what gets published.</li>
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<li>We can censor news and comments we consider off-topic or impolite. Censoring
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has very bad connotations and everybody is against it, so maybe you'd prefer to
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call it moderation. We provide the service with our money and sweat. We don't want
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any trolls having fun at our cost. As of today, we've only had nice and dialogant
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participants around, and they like the way things are managed. We don't host banners,
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we don't need money, we don't need hits. Thus, we do choose to have just a group of
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selected people taking part in Libertonia. Althogh articles usually don't have many
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comments (so far) compared to other weblogs, the quality of comments is good enough
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to compensate this, and competition makes the quality of the articles grow. As of today,
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we never had a troll and everybody lives happily and cordially in Libertonia.</li>
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</ul>
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<li><a href="http://comic.escomposLinux.org"><b>The ecol comic strip</b>:</a> One of the
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most famous EcolNet services, Humor :) Originally in <a
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href="http://tira.escomposLinux.org">Spanish</a>, now they are translated into
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English. They have become incredibly successful among the Spanish geeks, getting
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around 1000 visits daily, even though it's a weekly publication. Some popular weblogs
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link them, as well as scores of personal pages. As for the English version, over 100
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people have subscribed to a mailing list, run by a guy called Simon, neither Spanish
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nor EcolNet-related, but still very nice :) Besides, the English version receives well
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over 100 visits/day. You might have already read some of them, if you're a regular Linux
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Gazette reader. <EM>[Like the <A HREF="ecol.html">one</A> in this issue. --Editor]</EM>
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To deal with all that traffic, we have put up ten mirrors, which was kind
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of an interesting challenge. We still hope to be slashdotted someday and see how well we do.
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At EcolNet we like challenges. The comic strip is also EcolNet's "Poster Child", at least
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in Spain. By the way, I must disclose that I'm the proud father of the thing.</li>
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<li><b>Our news servers:</b> We are especially proud of our news servers. They are
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difficult to put up and maintain (hey, we find it difficult!) Neverteless, they are
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the base of the escomposLinux proyect. We go the extra mile to take care of the news servers.
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Here you can see a scheme of the servers we have now running, and who is feeding us
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externally. Kudos go to those feeders:
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<A HREF="misc/ecol2/3-ecolnet.png">[Click for image]</A>.
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</li>
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</ul>
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<h3>Who takes care of the whole thing? Is there something like a president? Do you
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have an EcolNet king?</h3>
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<p>There's a lot of people involved in EcolNet, which makes things
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"interesting". Fortunately, EcolNet volunteers are always talkative and very nice, and it's
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more a pleasure than a hasle to deal with them. Nevertheless, whenever there's people
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involved, there's a need for some kind of structure. At EcolNet there's a core of people,
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basically the "Five Good Men", who take care of the baby. They hold the experience and
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the know-how. If you want, you can see them as Primus intern Pares, First among Equals.
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<p>I've already talked about censoring in Libertonia, and I'll
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keep on reviewing "nasty" words. Next one is "dictatorship". Let me tell a story I
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especially like. Plato the philosopher said in <EM>The Republic</EM> that the perfect form
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of government is the dictatorship of a wise man. Unluckily, that's not possible in
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real life, or is it? Well, I think we do have that: we have a few people that have never
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been elected, that usually say what's to be done or they just do it, and everybody's happy with
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it. And it's been like that for many years and we keep rolling on, better and better each
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day. The rest of the volunteers of course have an opinion, and it's taken into account.
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Everything is pretty democratic, or at least it looks like it. It's hard to fight when
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everybody is nice and has the same goals. We all know we ride the same boat. We want
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to keep the boat afloat and we know who is the most capable, so everybody works together,
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rowing in the same direction.
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<p>How does EcolNet's decision-making process work? We have the admin
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mailing list, the users mailing list, an internal weblog and an online poll. Usually,
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infrastructure stuff gets discussed in the admin mailing list, because users don't need to
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know or be bothered with technical details. The users mailing list is for when things affect
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all the EcolNet population, both those running machines and users who have projects or documentation
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hosted. For minor discussions, we tend to use the internal weblog and its poll.
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<h3>In Memoriam</h3>
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<p>The EcolNet project is dedicated to <tt>Tas</tt>,
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one of the original "Five Good Men", now staying with $DEITY.
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<hr width="100%" size="1" noshade="noshade">
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<p><div align="left">Written by Javier Malonda.
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<p>There's a lot of people who should be listed in the
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credits, but they want to be anonymous. Just read
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<A HREF="http://www.escomposLinux.org/">http://www.escomposLinux.org</A>.
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<p>If you're curious, you can find the Dia source XML
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code of the diagrams, as well as the diagrams themselves, at <a
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href="http://helvete.escomposLinux.org/ecolnet/">http://helvete.escomposLinux.org/ecolnet/
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</a>.
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<hr>
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<CENTER><SMALL><STRONG>
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Copyright © 2003, Javier Malonda.
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Copying license <A HREF="../copying.html">http://www.linuxgazette.com/copying.html</A><BR>
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Published in Issue 86 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, January 2003
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</STRONG></SMALL></CENTER>
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