Bcfg2 Enhancements for Freedom

bcfg2 enhancements for freedom

The complexity of software has outstripped most user's abilities to configure and maintain it themselves. This has lead users to rely on 3rd parties (software as a service providers) that host the configuration of applications, as well as running copies of the applications and the user's data.

A feature targeted for the bcfg2 1.1 release will allow these concerns to be separated, so a service provider can host only the configuration data, and the user can host his own data and running applications; furthermore the user will be able to review any changes the configuration services provider has made, become a configuration service provider himself at any point, and change configuration service providers at will, without major disruption to his systems.

The high-level goal of this effort is to build a comprehensive set of configuration specifications for services, with good support for distributed, collaborative refinement over time. These specifications will be available freely. A focus will be on specifications for common infrastructure software, such as apache, and AGPLv3 software.

For example, this work may be used to allow users to easily run their own nodes in federated network services such as laconi.ca / identi.ca.

It could also be used to showcase AGPLv3 software, perhaps with lots of virtual machines and servicename.freedsite.org (e.g. http://opengoo.freedsite.org would be an instance of OpenGoo, an AGPLv3 Web Office suite).