COmanage Developers List

[Steve Olshansky <>]

COmanage-Dev Call 20-Feb-09

**Attending**

Heather Flanagan, Stanford (chair)

Jim Leous, Penn State

Digant Kasundra, Stanford

Steven Carmody, Brown

Ken Klingenstein, Internet2

Tom Barton, U. of Chicago

Steve Olshansky, Internet2 (scribe)


**New Action Items**

[AI] (Anyone interested) available to assist in early testing contact  
Heather and Digant.

[AI] (Steven and Jim) will flesh out the existing developer  
domestication guidelines in the wiki.

[AI] (Digant) will create a simple html mockup of the Beau Jest  
interface and have it available at the Spring I2MM.

[AI] (Ken) will reach out to potential international developers to  
participate in early alpha testing

[AI] (SteveO) will procure the vector versions of the logo graphic for  
Digant.

*Carry Over Action Items*

[AI] (Ken) will ask his contact at the Norwegian Federation about  
Foodle.

[AI] (Bob) will provide to the list background on user stories.

[AI] (Ken) will talk with Lois about Fluid involvement in improving  
the COmanage GUI, scheduling it for later in the year.

[AI] (SteveO) and (Digant) will work on setting up a subversion  
repository at Internet2.

[AI] (Chris) will contact Atlassian and try to obtain a timetable for  
Jira domestication. (Ken) will provide some wording for this  
communication with Atlassian.

[AI] (Bob) will send links to the group on the invitation problem.

[AI] (Ken) will send a note to his contact at OOI to explore their  
level interest (after the COmanage alpha is ready).

[AI] (Ken) will ping Frank Siebenlist from Argonne National  
Laboratory, who is interested in COmanage.

[AI] (Digant) will create COmanage video #2, when the improved  
Collabmin GUI is available.


**Discussion**

*Update on alpha candidates*

Digant has encountered numerous problems with the prior code. None of  
the alpha candidates are ready for release. Confluence still needs  
work, and Digant will be working on this with Chris. Digant setup  
their VM environment and has been working through the various  
installation use cases (local IdP, TestShib, federation). Once these  
are all done then it will be ready for early release, pending the  
final Drupal, Sympa, and Confluence integration.

ETA roughly 2 more weeks. Early testers will be very helpful.

[AI] (Anyone interested) available to assist in early testing contact  
Heather and Digant

Q: Will any of the apps in the alpha package be domesticated in terms  
of groups?

A: Sympa yes, Drupal and Confluence not yet clear.

Q: How much of what we are doing now is hard because we are packaging  
the apps in the context of the appliance? I.e. without this packaging  
would the task be easier?

A: Very few of the current problems have to do with packaging. Most of  
them are due to fixing problems in the prior COmanage codebase Digant  
inherited from previous Stanford work.

Q: when apps are domesticated, will we be releasing continued  
appliances, or rather a COmanage (shell) for overlay on existing apps?

A: Unclear at this point. Overlay on existing apps appears at the  
moment to be a hard problem, pending further work in this area.  
Managing existing apps by pointing them at the COmanage user and group  
stores would seem to be more tractable.

Ken reported on his recent interactions with the Federation of  
American Scientists (FAS) and their inquiry about Croquet integration.  
Croquet would seem to be a hard problem at the moment, best left for  
later attention.

Jim reported that LIGO has expressed interest in Sympa, which is  
included in the alpha release. Ken noted that key Sympa developers  
will be at the upcoming IETF/DKIM meeting, which presents a good  
opportunity for us to meet with them if practical.

Q: if we have interface specs and infrastructure for app integration,  
what other capabilities will be required for true "domestication"?  
What other packaging, or what will need to be assumed about an app for  
integration with COmanage? E.g. config file location(s), web services  
hooks, etc.?

A: Unclear at this point -- this may be a fairly long way out. We can  
play a role in terms of providing a spec for how apps could and should  
behave, and COmanage can certainly help a non-technical manager  
administer their systems. A consistent GUI (dashboard) for managing  
multiple key elements of collaborative apps (e.g. groups) is itself a  
big win.

It was suggested that recording the characteristics that an app should  
possess (best practices) in order to be "easy to domesticate" as a  
guide for developers would be useful, e.g. externalizing AuthN,  
ability to use LDAP for groups management, APIs for external privilege  
management, etc. Also noting known apps that meet these criteria, or  
at least have capabilities that make them amenable for integration  
with COmanage (e.g. Sympa and Confluence), would be useful for  
reference.

[AI] (Steven and Jim) will flesh out the existing developer  
domestication guidelines in the wiki.

Q: Would Kuali be domesticate-able as it currently exists?

A: Apparently not...

Q: Will the upcoming alpha release be ready for external users to  
start working with, e.g. FAS?

A: With the understanding that the potential users fully understand  
what "alpha" means, yes.

*Review of roadmap*

https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/COmanage/COmanage+Product+Roadmap

It was suggested that some explanation would be helpful, e.g. expected  
use cases for the alpha wrt Shibboleth - standing up as an SP to work  
with (only) one federation, and invite federation users to become  
users in the COmanage instance. Shibboleth administration capabilities  
will be limited in the alpha collabmin interface.

Beau Jest (due Aug. 2009), which will require a substantial rewrite of  
the existing code base/framework, will add more domesticated apps and  
management capabilities, e.g. new apps adding a tab to the Collabmin  
interface (v. an iFrame taking the user to the existing app GUI).

It was suggested that a simple html mockup of the anticipated Beau  
Jest interface would be a useful thing to show at the Spring I2MM, to  
help the community conceptualize how they would actually use this.

[AI] (Digant) will create a simple html mockup of the Beau Jest  
interface and have it available at the Spring I2MM.

Ken noted that many organizations will want to utilize COmanage with  
more than one federation, and there are international organizations/ 
federations that will likely be able and willing to provide  
development resources as the project moves along.

[AI] (Ken) will reach out to potential international developers to  
participate in early alpha testing

[AI] (SteveO) will procure the vector versions of the logo graphic for  
Digant.