Yesterday evening we did the final import into identity.kde.org and decided it was stable enough for general usage. With this blog we announce the general availability of this site and I will give a small introduction.

We imported all existing developers into the system, and all developers from the past too. Your username is identical to your subversion username. Your don’t have a password yet, but by using the obvious option on the welcome screen you can reset it and get access.

After the login you will be greeted with your profile. You can fill in all your details as you like. During the import we have set your Name and email address and the ssh public keys you use for svn access currently.

Important to know is what will become available to whom. We will not show all the profile data to everyone. We will use the grouping feature of the identity.kde.org-system. Basically we now the following groups: users, developers, former-developers, ev-members and sysadmins. users will never see anything. developers will probably see the usernames, names and email info of other developers, and ev-members will see what developers see, but also some more contact info about fellow ev-members. Or if someone decides otherwise, that’s fine too, we’re just executers trying to work with sane defaults for that matter.

This system will replace the famous accounts file in the future. We will of course provide something downloadable in the future for that. And hopefully it will replace the database we once used for ev-members, but this last bit is not sure yet, as the system is still being evaluated for this purpose.

This screen allowes your change your ssh-keys. This part is the primary use case for this system at this moment in time. While importing we have imported your keys already, and from now on you can manage your own ssh keys. You no longer need the system team to control which keys you will have access to svn. You can delete keys, and upload new additional keys, whatever you like, as often as you like and whenever it suits you.

Currently we are working on getting the scripts working which deal with all the key changes, so currently you can test this as much as you like without it having consequences. Just make sure that when you are ready with testing, you have the right set of keys uploaded. Starting from this weekend the scripts will be activated and the keys on identity.kde.org will be leading.

The future of the system is that we will soon open identity.kde.org for new users. After registration they will belong to the group ‘Users’. On this level, your username and password for identity.kde.org will also provide you immediate access to the new reviewboard and redmine system we will soon launch.

As a user you can request an upgrade to de developer status. This is done with a similar form as which we have used for the last couple of years. After the sysadmin has processed the request, the user is upgraded to developer, and from that moment on the user has push access to the repositories.

Both git.kde.org and svn.kde.org will allow commits / pushes from developers, both systems verify against the keys that are available in identity.kde.org. There is no difference between developers for git and developers for svn. If you can commit to svn you can also push to git.kde.org.

In the future we can use the data from identity.kde.org for a gazillion new purposes. Not only will your username and password from identity.kde.org give you access to a few new sites, but also you can think of more fun things. For example we can use it to power planetkde, instead of the config file, you can manage your rss feed from identity.kde.org. Or @kde.org email address holders can change the forward address behind the kde.org address. Or we can manage registrations for akademy this way. We’ve explcitely choosen identity.kde.org (which is powered by GOsa), because of the ability to create such features in a limited amount of time.

I’ve talked way to much for an introduction. You can now jump to the identity.kde.org-site, read the interview with Ben Cooksley, the sysadmin that deserves most of the credits for the setup of this system. You can also follow our progress in the launch of the git.kde.org infrastructure in our schedule. As usual you can file bugs for identity.kde.org at our bug tracker.

Slowely we are approaching the somewhat more interesting bits of the launch of the git infrastructure. Up-to-now the most visible bit for you has been the conversion to ssh based accounts. If you had one already, nothing has changed up to now. But that’s going to change soon. The conversion is almost complete, we have almost a dozen accounts left that should convert, from which some are traveling, some are a bit stubborn, and some stopped using the account earlier this year. But there is still a week to go in which they can convert, they can no longer commit to svn now, so they should notice something is wrong pretty quickly.

Next week we are going to import all developers to our new gosa based system ( we will call it identity.kde.org probably ). This system will be used for managing your ssh-keys you are using for svn and git. You can add additional ones, remove compromised ones and do whatever you like to them. You can get access to the system by using the password recovery function of the system. This means your e-mailaddress should be up-to-date. Please make sure that the correct one is currently listed in the accounts file. View it here.

In preparation to the conversion, this file will be made read-only next week. After the conversion the file will be automatically generated based on the gosa database. Consequence is that if your e-mail address is incorrect, you can not change it in the accounts file, and the password recovery function of gosa will not work, hence you will need to file a bugreport and wait for a sysadmin to solve it and verify your identity. You better prevent that and make sure your e-mail address is listed correctly.

Another item I’ld like to make you aware of is that due to this conversion, it will be a bit harder for us for a while to process new developer applications. That means that creating new svn and git accounts will be a bit more work for us. Although we will process them normally, we would like to ask to either postpone applications or do them this week. If you feel someone needs a svn account, ask them to do it in the next few days please!

One last bit from the sysadmin team: we fixed the account creation on kdedevelopers.org. We’ve updated the drupal cms to the latest version and it should be fine now. I’ve processed the back log, but if you have applied for an account and you’ve not yet received the activation confirmation, please let us know on the email address you got in the registration confirmation.

I’ve been preparing a series of interviews with KDE Sysadmins and the people directly involved. Today is the day that we launch the first interview.

While I was interviewing, I was wondering where and how to publish them. In the past we used the behindkde.org domain, but that system and domain wasn’t really used anymore. Ingo Malchow decided that it was time to reinstate the domain and use a content management system for it. He did all the work, made a theme, converted some of the old interviews (that’s still work in progress) and setup the structure so we can use it again in the future.

I’m planning to publish interviews with current sysadmins, sysadmins that want to leave the team and some ‘behind the scenes’ admins – who knows who is behind the anonsvn mirrors? Every two weeks a new interview will appear, in total there will be around 6 of these ‘dedicated’ interviews, maybe a bit more. After that we hopefully have some more interviews coming from KDE Brazil.

I’ve very happy we can use behindkde.org in a more ‘platform’ way. I hope it will get used for more than only these interviews. The masters of the universe serie from gamaral is also listed, and we hope to extend it with other interviews, podcasts, vidcasts, icecasts and whatever has to do with the people around KDE. If you have stuff that should be listed there, contact me or Ingo, easiest is via IRC on #kde-www I guess.

The very first interview is with Ingo. Not only did he re-initiate the behindkde.org site, but he’s also part of the sysadmin team. Go over there and read all about him.

This evening I’ve been playing a bit with Flattr. Flattr gives you the opportunity to do micro-donations to blogs, articles or projects you like. When you do that, in return, you can also receive Flattrs.

Say you want to donate 5 euro each month to projects you care about. Paypal could be used if they have a donate button, but that’s kind of an annoying system to use for this type of donations.

Flattr makes donating easy. When you see a Flattr button next to an article you like, you can press it. It counts as one ‘click’.At the end of the month your 5 euro will be divided by all articles or projects you gave a click to. If you clicked 5 times on such a button, each will get 1 euro. When say 20 different people did that, the author could receive a nice, flattering, amount of money.

You can add a Flattr-button next to the blogs you write, sites you have or projects you run. That way you have a nice and easy way to receive donation, where the barrier for the donation is as low as it will get.

I really like that system. I find it fun to browse through the top lists to see what others find flattering. Sometimes I see why and Flattr them too. If I do, it gets on my facebook page automagically, which is quite nice, as it shows which pages or blogs I like and other people can look at them too. The top lists showed me some new blogs I’ve started to follow.

It’s silly to think you will get rich with the system, I see it just for fun and a simple way to express gratitude to some people or projects. Although that does not have much to do with actually money I guess. For me, maybe it will cover some of the domains I’m currently privately paying or the tickets to the cinema now and then. I guess it will be the same for the recipients of my ‘clicks’. Anyways, join it, it is fun!

We are still waiting for 67 people to convert their account from password to ssh. As we can not shut down passwd based svn access until they are all done, we will probably not make our next deadline. Today for example we made no progress at all.

Those 67 are the contributors that have used their password based account this year, so we will not move forward without them. Please do not complain that we won’t make our deadlines!