Re: [school-discuss] ZIS Server Dreams

[Doug Loss <drloss@suscom.net>]

Dominique Broeglin wrote:

> On Wed, 2002-01-23 at 06:12, Tonnesen Steve wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 22 Jan 2002, Les Richardson wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > I've been looking at the SIF specs and muttering...oh my, oh my, ...
> > >
> > > It seems to me that there are several things that have to come before the
> > > ZIS server
> > >
> >
> > My thinking is that developing a ZIS server would be an excellent way to
> > come up with a solid #2.  It's going to be pretty hard for open source
> > developers to add ZIS support to an application if they don't have access
> > to a ZIS server in any case.  Also, I believe that we already have some
> > applications that could benefit from the addition of SIF.
> >
> >
>         I had not much time to read the spec but of what I've read I think the
> server in itself isn't much work. The main parts are the communication
> libraries used by the agents and the server. I think the development in
> of the toolkits would be the main part of the development of the server.
> So server and toolkit developments should take place in parallel
> (permiting unit and functionnal testing along the way).

I think that our first order ought to be developing a general agent that can talk
to any ZIS server and can be easily added to existing open source applications.  As
Steve says, Bruno's EduML might be helpful here.  This would be of great benefit to
getting Linux into schools even if we _never_ develop an open source ZIS server.
Of course, we will, but I think the agent or agents need to be the first priority.

I think we're getting far enough in this discussion to think about setting up a
formal project.  How about OpenSIF <http://opensif.org>?  Whoops, opensif.org
exists.  Take a look at it and see if these folks have already developed what we're
talking about!

--
Doug Loss                 All I want is a warm bed
Data Network Coordinator  and a kind word and
Bloomsburg University     unlimited power.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Ashleigh Brilliant