[MLton] mlton.org server

[Matthew Fluet]

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Stephen Weeks <sweeks at sweeks.com> wrote:
> I'd like to bring up the topic of handing off the administration of mlton.org
> (mail, web, svn), so I can stop maintaining the current mlton.org server.  This
> is by no means urgent, but I simply do not have time to do a good job of
> maintaining the server which is becoming more and more stale.  I'd like to
> transfer before the lack of good administration bites us.
> Options are to go to another server maintained by someone else, or to use hosted
> solutions for individual services.  I lean toward the latter.  Whatever we do, I
> think it would be good to get something that we believe will work for at least a
> 5-year time frame.
> Thoughts?  Volunteers?

Are there any other thoughts on migrating mlton.org content?  I'm
especially keen to hear if there are any other alternatives to those
raised previously.

Looking at the Wikipedia comparison of open source software hosting
facilities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_hosting_facilities),
there are not many options that provide web hosting and mailing lists,
and fewer that aren't macro-project specific.  For instance, neither
BitBucket nor GitHub offer web hosting or mailing lists (not to
mention, being VCS specific).

It occurs to me that something between self-hosting and using a
software hosting service is to self-host a software hosting service.
That is, run a virtual machine instance on which one installs an
instance of GForge (http://gforge.org/gf/) or FusionForge
(https://fusionforge.org/).  The (hoped for) reduced administration
comes from the fact that the forge installation should handle all of
the dependencies on sub-services (web, mailman, VCSs).  But, still,
some non-trivial administration overhead.  Also, it requires someone
to administer updates to the forge installation, whereas with a
software hosting service, such service upgrades would be provided.
So, not clear to me whether or not it would be a win.  Though, it
might fit well with a proposed "Standard ML Foundation", though I'm
still unclear about the financials/logics of such an arrangement.

For those who raised concerns about SourceForge, it might be worth
looking at Allura (https://sourceforge.net/p/allura/home/), the
SourceForge Beta framework.  It is available to new projects but at
some point should become available for existing projects.