Relative to the announcement below, we're looking for an inexpensive (or free) place to host a backup copy of OpenSector.org's Zope-based site. The way we're currently operating is with the server at a home office with DSL, front-ended by Squid (acting as an HTTP accelerator) on a virtual server at Verio. That's working nicely -- Squid rarely has to hit the Zope server. However, if the DSL goes down, we're off the air. Thus, I'm thinking we should put a ZEO server on the same host and have clients hosted elsewhere, such as home offices, until it outgrows that scenario. That should give us a lot of headroom. Verio's virtual servers are contractually limited by the number of processes, and Squid is just one process! FYI, we built the site in Squishdot, then dropped it into Plone, mainly for its user registration, etc. We've been re-writing Squishdot to eliminate an awful lot of redundancy in the forms and code. From the start of coding to launching the site was only about three weeks, which says a lot for Zope, I think. We'd welcome your advice and experience. While we're no strangers to scalable web sites, we're relatively new to Zope. And if it isn't already obvious, the budget for this is tight, since it's not a revenue-producing activity. We're also looking for contributors -- news and discussion items, as well as people to review and edit. We're building some back-end tools to help our editors find and use items from a variety of RSS feeds and canned search engine queries. The announcement follows... -- Senti-Metrics Launches OpenSector.org Supported by Open Software Applications Foundation SANTA CLARA, CA July 10, 2003 Senti-Metrics, with support from the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF), today launched OpenSector.org (http://www.opensector.org), a news and discussion site about public sector open source software initiatives. "There is a tremendous amount of interest in open source in government and education around the world," said Mitch Kapor, founder and Chair of the OSAF, a non-profit organization working to create and gain wide adoption for software applications of uncompromising quality using open-source methods. "Until now, there have been few resources to help public sector decision-makers stay current on government initiatives related to Linux and other open source software. We are pleased to have been able to make a small contribution to the launch of OpenSector.org, which promises to be a powerful and useful site for anyone interested in what's going on with open source in the public sector." Kapor announced OpenSector.org at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon. OSAF is funding Bart Decrem, author of Desktop Linux Technology Market Overview, published by OSAF, to help develop and manage OpenSector.org site content. Decrem was a co-founder of Eazel, Inc. and helped create the GNOME Foundation. OpenSector.org is a global news and meeting place where public sector decision and policy makers primarily in government and education can meet with each other and with open source software developers, projects, products, companies and ideas. It features news and features contributed by readers, organized by region, with weblog-style discussion of each item. "The main goal of OpenSector.org is to improve communication in the global software community," said Nick Arnett, Senti-Metrics' founder and senior partner. "Senti-Metrics helps large technology companies communicate more effectively with developers, so OpenSector.org is a perfect fit. We use open source software ourselves we rely heavily on Linux, MySQL, Python and other open source tools. OpenSector.org lets us give back to the open source software community." Senti-Metrics partner David Land and Arnett built and operate the OpenSector.org site with GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Zope, Python, Squid and other open source products and tools. Land is the former publisher of the java.sun.com developer site at Sun Microsystems. About Senti-Metrics Senti-Metrics developed the Senti-Meter process, based on custom information retrieval and analysis tools that it uses to help its clients communicate more effectively with on-line constituencies. The company's techniques include sophisticated analysis of discussion traffic, social networks and linguistics, which it combines with expert human interpretation to organize, summarize and make sense of on-line buzz, creating custom reports and services for its clients. About the Open Source Applications Foundation The Open Source Applications Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit foundation, has a mission to create and gain wide adoption of Open Source application software of uncompromising quality. CONTACT: Senti-Metrics Nick Arnett +1 408-904-7198 narnett@senti-metrics.com