Trust and Internet Identity Meeting Europe
2013 - 2020: Workshops and Unconference

Is SURF destroying CoManage?

(Gerben Venekamp)

SurfNet contributed to CoManage. Keep getting the feedback that at least for admin purposes comanage is difficult. Hired UI experts to improve. PR are taking quite some time to be processes.

Development is perceived a bit slow. Thinking of developing their own product. It is starting from scratch and not using PHP.

One of the issues is to make the application multi-tenant capable. It requires to have a REST-API. Should have templating. The data model is very similar.

Matthew: created a simple PAI for enrollments.

A current problem is handling of bulk-enrolments. And CoManage should provision discovery. Enrolment need to change for duplicates.

SurfNet wants to go faster than CoManage is moving. Question: Would not spending the time on CO provide better results than an independent approach.

What is it for the community to be OK with SurfNet starting a new project?

  • one end it will be a long-term burden on development
  • the quick pilot will not necessarily resolve the production issue in the short term
  • There is a risk that a flood of requests from production cases will bog down the new project into a similar position

There is a certain need of coordination required to restructure the project in a way developer may do their own thing, or get PRs accepted quicker.

How can this be coordinated? Proposal: make regular user group calls, like every few weeks. Need to have more core developer capacity.