I will add mls to cc to allow him to defend himself if he feels that this is needed. But notice this is not about him but about a general problem of the development model. He is just involved in one instance of the problem. On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 08:00:01PM +0100, Sonja Krause-Harder wrote:
On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 07:23:01PM +0100, Robert Schiele wrote:
Actually I don't care whether it is a "shadow" svn or a "shadow" we-don't-use-revision-control-internally-at-all tool. Obviously software (like the build script) is already deployed to the build server in a version that is not in the public repository (because there is _no_ version of the build script in the repository but the server does actually build packages already).
This is the backend part I mentioned.
I know but still want to make the point there because this is exactly the place where one instance of the problem currently shows up.
No, I don't. We went public with a pre-pre-alpha, far from feature complete, incomplete version to give people the possibility to look at the code as early as possible. I understand your frustration that this is not going faster, but I can't change it now. We're working on the problem.
I understand that you can't chage this now. I am not a naive fool believing that I can change the way the world turns round in five minutes but I am pointing to the problems as long until I get some success or until I give up and go away, whatever happens first.
You once moaned about having not enough speakers from outside SUSE at FOSDEM.
I moaned? That was not intended and perhaps a misunderstanding. I hope
Use the verb regret if you think this is more appropriate. It does not alter my point what the reason is for this situation. On Wed, Mar 08, 2006 at 08:06:00PM +0100, Adrian Schroeter wrote:
The reason is basically that mls has his own mind in which state he want to release his code. And he does currently not feel comfortable to release the current hacked version. So this is his private opinion, but he promised to release it this week, so I would like to avoid to stress this issue too much.
I don't want to stress _this_ issue in special because it is only one instance of the problem. But I want to use this example to stress the general issue of the development model. Actually mls _did_ release his code already. He did release the code to SUSE staff. Here you get two classes of developers: people inside SUSE/Novell and people outside. The question is now: Do you want external developers in the openSUSE project or not? If you don't want them then you could just state that and I will see that I did completely misunderstand the intention of the openSUSE project up to now. But if you want to attract external developers a change in the development model should happen. Would you as a KDE project member port KDE to a new version of Qt if Trolltech would only give you a pointer to their API documentation of the new release but not the library itself with the reason that the code is not yet in a state that can be released? Would you feel comfortable if some employees of Trolltech started to port KDE to the new version but you had no chance to test their or your work because you don't have access to the new Qt release? Would you port glibc to a new kernel if you get only the list of system calls but not the kernel itself because it is not yet in a state the developer wants to release? So for the concrete example mls might reconsider when to release his code but for the wider view of the whole openSUSE project you and all other people responsible for the project might reconsider the general development model. While doing that you should also take into account what happened to other open source projects after changing the development model. For instance compare the speed of development and quality of gcc before the egcs fork and afterwards. Please don't do the same your colleagues did while developing Xgl. I am sure they are attracting now some developers from outside Novell because Xgl is a shiny thing but they could have more if they did develop it in an open way from the very beginning. Robert -- Robert Schiele Tel.: +49-621-181-2214 Dipl.-Wirtsch.informatiker mailto:rschiele@uni-mannheim.de "Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur."