Hi,
first of all, thanks for reading the document and provide feedback. We will digest it and propose changes. I am not qualify to answer about the concrete technical proposals. So other Team member will answer them
Please read below for further comments related with the "motivations" and goals.
On Friday 20 September 2013 22:31:40 Richard Brown wrote:
>
> Secondly, I want to provide my suggestions to address a number of
> painpoints this documentation has brought up. There will be some
> overlap, but I'll want to make it clear I see two separate sets of
> issues here that need to be addressed - We need to make sure the
> current documentation is an accurate reflection of the facts, and then
> we need to decide how we want to develop stuff moving forward
>
> So, starting with my proposed corrections of the document:
> https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Development_Process
>
> >The goal of this document is to:
> >
> >Serve as main reference to the existing documentation around the process.
> >Provide the big picture of the process to those potentially interested in
> >joining. Help us to detect areas for improvements.
> >Explain the process to SUSE employees.
>
> The wording of this is not helpful. I've been part of the project for
> years, and for the bulk of them, we've worked very hard to dispel the
> myth that SUSE are 'in charge' of the openSUSE project. They're our
> biggest sponsor, and a hugely important part of this community, but
> are not the only significant part. In fact, we now have hard data
> showing that SUSE employees are consistently in the minority of
> contributors to Factory, and there hasn't been a weekly 'Top 10
> contributors to Factory' table that wasn't stuffed with 'non-SUSE
> contributors', often taking the #1 and #2 spots, sometimes both.
> Should we use this data to engage in some pointless measuring exercise
> and spiral into a dangerous debate of the 'SUSE vs non-SUSE
> contributions'?
> Or should we emphasis the established Guiding Principles of the
> project and value *all* contributions equally regardless where they
> come from?
>
> I understand the openSUSE team @ SUSE was motiviated into doing this
> work to address the concern that SUSE employees working on openSUSE
> need to know the lay of the land - but a SUSE employee is no different
> from Joe or Jane Bloggs sitting who knows where working on their first
> patch for openSUSE in their spare time. Our documentation should
> reflect that.
>
> I also can't help but feel it's a bit of a shame that it took the
> business needs of SUSE to motiviate this Documentation exercise (which
> I do think is worthwhile) - I suppose in an idyllic situation, the
> motivation should have been there to produce this document for
> everyone, anyhow.
As stated in the blog post[1] we published a few days ago, the first and biggest motivation for writing the document has been:
"Starting in July 2012, the openSUSE Team at SUSE has put effort in documenting the Development + Release process. Throughout the years, the process has evolved and some of those changes were not documented or the documentation was not up to date. We have taken the opportunity to analyze the the Dev+Release process, so we could learn from it and being able to design and execute changes to improve it."
...and there is another paragraph in this direction...
"This process has allowed us to analyze and discuss the process as a team, learning not just about the hows but the whys. It has also worked as a test for documenting future changes in how openSUSE is developed. We also hope that the effort can be worth it to contributors that want to get a high level view of how openSUSE works, since some of the tasks are done in house. This document has to be seen also as an exercise of transparency."
Your assumptions about our main motivations for writing the document are not accurate.
>
> So with that all said, I strongly believe we should redefine the goal
> of this document as follows
>
> "The goal of this document is to:
>
> Serve as main reference to the existing documentation around the process.
> Provide the big picture of the process to the existing community and
> those new to it
> Help us to detect areas for improvements."
From your proposal I assume that removing the fourth goal might address your concerns. Is that correct? If it is, I do not see any problem on that.
Thanks again for reading the document and put effort on this..
[1] http://lizards.opensuse.org/2013/09/18/documenting-the-opensuse-development-and-release-process/
Saludos
--
Agustin Benito Bethencourt
openSUSE Team Lead at SUSE
abebe@suse.com