Yesterday I read several hundred mails on this list, that is, the whole strategy discussions, and after finishing the main impression I had was that it was quite a pain to read, that a good part of the discussions is pointless and that as a whole it is going nowhere. Specifically, there seem to be two big problems: - some people taking part in the discussion do not understand some, even basic, things about the strategy discussion, such as the purpose - the strategies either fail or very poorly state some practical aspects (most notably an answer to the question 'why should we do this?') and feel more like something abstract that should be discussed over coffee Additionally there is of course the usual problem of openSUSE mailing lists that some people make long threads even longer by straying completely offtopic or posting various irrelevant comments. And I hope the reason for this is that those people do not understand the purpose of the discussion rather than think that chatting in a huge project discussion is an interesting way to spend their afternoon. And these problems indeed reinforce each other. So, let's try to make some things clear: The purpose of these discussions: ====================== Right now, we are discussing the proposed strategies. That means pointing out their strengths and weakenesses, making them more clear, etc. The strategies are now supposed to be prepared for later, when a strategy will be selected. That specifically means that we are not voting on them now (and as such exclaims such as "with this strategy I won't be with openSUSE" are irrevelant, just like adding "me too" and similar). If you think there is something unclear about a strategy, discuss to clear it up, if you like a strategy and think it could be improved, discuss to improve it, if you think a strategy has a weakness that's been missed, point it out, and if you disagree with a strategy because of your personal preference, shut up. This is not about winning an argument. http://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Strategy has a description of what a strategy is and other requirements for this discussion. If you for some strange reason haven't read them yet, do so now and do not waste other people's time without doing that. Why we need a strategy: ================ And since everybody gets things better when there's an example, let's have one hypothetical case. Assume that in time for openSUSE 11.4 the latest Firefox release will be 4.0.1, which will support some latest Web technologies, but will not be as tested as Firefox 3.x and its KDE integration will not be ready. The maintainer therefore will need to choose one version as the shipped default, and there wil be trade-offs. 4.0 would be presumably preferred by most Web developers and bleeding-edge users, 3.x would be preferred by "stable" users and KDE users. For simplicity let's also assume that installing both 3.x and 4.0 at the same time is practically impossible because of not having enough contributors for solving the necessary problems. Currently it's more or less at the judgement of the maintainer of the component. This can lead to various problems such as the decision not being good for the majority (e.g. if the maintainer is a GNOME user who likes new Web technologies but the majority are users who use KDE and/or want a really stable browser) or leading to inconsistencies (a maintainer of a different component related to Web decides not to enable an experimental library for new Web technologies, making openSUSE not either for stable users or for Web developers). With a strategy, this is much simpler. KDE #1 strategy, productive poweruser strategy will most probably favour 3.x, while home for developers strategy and mobile/cloud strategy will presumably favour 4.0. Either way, it will also cause the other maintainer to not enable or enable the experimental library accordingly. Things a strategy does not change: ======================= I hope the example makes some things about strategies rather clear: - selecting a focus does not make other areas forbidden. The case above does not stop anybody from maintaining packages of Chromium or Arora. There are examples of e.g. KDE being provided as Ubuntu or Fedora spins even though they are not the focus. In fact, with the build service, unless openSUSE would decide to actively block some contributors (which would be pretty stupid), the only reason for a component not being anymore available for openSUSE would be its contributors deciding so. - contributors can focus on whatever they want and cannot be forced to switch. With a community distribution this just plain doesn't make sense. In the example, the "perfect" solutions would be making Firefox 3.x and 4.0 co-installable or fixing the problems, but if people will be interested in other areas and there won't be enough contributors to make these happen, they simply won't happen. How can somebody be forced to voluntarily work on something specific? - strategies cannot be just team strategies. For example, the KDE #1 strategy already is openSUSE KDE team's strategy, but there are problems that reach beyong the team. In the example above, with the Firefox maintainer's decision to go with 4.0, KDE in openSUSE obviously suffers and this is out of control of the KDE team. It is obvious that openSUSE not preferring a desktop cannot provide as good KDE implementation as it could with focusing on KDE as the primary desktop. This applies generally, in some cases making something better inevitably leads to something else getting worse in the real world. Clear now? I'd like to ask people, before sending each mail that makes the discussion even better, to think if it adds some new value and if it helps the purpose. If not, please just don't send it. -- Lubos Lunak openSUSE Boosters team, KDE developer l.lunak@suse.cz , l.lunak@kde.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org