I almost 100% agree with your mail! :) Some additions to your ideas follow:
On Saturday, August 06, 2016 09:42:52 AM Ian Clarke wrote: > On Sat, Aug 6, 2016 9:22 AM, Florent Daigniere nextg...@freenetproject.org > > wrote: > > The project is in terrible shape due to the lack of leadership, and > > most of it boils down to the fact that you're just not around (I'm sure > > you're busy with other things). > > It is certainly true that I'm preoccupied with other things (namely making > a living - an unfortunate necessity for most people). Should someone else > come along with the time, motivation, and expertise to take over as > coordinator, I would welcome it. No such person has come forward. I do consider Steve as our release manager, and to be honest he's also a leader for me currently. He's spent an insane amount of work in both code-review and deployment and also steering the project. You merely don't know that because you didn't read IRC over the past years - he is very very active. That should be rewarded :) That doesn't make you less of a leader though, we just have two of them :) > > What's wrong is not just the current > > funding allocation fiasco (who will ever consider sponsoring us, now > > that we've shown that we don't even know what to do with the money we > > have?). > > We're in the midst of a process to do exactly that, a process which is now > moving forward. Agree! > > - we have no roadmap; we need one. > > That's precisely what this process is designed to create. Agree! > > - the consensus / democratic / hipster way of taking decisions doesn't > > > > work for open-source projects that aren't funded. > > Why do you assume that the process won't work before we've even tried it? Agree very much! Let's try the thing before we call it a failure. +1 > > Open source projects are a meritocracy where do-ers have power; those that > > disagree are free to fork and become do-ers. > > That seems self-contradictory to me - you just recommended having a > roadmap, and yet now you seem to be arguing that a volunteer-run project > can't have a roadmap because nobody can be compelled to do anything they > don't want to do. Agree. Also, once we've finished the poll, nothing prevents us from doing this: Not just only have 1 result spreadsheet, but 3: - One to compute the average as a result of *all* voters. - One to compute the average only from users. - One to compute the average of the "do-ers" Florent has just talked about. I.e. only the most active core developers. Then we can look at the differences and discuss whether we need to adapt the roadmap in favor of the "more qualified" opinions of the people who know the codebase more than the users. > > - the current level of funding doesn't give much time/resources and > > it's clearly a waste of time for everyone involved to argue about > > processes for allocating them. > > Who is arguing? Most people seem to be just getting on with working within > the process. Everyone had ample opportunity to offer feedback on the > process months ago when it was first proposed. I don't understand why you > and others have waited until we're in the middle of the process before > trying to poke holes in it. I agree, it's not fair to argue against the procedure yourself while ignoring that the time for arguing is over *and* then complain that people are arguing against it. It's also not a waste of time to go through with it from the *current* state: We've set a 1 week deadline for replies before the next stage begins. The next stage can have a 1 week deadline as well. 2 weeks surely isn't much of a loss of time. So everyone please just fill in the spreadsheet (or don't), and if you don't like the results after it is finished, you can still complain then :) > > Time is money, even if it's only volunteers's. Just call the shots, those > > that disagree are free to leave (and that comes from someone who has a > > long history of disagreeing with most of your previous calls :)). I'm > > puzzled as of why you've decided to do things differently this time > > around... > > Because I noticed that a solid "core" of Freenet developers seemed very > resentful of me getting involved in the project again, and so I concluded > that if I just came in and started to bark orders at people, they would not > respond well. This is a very honorable insight of yours :) And well, to be honest, it is true. People were frustrated. But it's nice that you've realized this and want to go through with improving it, so please just continue what you're doing :) (and as said, give Steve some power as well :) > > What's the strategy/long-term roadmap for the project? I mean, once > > we've blown the current financial resources, what's the plan? > > I would say the goal is two-fold: > > a) Get Freenet to the point that it is easy to use, comparable to > contemporary software-projects in terms of UI design, marketing etc. > > b) Ensure that Freenet achieves its goal of ensuring true freedom of > communication (which means it needs to be secure, etc) I know I'm not in a position to dictate our goals, but I always wonder why the following one is forgotten about frequently, so I'll just throw it into the room and you can do with it what you want (including to sigh about hearing it over and over again, sorry. I don't know what else to do than repeating it, given that I think it is the elephant in the room which everyone is ignoring :) c) Freenet by default installation is currently equals to Freesites. Freesites are 1990s-style static HTML. That is ultra boring to the Web2.0 kids who grew up with smartphones. We *NEED* dynamic applications. Forums, Social networking, Mail, Blogging, Filesharing, etc. I don't care. Anything else won't get us more users or even money nowadays. That's why I'm pushing for WoT. I don't even thoroughly enjoy working on WoT. I don't care much about WoT, I joined to work on Freetalk instead. But we *need* the things which can be built with WoT, and I'd like to get it over with soon. It should be possible to make WoT reasonably usable with the 1 year of funding we have, and it should also be possible to begin working on deploying an application built upon it. For example, FlogHelper being installed by default should be possible. It may be possible to make it able to discover blogs of remote users; and to announce your own into that set - so we'd have a first stage of dynamic interaction between users. (Remember: Freesites don't have any way to communicate "backwards". You can view them, but you cannot reply to the author. You also cannot announce your own Freesite to the network by automatic tools. You need to manually install something such as FMS and post the Freesite there. FlogHelper publishing/discovery would fix that). And besides: I don't know why everyone is focused so much on actually finishing something 100% with the current funds. Software development is complex, and some things just take multiple years to finish. This won't go away even from a thousand times of complaining that we need a goal we can achieve within 1 year. So I'd be fine if we go for FlogHelper, because that could work within a year. But something like filesharing will get us a *lot* more new users, and it takes multiple years, so why not work towards that instead? > > PS: To be cristal clear, I'm fine with Freenet not having resources, > > being a research/toy project, I definitely don't want more > > users/problems... but I don't understand the logic/strategy pursued by > > those that do. > > If I wanted to be autocratic I'd immediately allocate $5k to get > professional designers to redesign the website from the ground-up, however > I have a strong feeling that would be met by howls of protest by those who > (for reasons that make no sense to me) think the website is just fine the > way it is. Indeed :) I would strongly suggest you read the longer mail about the website I wrote on 2016-08-03 - the one which talks about beer :) -- hopstolive (keyword for Ians spam filter)
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