On Wednesday, January 25, 2012 05:26:08 PM Chris Radek did opine: > Michael, > > Thanks for your criticism. I have taken several days to think about > it. I have not discussed my thoughts with the board and I am > speaking only for myself and to my own relationship to the project. > > I agree with you that there are some technical problems with how the > renaming was done; in particular, changes of variable or object names > in the source is unnecessary from a branding standpoint and > unnecessarily destabilizing. It's possible we could revert those > mistakes and perhaps we should. I think Jeff has responded to these > thoughts too. > > But this is a very small part of the dissatisfaction expressed in your > letter. Mostly you are dissatisfied with all aspects of the board's > behavior. > > You would like the board to take more direct and authoritative action > guiding development. In fact the bylaws currently say something to > this effect: we'll within 24 hours set the priority and assign to a > developer all bug fixes and feature requests submitted on sourceforge. > To me this is eminently silly and you are right that I do not take > this responsibility seriously. I do not feel I have the authority to > assign ANYTHING to ANYONE and I certainly don't have the authority to > prioritize their "action items". I am not a development manager and > none of our developers are my employees. Our developers, me included, > take on bug fixes and improvements as we feel qualified to tackle > them, and as we have time and energy to spare in our day-to-day lives. > I will say more about this later. > > Now on the other hand, you would have liked the board to take a less > direct/authoritative and more community-oriented approach to the > problems posed by emc.com's lawyer, even suggesting that perhaps a > community member may have had the experience to handle it better and > get us a better outcome. I will say more about this later too. > > Now I do not claim to do everything right, or to have given the > project my full attention at all times in the last, uh, decade or so > that I've been involved, or that I've always handled every question > to the best of my ability. I hope nobody expects that of me. > > But aside from that, I see that we have a fundamental disagreement > about the role of the board. The things I think the board should > handle are something like this: > > Represent the project in general to the outside world, being a > point of contact for companies, lawyers, etc. > > Keep tabs on the infrastructure the whole project needs, make > smart decisions about it, and keep it working. This is stuff > like the DNS, the key used to sign the apt repositories, the > websites, arrangements with services that recognize our > project somehow like sourceforge and freenode and the Linux > foundation, and so on. > > This task also includes things like > studying/advocating/implementing the switch from cvs to git. > It also includes deciding in general how we use vc (merging > strategy, stable release branches, feature branches) and > trying to keep people doing that properly. > > Maintain the set of keys from pushers and offer push access to > contributors who show consistent quality and express an > intention to stick around for a while, and hopefully a bit of > guidance to new folks on using vc correctly, the stuff I > mentioned above. > > Select release managers that can help a branch become stable > and eventually get released (so far these have been board > members, but I think they don't need to be). > > > I value your great contributions to the project and am sorry > that you don't have the guidance you want. For example I hear you > talking about a task/interpreter restructure that you are interested > in, and that you have made some progress but want feedback. When > you get no feedback I understand that you can't tell if it's because > nobody cares, or because nobody feels qualified to help you in that > way. In the case of me personally, it's the latter. I'm not an > expert in object oriented design and it does no good for you to tell > me about your design. I have no useful input. > > On the other hand, when you show (not tell) me that you have something > that makes the system better, like when you shared your remapping > work, I helped you test and became your advocate and helped you get it > merged. I think it's a little unfair to say that you've had > complete silence from the board or board members; I do understand > though that the moments of silence do stick in one's mind. > > Now, about the decision to rebrand and how we came to it: > > The first letter from the lawyer was directly to me. I hope you and > others can understand that since there is no LinuxCNC organization and > that we are only a bunch of individuals, those of us with (titular?) > authority and responsibility had particular personal danger in this > proceeding. My goals personally (again I am not speaking for the > others) were, in order: > > Protect myself and other individuals involved in the project > from a ruinous lawsuit brought by an immensely wealthy > multinational corporation that could cause grave hardship for > us and our loved ones; > > Find an outcome that allows the continuation of the LinuxCNC > project with as little disruption as possible, and that is > likely to help us avoid more of this kind of mess in the > future; > > Not piss off other developers and users too much. > > I think we have succeeded with #1 and #2, and not very well with #3. > > I assure you I went through the same stages of being angry, wanting > a fight, questioning the claims, being mad about US trademark law, > and so on, that others have gone through since the announcement. I > also came to the conclusion that a rename, while inconvenient, would > be *better* for our project in the long run, and would not unduly > break us from our history. I am happy to see that several people > on the list have come to this conclusion too. > > I feel that coming forward immediately and making the letter to me > public would have resulted in a worse outcome. In fact I think it is > likely that this action would have resulted in many mad people > attacking emc.com in different ways, and I think it is possible that > we may have failed on goals #1 and certainly #2 had the board done > that. It is unarguably the case, being in the US, that emc.com could > have caused the disappearance of our entire web presence with only a > few phonecalls or letters, for instance. Due to the nature of free > software, happily, they could not have caused the disappearance of the > software. But they could have caused the project a lot of disruption > even if they did not choose to go after individuals. > > I am happy with the outcome we have now, and I feel that emc.com > worked with us to come to a fair and workable solution, and once it > settles down we will be fine and the project will go on. I think it > was the right decision for the board to handle this for the community. > I think doing that was EXACTLY the job of the board and we handled it > fine. I know that reasonable people, like you, disagree. > > In summary, I think it is valuable for us to have a discussion about > what we want the board to be. You say it serves primarily a social > function, and I think it serves primarily an administrative function. > I don't want to put words in your mouth but from my observations I > believe you feel the people on the board should be savvy programmers > who can guide the technical progress of the code base. I don't > necessarily see that as a requirement, and in fact in the past I > nominated one or more people who are huge advocates for the project > but who have little or no technical familiarity with the code. > > I think the community guides the code base, and for instance we get > neat features, like remapping, when smart people like you come along > and get interested in it -- not when the board decides it's an > action item on a list. I think that's how community-driven > development works and we should hope for nothing else. I think > having lists and voting for priorities and so on, as others have > suggested, is even further down this road of misunderstanding how > community-driven projects work. Also I've seen over time that > there's nothing worse than asking people what they want, getting a > vote or whatever, and then not giving them that because there's no > authority to make it happen. It just makes everyone unhappy. > > I think it will be valuable, after this discussion about what we want > the board to be, to have a new election, as we are certainly overdue. > The discussion about the board's purpose may help determine who will > and won't run. I think that is a good thing. Perhaps we can update > some bylaws that are out of date (or out of touch) to reflect what > we collectively think the new board should do. Or, on the other end > of the spectrum, if we feel the board serves no important purpose, > maybe we should disband it and be entirely community-driven. > > This is a long message about a lot of issues; please forgive me if > my wording is not as good as it could be, or if I've accidentally > spoken for someone incorrectly or ungenerously. > > Chris
Actually Chris, I think you have stated things far better than I could, obviously having a lot longer fuse than mine, which is (in)famously short. I think the only rebuttal comment I could make, and I'm well aware of my relatively minor effect regardless, the change I would make is to be a bit more public with the reasons a request, including mine of course, aren't being considered as useful to the overall project. Feedback IOW. As has been said for 50+ years now, patches welcome. :) Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> "Out of register space (ugh)" -- vi ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
