First, I would like to thank Stuart for organizing and hosting this event - it was good to finally meet you guys and exchange views "prima facie";)
My takeways from the meeting were several: face to face meetings are very valuable, so I'll engage a bit on getting the meeting in Germany going. I also encourage followup meetings in shorter times apart, maybe annually, even if not everybody is able to make it. I hope to speak for all by saying that everybody's takeaway is the others act in good faith. I state that explicitly as I was surprised by the amount of fears being expressed about the 'f word' (not that one.. "fork"). While I might be a bit pushy on setting things in motion, many of you expressing such fears would be surprised to learn about the amount of arguing _against_ a fork I have done offline. I hope that issue is closed, at least I would appreciate not having to personally deal with it any further. I have asked myself in the past why it is that many contributions fall by the wayside, and my working theory so far was that there might be a rather narrow focus on one's own environment at work. I've learned through the discussion in Wichita there's something different at work, namely a rather high ranking of stability and quality of support being the overriding driving factor. While that clearly is a more commendable explanation, unfortunately the effect is similar: the focus on a single technical aspect - quality at a given point in time - drives other aspects into the background - for instance: even if it is not 100% ready for use, is it an important or at least first step into a new (and eventually important) direction. I hope that a broader range of aspects can be catered for downstream, and I would believe there are some rather easy measures one could take to avoid the large lossage along the way; a starting point would be to differentiate between 'core' and 'contributed' components which are clearly labeled with respect to management of expectations (eg by directory tree and maybe build options like 'enable-contributed-components'). I have visited two more industrial users of LinuxCNC after the Wichita meeting, and discussions with them have reinforced an observation I took away from listening to Stuart and and others what they might want to see in LinuxCNC. This doesnt necessarily match what developers are doing or view as desirable, and the reason for this IMO lies in the composition of the set of developers: I got the impression that none of the more active developers is actually a bona-fide industrial user (i.e. using the stuff in a shop where money is made and folks are employed using it). And, btw, that includes me. While I wouldnt call this an outright defect, I would think this calls for a bit of coordination among industrial users (and potential ones at that too) of LinuxCNC: I do suggest these folks get together, maybe even offline, and coordinate among themselves a prioritized list of features _they_ want to see in LinuxCNC and come back once done in a less isolated fashion; I also suggest that be not done in the usual contexts of mailing list and IRC, the reason for that being the discussion not diverted prematurely by 'this cant be done because of' etc contributions which are likely to happen on the open channels. As for the governance discussion, I am happy to see that the problem has been recognized by the 'old guard' to actually be one, rather than just a pet peeve of the mad Austrian jumping up and down on the European end of an IRC pipe, and I appreciate the willingness to address it. I think the IRC meeting is a step in the right direction, and I will certainly do my part in making that channel and format happen in an effective way. I am not sure if this is sufficient, and I would think some honest reconsideration in a few months might answer this question more clearly. More important, things have started moving; let's review the direction and velocity in due course. - Michael ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows: Build for Windows Store. http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
