Hey Guys,
The era of respect is only over if people choose to abandon it. I think we
can all hope for something better than that.
Let me summarize how things generally have worked and (I believe) should
work.
An author of an aircraft (or a section of code) generally enjoys a certain
level of ownership over that work.
If someone would like to make some substantial changes to that work, they
really owe the author (out of respect) some communication and interaction
and willingness to defer to the wishes of the original author if there are
differences in ideas. Ideally this communication would happen on our
developers mailing list so that others can pitch in with their thoughts.
Sometimes the original author is busy at the moment, or may not care if
others make changes or improvements. Sometimes they might care, or have a
different or better way to solve an issue that they would prefer.
The author on the other hand contributes their work to the project under the
terms of the GPL knowing that they do give up some control. The benefit is
that if some other part of the code is changed, and your work needs to be
tweaked to continue to operate correctly, someone else can make those tweaks
automatically while they are fixing everything else.
If someone does cross the line from either side and do too much with too
little communication, I think it's worth examining the intentions and
remembering that git gives us the opportunity to have communication after a
problem is discovered and back track if needed or find a better solution.
Also, please, when it comes to "respect", if someone does make an error,
shouldn't our first reaction be to assume the best intentions? Especially
when the person has a history of working hard to improve the code and
aircraft? Getting upset is maybe ok later after we've exhausted reasonable
attempts to resolve the situation respectfully.
At the end of the day, if people push the GPL to the limits of what they can
get away with, we end up with another proflightsim situation where everyone
is upset and no one is happy. The legal terms set ultimate boundaries, but
they don't necessarily imply policy or culture, and they don't mention
respect at all.
Instead people should of course treat each other with respect. Both in
handling each others work, and in communication on this mailing list or the
forum. And let's also be willing to cut each other a *little* bit of slack
if someone steps on or near our toes. Let's first try to steer conflicts in
a positive direction. And too often someone(s) from the sidelines are a bit
too quick to jump in with their own "me too" comments which usually just
make the situation worse.
Seriously, life is so much better and so much more pleasant when we work
together. Even friends will not agree on everything, so there can be some
healthy discussion. That is good. I've had enough ideas myself to know
that not every one of them is going to be a winner. But there are a few
people (and maybe a few combinations of people) that should seriously
consider these words and really could try to do better. I want this email
to be positive, so that will be the extent of my scolding. :-)
I think most of us here are adults and understand how to interact with
fellow human beings in a positive constructive way. I know there are
younger folks here too, and I bet they have also already learned how to be
positive and get along. Some of us just happen to forget once in a while I
guess.
Regards,
Curt.
On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Melchior FRANZ <mfr...@aon.at> wrote:
> Now I have to clarify: I assume Thorsten just did what he does since
> a while: fix bugs. Which is great. He probably either thought the
> bo105 is no longer maintained, or didn't know the (now obsolete?)
> maintenance principle. But there were certainly no bad intentions.
>
> What I'm more concerned about are those people who apparently think
> that maintainers (who are usually the *creators* -- who spent hundreds
> of hours for an aircraft) should just shut up and let others interfere
> without complaining.
>
> Now, you may claim that by not committing much in a long time to
> the bo105 I have already given up maintenance. Wrong. As long as
> I haven't explicitly said so and am still reachable via email in
> a reasonable time, I have not. Of course, I have plans to continue
> the bo105. But guess who makes the schedule?
>
> m.
>
>
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--
Curtis Olson:
http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/
http://www.flightgear.org - http://gallinazo.flightgear.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable.
Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security
threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes
sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2
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