On 11.02.2004 22:50:11 Peter B. West wrote: <snip/> > > Some background: Fact is that the whole FOP team was exchanged during > > the last two years. > > Almost. I've been involved since the beginning of 2001, and a committer > for a little over two years now, I think. Joerg, Jeremias and I became > committers at the same time, so we had varying degrees of prior involvement.
You're right, of course. > > None of the old committers is still active though > > one or two are still injecting a comment from time to time. We have a > > heavy decision to carry on taken over two years ago (freezing the old > > maintenance branch and doing a redesign of FOP). I guess the committers > > are only now really getting used to all the code in FOP and getting into > > a position to really bring on the design. > > Amen. > > > Then we've got the problem > > that there are some "strong personalities" among the comitters which > > doesn't make things easier. Take the mailing list as suboptimal > > communication platform into the equation and you got the problems > > together. I myself was pretty close to quitting recently but decided to > > calm down and to concentrate on investing my very little time still > > available to FOP in a productive way because I've already invested so > > much of my free time into FOP that I simply can't let go. > > I'd like to hear more about your thinking on this and your later comment > about the unhealthiness of the team, probably on the fop-dev list, Jeremias. I mean unhealthiness of the team in terms of: - active committer count was at four people at times, all working on FOP outside of the day jobs. I'm grateful this started to change recently, new committers and all. - we've had too much negative energy mixed into our threads lately. - the team switch has cause too much loss of knowledge and awareness of decisions taken earlier. This takes a lot of time to put right again. A positive point is that we finally managed to get the message through that HEAD is the way to go (of course with possible additions from Peter's branch). > > I'm not very good in this sort of thing especially since English ist not > > my primary language and I know that my intentions sometimes don't make > > it 100% to the other side. I hope I haven't put any more oil into the > > fire by writing this. If Peter disagrees with my view of the things I'd > > like him to chime in. For any details I'd like to point to the fop-dev > > mailing list archive (the whole thing happened around 2003-12-17). > > > > So. Peter and the other PMC members, do you think we should change > > anything about my report about FOP? I thought, this was important to > > mention but I don't think this needs any intervention right now as I > > know that some (or at least one) "high-ranking" Apache people are > > listening into the conversions over in FOP-land which I'm grateful for. > > Maybe "infighting" wasn't the best word but I took it as such a few > > times during the last months. I don't consider the FOP developer > > community a healthy one, especially compared to others here at the ASF, > > but I also haven't given up hope. We're all struggling for free time, no > > big companies backing us up anymore. > > > > Perhaps "infighting over technical/design issues" would be more precise. > If you saw it as infighting, it's fair enough to describe it that way. > > I'm interested also in the comment about the lack of backing. What > backing were we receiving previously? Due to his work at Dresdner Bank Keiron was able to work on the redesign for months. I've been able to do some work while I was still at Outline (although this is only a small company but so what) although most of it was in my free time. > As to free time, I'm now working outside the industry, on a > part-time/casual basis, and I like the situation. Working full-time in > IT makes too heavy demands on my concentration to be able to devote the > necessary time to FOP, which, as you point out, is extremely demanding. > The situation I am in now gives me more time the freedom to do my > design and coding the way I want to. That comment has wider application > than FOP. > > On the positive side, the recent increase in activity includes a lot of > cross-fertilization from alt-design to HEAD, which seems to have been > received very well by everyone concerned. Perhaps this should be > mentioned to balance concerns about Victor's departure. I'm glad this happens (not that Victor left however). Jeremias Maerki
