On 9/13/07, James Carlson <james.d.carlson at sun.com> wrote: > Danek Duvall writes: > > On Wed, Sep 12, 2007 at 11:12:29PM +0100, Peter Tribble wrote: > > > Well, I have to say that one reason for that is the fairly widespread > > > knowledge that there has been work being done inside Sun on a > > > new packaging technology, so why should we invest effort in working > > > on the existing tools? > > > > If you truly don't believe that we're capable of doing it, or think we're > > going about it in the wrong way and won't listen to anyone else, those are > > pretty good reasons. From some of the comments I've seen, it may be that > > people feel this way (without talking to someone in person, it can be hard > > to tell). Hopefully we can now start (are starting?) to dispel the issues. > > It probably doesn't make a difference at this point, but I think that, > in terms of working with an open source project, presenting a worked > example to a community group and saying in effect "we've done some > work you will want; please endorse this" presents a naturally higher > resistance path than developing the idea itself in the group -- in the > open. > > It's hard for the community group's members to know that their > concerns have been considered in the initial requirements analysis if > they weren't actually involved in that process, and thus it's not > necessarily clear that the proposal solves the problem that the group > believes needs to be solved. They're forced, on the spot, to > recapitulate all of the development decisions you've already made over > the weeks or months you've been considering the project yourself. > > It's a matter of establishing some collective ownership and a stake in > the results, and shipping a prototype and decision summaries doesn't > do that. > > I voted to endorse, and I'm looking forward to useful results and an > openly run project, but I'm not at all surprised to hear some > skepticism.
Absolutely. Well put. My agreement to endorse this project is based on the fact an evaluation of how we're doing packaging is necessary and that this project would be valuable as an exploration of one way of doing it better. Just because the project is approved doesn't - in my mind, and I voted to approve on this basis - signify any endorsement of this as the package management solution that we would adopt. Decisions like that would be made once the project has finished. It may be that the solution is so good that we can adopt it as is; it may be that it's real value is in telling us how the existing system needs to be fixed. What I absolutely don't want is to have an implementation that has had zero community involvement to this point presented to us as "the solution" and implemented as the packaging system for Solaris by sheer inertia. I hope that's not going to happen, and would like to see clear statements as to the level of engagement the project team will have with the community. -- -Peter Tribble http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/
