Ok
this is actually an interesting thread.
The question that is really at the core is "how do we manage the growth of
JBoss". JBoss is a fantastic innovation machine. We need to keep it
growing exponentially. I am very happy to have feedback from the trenches.
Even the "bad" ideas have something in them.
The bottom line is a glimpse of the obvious: we need financing.
The problem is not in recruitment now, you guys are IT! nobody has this
jboss-dev list and talent, nobody! it is not the patch flow, since patches
do come and people can work on the code. JBoss user is a screaming success
of support with 3 levels.
The problem is "delegation". To delegate I need dedicated people. I work
full time on this, because I can support myself. Rickard to some degree.
But that's it! It is as simple as the fact that when I took up a
contracting job some time ago I was too dead tired at night to work on
JBoss. I don't expect better from the next guy. I find it amazing that
people like Simon, toby, hiram and many of you guys put their weekend time
on this, and I feel guilty when a patch is dropped for lack of dedicated
resources.
Dedicated resources need to be full time. I am sorry but there is just no
way around it.
Managing JBoss takes 10 full time people imho today. We can't do like Linux
and wait 10 years for things to slowly grow and manage themselves. In 10
years J2EE will be gone (if succesful :). This is the time!
Full time == $$. We need to find $$.
So I am looking at the almighty Dollar and Mr Time (some say they are one
and the same) for a solution to the "management of growth" problem.
We have and will sustain tremendous growth, both commercial and
technological, these problems are "growing pains", the good kind of pain...
We are already working on a solution
marc
|-----Original Message-----
|From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
|[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Dan Christopherson
|Sent: Monday, February 05, 2001 3:20 PM
|To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
|Subject: developer retention & comunity grouth: was: Re: [jBoss-Dev]
|<sigh> any response PLEASE? (fwd)
|
|
|This gets a little bit longish, but I do talk about a couple of
|minor changes in the way things are being done eventually -
|changes that I think might help. Please read this remembering that my
|perspective is that of a jBoss user and advocate who has been unable to
|contribute much to this point due to other requirements on my time. I
|personally approach contributions to an effort such as this pretty much as
|I outline.
|
|On Sun, 4 Feb 2001, Rickard [iso-8859-1] Öberg wrote:
|
|> Jason Thomas wrote:
|> > Then again maybe some of that 95% quit trying to help because their
|> > ideas are made fun of.
|>
|> I said that the design of the system was most excellent, just not
|> appropriate in this context. Anything else is your own interpretation.
|Your exact quote was "Excellent design of a silly control system"
|How was Jason supposed to interpret the word 'silly', other than as a
|flame? I'm not saying that it was neccesarily your intent to come off this
|way, but it's probably how most of us would have interpreted your
|statement (It's how I interpreted it, at any rate).
|
|That's not to say that the proposed system didn't fill me with a certain
|feeling of distaste: the notion of 'designers' throwing 'detailed design
|documents' over the wall in an open source project gave me the willies: I
|like open source because that doesn't happen, because it's assumed the an
|individual programmer will perform detailed design. It's true that someone
|more experienced might encourage modifications to this design, but that's
|what this mailing list is for. This also allows all parties involved
|(including lurkers) to learn constantly. IMHO, if you don't have a desire
|to constantly learn, you shouldn't be in this field.
|
|There have been some problems on jboss-dev: dropped patches are hideous,
|and a lack of responses to someone saying "OK, I want to do this, someone
|point me in a direction." is close behind. Mark made the excellent point
|that it will not scale if he must reply to all of the "I want to
|help" requests (although I think it was, well, 'silly' that he felt he had
|to point that out 8^}) - of course it won't scale! and I hope that no-one
|was expecting a monarchy here. hackers make really poor serfs). My
|proposed Threads ('Lightweight Processes') for jBoss development is:
|
|1. Find a bug
|2. (Optional) consult with jboss-dev
|3. Kill it
|4. Submit your patch
|5. Find out what was wrong with your patch
|6. Repeat 2 through 5 as neccesary
|
| - OR -
|1. Find a feature
|2. (Optional) consult with jboss-dev
|3. Implement it
|4. Submit your patch
|5. Find out what was wrong with your patch
|6. Repeat 2 through 5 as neccesary
|
|Is this really any different that what happens now? It seems to me (as an
|interested observer) that there are three things that might need to happen
|at this point.
|
|1) Step 2 will be much easier once Bugzilla is back (Or a Bugzilla
|replacement 'Powered by jBoss'?) This should also allow developers to
|check out bugs or features for themselves (I don't think there
|should be any 'board assigned' tasks - Telkel employees might be
|assigned tasks, but that's different). This might be a big change: how
|many people consult bugzilla before reporting bugs? I tend not to, but
|that's might just be me and my feelings about bugzilla.
|
|2) Steps 2,4, and 5 will really only work when module/subsystem owners
|commit to replying to messages within a reasonable timeframe. This doesn't
|mean that other people won't discuss it (by now you've realized you'll
|never shut me up 8^})) - it just seems to be needed to ensure response.
|
|3) Note that I don't assume that every contributer is a commiter (cvs
|wise) My personal opinion is that this probably isn't neccesary, that
|making people submit patches has a couple of benefits (in the 'more eyes'
|territory) and that anybody who really should have commit priviledge will
|get it once they've buried a subsystem owner in patches 8^})
|
|Well, that would be my .02$ (and you got a lot of text per penny, if not
|much else)
|
|>
|> regards,
|> Rickard
|>
|>
|
|--
|Dan Christopherson (danch)
|nVisia Technical Architect (www.nvisia.com)
|
|Opinions expressed are mine and do not neccessarily reflect any
|position or opinion of nVISIA.
|
|---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|If you're a capitalist and you have the best goods and they're
|free, you don't have to proselytize, you just have to wait.
|-Eben Moglen
|
|
|
|
|
