I definitely respect the mentors' opinions and want to learn from
their experience in the open-source community. None of my questions
or challenges to their ideas should be taken as disrespect.
The current IDE project files are in active use by multiple core
committers to this project, who find them very useful. I've heard no
reports of them causing any real trouble for anyone else, and even if
they were - it's not hard to setup a separate IDEA project if you want
to have one customized to your liking. I don't understand why it's
surprising that an email stating only "Can we remove these?" with no
further explanation would not be questioned or challenged in some
way. This doesn't indicate a lack of respect for Alan - I certainly
respect him and value the time and experience he is devoting to this
project! That doesn't mean I will always agree, right or wrong...
I do agree that this is a small issue, much like the build system
issue. In my humble opinion, neither of these are causing any real
issues to the project at the moment. I do think JSecurity has lots of
big issues - how to attract more users (for example, better
integration with other projects, etc), how to improve our website, how
to improve our documentation, what are the next "killer features" that
need to be added to spur more support and adoption, etc. I would love
to be brainstorming with you guys and getting your ideas and advice on
these issues.
The IDE project files are providing a real benefit to the current
committers of this project, and causing very little (if any) harm. If
this changes in the future, it's a really simple task to remove them
from SVN. For now, I wish we could focus our time and effort on
discussing the bigger challenges facing JSecurity.
Jeremy
On Jan 5, 2009, at 12:30 PM, Alex Karasulu wrote:
This is not a big issue but if you don't see the kinds of collisions
IDE
specific files in SVN cause in collaborative environments, then
experience
will eventually show you over time. I won't enumerate over how many
people
told me the same or how many painful experiences taught us this
lesson. All
in all, it's no big deal and these things will sort themselves out.
If you
feel you need to keep the files then go ahead.
More importantly though, these kinds of threads are distracting.
This is a
simple suggestion by those who have learned these conventions after
years of
working in this community. You don't have to apply a mentor's
advice if you
don't want to and eventually incubation rules will be applied to
sort out
what really matters to the ASF. Although I have not been able to
give you
guys the kind of time I've wanted to, I was hoping to be here to
help during
these growing pains. I guess this last thread was a signal for me
to kick
in. To do this right, you guys need to trust and be open to the
suggestions
made. Mentors are not gods nor are they tyrants. They've just had
more
experience in this community and can provide some guidance. That
does not
make them better or more savvy. There's no golden mentor badge of
honor
:-). This project needs to incubate no matter what so why not get
the most
out of it. If everything we have to deal with together is met with
difficulty then ask yourself why you're here!
Let's together refuse to tolerate discord and gain as much as we
can. All I
can recommend at this point is for those new to the ASF to be a bit
more
open and trusting. To the mentors I recommend we have a little more
patience and let these guys educate themselves from their own
experiences.
It's important for us to make suggestions and equally if not more
important
we must understand and accept that some advice will be disregarded.
When
advice is solicited we can give it gratis. On the flip side, if
everything
is a struggle and all advice is dismissed then what's there to
mentor. In
the end you just have to ask yourself why you bother to be here!
(Note: same
advice as above paragraph)
I've had great personal and group experiences here at the ASF where
I have
mentored and been mentored. These have usually been ones where there
has
been mutual respect and the bonds formed have lasted for a lifetime. I
remember one of my mentors, Noel, who is now the IPMC chair. He
would give
advice and stand back for us to make our own choices. Eventually we
always
wound up following his wise advice and gained a lot of respect for him
through his patience. However we also did pay for having to learn
lessons on
our own with more time in the incubator :-(. It's all about tradeoffs
without absolutes.
I apologize in advance if this email touches nerves. Just being
sincere
without any objective but to reduce the unnecessary discord.
Regards,
Alex
