On 2/03/2009, at 10:30 PM, Martin Bochnig wrote: >> You can't have a set of technical decisions made by a referendum. >> Lots of >> people without a strong vested interest in the code would >> essentially be >> arbitrarily voting on what the 'perceived' best solution is, >> without any >> strong personal research on it. > > > Sorry Glynn, but this is always the case. > Especially in real national politics. > Folks will always elect what or whom their favorite TV station > instructs them to (and most folks lack any halfway sophisticated > political background). > Do you then see this as sufficient to abandon democracy?
Yes, but design by committee doesn't work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee >> There's very few open source communities out >> there that would do such a thing. > > > I am also on a few other devel lists (e.g. qemu, xorg). > While there aren't actual referenda there, those discussions are > indeed happening (openly / unbiased-ly). Discussions may be happening, but ultimately very few involved in the discussion will be the ones who make the decision. >> Quite often, developers gather around >> something that they find most interesting, and momentum gathers >> from there. >> It just so happened that more developers found disadvantages of >> conary >> versus writing IPS from scratch. > > > Really? Where can I find that specific discussion somewhere in the > archives? > AT LEAST NOT IN PUBLIC. Maybe you have more knowledge than I, simply > because you know how it looks on the other side of the firewall. > Somebody inside SMI had made this decision "for" the community. Namely > in advance (circa summer 2007). Period and end. > > Also, I heard it so often, that conary was so different and had so > many disadvantages (and would therefore simply not be the right choice > for OpenSolaris). This argument - as is - always gets fired back to > me. Could you be a little more specific please? What exactly makes > conary a bad choice? http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/pkg-discuss/2007-September/000048.html Stephen touched on this back at the inception of the IPS project. > And if it is really so different from what OpenSolaris needs, why is > IPS cloning its functionality? Why is it even implemented in the > similar framework (python2.4 cli front-end, shared C libs backend, > sqlite3 database [and stubs for other db's] repo management)? > > IPS is a conary-clone. > Without the ability to build packages from src. > Don't you believe me, if so, why _exactly_? > > So, Sun's default argument that conary would not be what OpenSolaris > needs, cannot be valid, because in that case why would you be cloning > it from scratch, in a huge effort? I'm sorry, but I can't speak for the IPS developers here. Only they can know the design choices they made. >> If developers with runs on the board in >> terms of contribution, trust and experience had gathered around >> conary, then >> things might have been different. > > > It was due to my - then - very poor style of interacting with the > community and Sun. > But what counts more, the best technical intentions and resulting > benefits for our overall project, or some social problems due to > untalented behavior, misunderstandings and misinterpretations? I'm just suggesting that if you had been a core ON contributor for several years, things might have been different, that's all. > Glynn
