On 3 July 2011 23:29, Ted Rolle Jr. <ster...@gmail.com> wrote: > I've been a programmer for many years. I've seen projects succeed and > projects fail. > > Someone has said that managing programmers is akin to herding cats. > > Programmers put blood, sweat, tears, and ego into their code (or at least > they should!). > For many programmers, their code is their art. > When this is the case, they - quite naturally - become protective of their > code. > With this philosophy/scenario, there can rarely be smooth roads. > > One of the philosophies that I had the unfortunate experience of working > under was 'egoless code'. > Yeah, sure. > Sounded good to the managers. It rarely worked in reality.
The Apache Way is all about what some might call "ego-less code". However, this project does face a different issue, not commonly found in other ASF projects. How do we work with the community split between OOo and LO. It would be great if we could get past ego and work together. But before we can get to that point we need to address the technical differences between the two code bases. LO is already 8 months or so adrift of OOo (or at least that is what I am led to believe). At present the only way I can see to start doing this is to a) drop the ego on both "sides", this is a different world from the one in which the fork was seen as necessary. There are still fundamental licence differences, but I am sure that, for many, the licence is less important than getting results. b) spending some time understanding one another (for some that will mean rebuilding relationships) in order to work towards your second suggestion... > Another suggestion is that the teams pursue a common, well-defined > cooperative (read: non-competitive!) objective. I don't know OOo or LO well enough to know if there is scope for a "common, well-defined cooperative objective." It would be great if some people could spend some time considering this. It might well be that there is little scope for true collaboration. However, during the proposal phase there were a few people who wanted to explore this. What happened to the plan for OOo and TDF people to get together? Ross > > On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 2:50 AM, Ross Gardler <rgard...@opendirective.com> > wrote: >> >> Hi Ted, >> >> I think the warning in your mail should be heeded. Whilst there are >> opportunities and established practices for collaboration on shared >> code, ensuring the collaboration happens can be difficult. It requires >> a certain level of humility, patience and effort on the part of all >> involved. >> >> Since you are obviously concerned about this do you have any ideas >> that can help us develop the right relationship for collaboration >> between the different parties involved? >> >> Ross > -- Ross Gardler (@rgardler) Programme Leader (Open Development) OpenDirective http://opendirective.com
