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Your svn and Apache (server) response just emphasises our disconnect.
OOo
is aimed at normal mortals who don't even know what a command prompt is.
Could you imagine you grandfather, mother or young child wanting to use
either of these? Fruitcakes and viagra spam on a website are
irrelevant to
the continuance of a mail forwarding service. Your last point is that we
need a migration / mitigation plan. On that point +1
I agree it there is a disconnect. But I still think you are making a
false distinction. The difference between end-user and developer or
admin software is in *what* is created. It is not necessarily a
difference in *how* it is created. I've worked over 20 years on both
kinds of software, open source and proprietary, end user, developer
and admin, and they are not developed differently. A quicksort is a
quicksort, regardless of whether it is on your iPhone on your server
or on the International Space Station. Usability testing is the same
whether you are are testing an enterprise system monitoring product or
a children's game. Technical writing is the same everywhere. You
make assumptions about your audience and you target that background
and skill level.
I acknowledge that the OpenOffice software is different than
Subversion or Apache server. (At least parts of it -- but we do have
developer modules, UNO API, etc.) But I think that difference has
few implications for how the project is run. In other words, the
argument "OpenOffice is different so we need to do it the same way we
always did it", is not really a well-founded argument at all.
Prefacing an assertion with "The Community will be offended if we
change" is similarly not an argument. Obviously a significant part of
"the Community" was offended by OpenOffice.org not changing enough,
and they went to LibreOffice. I think in both cases we need to be
forward-looking and ask what will best grow the community growing
forward, preferably a community that is comfortable working at Apache
and ideally is not quite so easily offended.
Siggghhhh. I didn't -- and I don't think that I have ever -- said
"OpenOffice is different, so we need to do it the same way we always did
it". Please don't put these words in my mouth. My point was that a
product with this breadth of functionality and targeted at a
Jo-Bloe-end-user community does have different support characteristics
from most products that Apache has nurtured; we should al least consider
the continuity impacts if we decide to curtail any existing support
service, and mitigate them where appropriate.
After my 20 years in software development, I then spent the next 10+ on
taking over accounts, handing them over, and dealing with messes that
some account execs create. I want to avoid seeing this project go the
way of some failures that I've witnessed. Somehow we need to get past
this storming, and work towards building consensus and generating solid
achievement.
Regards Terry
