>First, we need to talk about "philosophy." We need to share our values.
>Then, we can come up with goals. I think we need a core of FAQ documents
>that outlines our approaches and our foundations. Plus, we'll need a suite
>of plans to follow. The specific outcomes (License Agreements, etc.) need to
>flow from the global things, right?
>
>We need, IMNSHO, either:
> a) a renegade leader / dictator / visionary to trail behind.
Hi,
although a dictator would make us move more quickly and certainly simplify
things, I'd prefer if we tried to go the harder way. Let's try this
democracy thing. I've often sat here reading some unsuspecting comment that
was completely wrong and yelled out some not quite nice word. And then I
cooled off, sat down, and got to writing a very polite reply telling this
person why it didn't work (or I simply waited for Anthony to do it). Don't
get me wrong -- I hated it. But I don't want to live without it. *this* is
how it's supposed to be. We're a community for better *and* for worse. And
every time someone of us makes a mistake, the whole list learns from it.
Questions are clarified I would never have thought of. Please keep annoying
me, as I will keep annoying Alain in Server questions, and Anthony in
programming techniques.
Please read the above paragraph realizing that I'm completely honest with
you here. I think this is really necessary to understand why I feel so
strongly about making the experiment and working together.
As for visionaries to follow ... Alain immediately springs to mind. Eric
is also strong on the vision side. Everyone who utters their entusiasm
about this endeavor is a visionary. Some might only do it for a moment --
others might mainly do it. To sum up what I think, let's take a line from
Apple's famous 1984 commercial:
"Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, but we will bury them
in their own confusion. We shall prevail"
It is our program. ... and a warning.
>or....
> b) We DO need discipline as a community.
>
>Discipline: doing the right things at the right time to get to the desired
>results. What are the global desires? Do we all agree? Are we sure?
Surely we need discipline. It showed with the name vote. I tried to rush a
decision, and we had to repeat it. And then we had to say: That's it. This
is the decision. We'll have to go by trial and error, but we'll need to
keep doing these polls. This was our first opportunity to show discipline.
Now we just need to get the next vote together.
>Is it wise to take a few deep breaths and plan with big, broad strokes?
We're very early at the beginning. That's why I think it is necessary to
plan in vague strokes first. We shouldn't get into feature-mainia. That's
why I keep repeating something "is a 2.0 feature" ... first copy HC, then
we can be feature-crazy. Others have done it quite successfully. E.g. the
Quesa team, who are creating a cross-platform QuickDraw 3D, have first
copied and implemented QD3D up to version 1.6 before they even let people
post new feature suggestions to their mailing list.
>Should we all assume that the heavy hitters here are ALREADY on the same
>page and working in harmony, or not? I don't know? Is there proof?
Every time we have something new, Anthony and I post it on the web page,
so each one can see what the other is doing. If something looks like it
won't fit with what I did, I tell him, and vice versa. Since we both know
it's supposed to look like HC, and we have the complete sources and testing
programs ready, each of us can see whether it'll combine well. Also, there
aren't that many techniques to put together a program. You always have to
load data you're using into RAM, you always need to have routines that read
a file and convert it to RAM data and to write it to disk again. These are
the reasons why I can assure you that so far everything still is compatible.
>If
>we fiddle with mission statements and such, is that too much "marketing
>mumbo-jumbo" for those here, who are assumed to be more of a technical
>nature?
They are important. They're part of a top-down approach: Start with a
general mission statement. If everyone agrees, continue with a doc more
closely defining what needs to be done. Then become ever more concrete
until we have all info needed agreed upon.
>Should we plan for a time and place in the future when we all can meet in
>person, and/or via high-bandwidth teleconferences at a few remote sites?
It's the same answer as with programming: We shouldn't do things to
prevent this, but it's certainly still too early in our progress to do it
now, and thus we shouldn't start renting the lines. If there is need, we'll
find ways to meet.
>Well, thanks for the parable Rob.
>Reactions and insights most welcomed.
I can only say thanks, too, and I hope my insights will be but one
statement among many.
Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.weblayout.com/witness
'The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere...'
--- HELP SAVE HYPERCARD: ---
Details at: http://www.hyperactivesw.com/SaveHC.html
Sign: http://www.giguere.uqam.ca/petition/hcpetition.html
