Very well played Morgaine :) Cheers! James/Hiro
On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 6:41 AM, Morgaine <[email protected]>wrote: > Greetings. > > Three points of fact: > > > 1. Opensim is now in Git, a *distributed* SCM that promotes * > distributed* development. > 2. Opensim devs have declared many times that Opensim is not a product, > but a platform or toolkit from which products can be made. > 3. Opensim distros have started to appear (Diva++), consistent with > point #2. > > > These 3 points taken together suggest the following rather likely course of > future history: > > > - Git will be used in the manner in which it was intended. In other > words, there will be an explosion of Git community repos featuring personal > branches created by Opensim user/developers outside of the core group, in > much the way that happened with the LL viewer. It's likely to happen even > more strongly in the case of Opensim, because Git promotes this and because > Opensim code is already nicely modular, which cannot be said of the LL > viewer. > > > - As happened with community viewers, many Git community repos will > gain high reputations for new features, better performance, more > robustness, > expanded data types, higher scalability, fewer barriers to open teamwork, > alternative interop models, better APIs, and a hundred other things that an > extended community can tackle but which the small core team has never > thought of, or not had the manpower to pursue. > > > - Opensim distro builders will build their distros from all the best > features available in all the best known and most respected Git repos, > cherry picking to make their distros special in whatever way suits them. > Distro builders will of course also provide their own Git repositories, > swelling the repo numbers even further and giving them the prestige of a > good distro name. The Opensim equivalents of RedHat and Ubuntu will > emerge, > both as distros and as companies, and will become formidable. > > > The above doesn't require much vision because it's almost certain to > happen, simply because the tools are right, the incentives exist, people > like doing their own thing, and the precedent offered by the community > viewers is very strong. The only big uncertainty is to what extent it will > happen, and how much control the core group will retain amid the plethora of > distributed repositories. > > The latter is very hard to predict. However, two extreme cases might give > some idea of how things might pan out: > > > - If the core group remains closed, secretive and exclusionary, this > promotes the emergence of more respected upstream alternative repos as > replacement Opensim Git masters. If disputes like the current one get > really bad, there will be wholesale forks of core, destructive competition, > politically driven non-sharing, and very damaging press and public > perception. > > > - If the core group becomes open and transparent, and embraces > distributed community development for core features, this promotes the role > of the core repo as the single (or at least the leading) upstream master, a > respected concentrator of the best features from broad Opensim community > development. > > > I have a strong predisposition for openness so please take this advice with > a pinch of salt, but I believe it's correct nevertheless. If the current > core group wishes all the accolades and respect that come from a highly > popular and well run community open source project, I believe that the right > course of action is to become *organizationally* open and transparent as > well. > > Perhaps reaching version 1.0 and creating an open foundation might be a > good time for that to happen. > > Regards, and much admiration for the great achievements so far. :-) > > > Morgaine. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Opensim-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev > > -- =================================== http://osgrid.org http://del.icio.us/SPQR http://twitter.com/jstallings2 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/5/770/a49
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