Morgaine thanks for the excellent summary of our options. I now understand how opensource works a little better & see the logic on both sides of the argument. Whatever the core dev's decide to do I am sure will be done fairly now & I will not bother about this issue anymore...Thanks for keeping us in the loop as much as possible...
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Dickson Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 8:13 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] The notion of "core" ... looking ahead Strongly agree with your analysis Morgaine. Right on target. Mike On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 11:41 +0000, Morgaine 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 _______________________________________________ Opensim-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
