Ian Murdock wrote:
On 5/31/07, Alan Burlison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The level of beaurocracy in OpenSolaris exceeds what I've seen
> in any other open source group by an order of magnitude and
> is a facet of life at Sun that we seem to have carried over from
> Solaris to OpenSolaris, for better or worse.
I agree entirely, that mirrors my thoughts too.
Holy crap yes.
On Thu, 31 May 2007, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
There's one further thought to add to this and that is for
someone who wants to do something "fun" with their spare
time, dealing with all of this is very unattractive.
Imagine if some high-school/university computer geek were
to come along and look in on opensolaris-discuss, does anyone
here actually think that they would be attracted to the project?
Maybe OpenSolaris is trying *too hard* to be the perfect
open source community.
More source code and less comments/opinions!
But now imagine that you're offering the knowledge, wisdom, and experience
of a group of veteran developers to the aforementioned high school or
university student. As long as you're making that available in a way that
helps them learn and accomplish, and not using it to shut them down before
they get started, that's a fantastic opportunity.
And now read Bryan's excellent response:
> More source code and less comments/opinions!
Yes, please. I don't think one can necessarily fault the OpenSolaris
community for being bureaucratic; if a project wishes to lead with the
process and follow with the prototype, life will naturally feel very
bureaucratic. I (rather strongly) believe that this is _not_ the way
that software should be developed; in software, ideas are expressed in
_code_ -- the implementation _is_ the idea. If an idea has not been
implemented, it is (in my opinion) premature to call it an "idea" -- it
is rather a notion, a daydream or perhaps a fancy. If one has such
a thought, the first order of business is not to send out proposals or
give speeches or navigate through process but rather to sit down and
write some code: build a prototype, share it with some like-minded
people, incorporate their feedback, expand the community (note,
lowercase "c") and iterate. If one does this and one's ideas are sound,
the process (in my experience) naturally follows; people naturally
gravitate to good ideas.
This is not to say that the OpenSolaris processes can't be used to help
this process of iteration -- just that they should be used to help the
process, not initiate it.
If going through the rigmarole to start a project or community is required
BEFORE doing anything useful, then we're abusing processes, and using them
to stifle activity.
If we're using the process appropriately, to help refine ideas or
implementations through application of collective experience, then we're
using the processes appropriately, to make things better.
Any review process, be it ARC or c-team or OGB/project instantiation, can
be used effectively to facilitate progress, or it can be abused to stifle
creativity.
For a well designed and implemented process, the distinction will never be
clear on paper, because it's largely a function of how all participants
approach the issues.
For a process that doesn't dovetail with the way a community works,
though, the distinction will be clear. It will always be cumbersome at
best.
Is the goal of this process to foster creative development? Or to protect
OpenSolaris resources from abuse? Or to proactively prevent the
proliferation of what is, essentially, noise (as opposed to signal)?
It is inevitable that followup will be inconsistent, based on many
factors. Some ideas will atrophy, others will become obsolete before they
are implemented. Some efforts will be duplicated by folks that don't know
each other, or who fail to reconcile different points of view.
But those are problems that must be solved after they occur, not before.
You don't tell someone "you may not blog, because we don't think you'll
do a good job of providing information worth consuming, or we don't
think you'll follow through with regular updates." You let everybody and
their brother start a blog, and you stop reading the ones that are
useless.
If the resources associated with providing useless blogs are found to be
scarce or precious, then you come up with a standard or criteria or
process to reclaim them.
Seems like projects should be similarly vetted, with value of contribution
recognized and rewarded somewhat organically, rather than by mechanical
barriers to initial startup.
--Mark
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
