Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Hi David, On Mon, 2011-10-10 at 15:40 +0300, David Nelson wrote: Sorry, I just want to add this small comment/question to my preceding posts in this thread: These belong on discuss - as has been pointed out. They are also rather tangential to the role of the board IMHO - which devolves development and release scheduling decisions to the Engineering Steering Committee. I have been searching around, and I have not been able to find an official development roadmap of any kind. For sure, there's detailed information about planned release dates going far into the future [1]. It is lovely to have a roadmap - and it is nice to have things on it, it serves a useful marketing function no doubt. However we really need to motivate volunteers to have fun incrementally improving the code, and there is no shortage of useful tasks here. Our approach seems to work for the Linux Kernel - perhaps you should go check the Linux Kernel roadmap out to see best practise there. If our leading devs stopped coding on LibreOffice tomorrow An extremely unlikely possibility, but perhaps worth considering. we wouldn't have any idea of what kind of future plans they'd been working on implementing, and how far they'd advanced in the process. Since the new devs that you're going to find to replace all those who died of a mystery illness ;-) would have their own ideas as to what they plan to work on - thus making the previous roadmap of only academic interest. So your rational seems weak. I can believe a made-up roadmap is worth doing for marketing though. Does the engineering steering committee have any kind of formal methodologies, and any kind of formal documents that it maintains? Emphatically not beyond our minutes. Clearly we do some informal co-ordination of what we're working on to avoid overlap, and we have some ideas as to the big feature holes, and problems in the code: but it is informal. It is really easy to get included into those inclusive discussions: get involved in hard-core hacking :-) then people will try to persuade you to work on their pet feature etc. Or is the future of LibreOffice simply stored in a myriad of post-its on your computer monitors, and in your minds, and in a tenuous web of discussion threads on the devs mailing list? Not at all; the future of LibreOffice is formed exclusively by contributions that people make, and a collaboration between them that grows organically. It adapts to meet user needs as it goes with help from designers, QA people, documentation guys etc. This is anathema to large chunks of the formal, specification driven, process ruled, waterfall style software development industry. You can go and read huge management screeds about how evil it is to work incrementally and without a highly granular ten year plan, with no product management, gantt chart, etc. ;-) I meet people who simply refuse to believe that Free Software exists - and that it can possibly work and improve on this basis. However the reality is, that the best software I've seen is Free Software, and was built without any of this overhead. It is also the case that, in general, volunteers don't like being 'managed' or making binding commitments to XYZ feature delivery dates :-) I don't plan to arrive at the docs team eg. and say: what is your five year roadmap for documentation ? or you created this fantastic documentation - but why is it late !? etc. ;-) I'd be rather concerned if you had such a thing: but each to his own. Finally a time-based release plan is one that doesn't wait for features. This gives confidence to distributors and developers alike, and keeps freeze discipline without conflict. It reduces the risk of unfortunate incentives during the development process and it appears to work really well, not just for us - but for many other Free Software projects that have adopted it. HTH, Michael. -- michael.me...@suse.com , Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Hi :) Thanks :) I'm not going to be at Paris but thanks for the offer. Documentation on how to join in with other teams (including the Docs Team (following recent upgrades to their infrastructure)) also needs to be done. I don't know what UNO is. It seems to be something that depends on javascript or .Net or something?? Seems a bit strange. Of the links i found this link made the most sense http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/DevGuide/FirstSteps/Programming_with_UNO and even that was a tad confusing imo. Does the limited guidance on how to add a language or new translation push people into using UNO? Oddly we don't get many calls for how to translate or how to add a new language and when we do people seem satisfied with the links we give them to specific teams or to the global translations list. We do need to get decent guides for those things but we get a lot more people asking about how to join in with programming and people seldom seem happy with what we can give them. It would be good to have a proper LO Guide that reflects LO's direction instead of the direction under Sun. If there are other guides that could be usefully added to the collection that would be great. Anyone can either edit the page or pass the links to the documentation list. Anyway, thanks hugely for your considerate reply. Regards from Tom :) --- On Mon, 10/10/11, Michael Meeks michael.me...@suse.com wrote: From: Michael Meeks michael.me...@suse.com Subject: Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks To: steering-discuss@documentfoundation.org Date: Monday, 10 October, 2011, 10:11 Hi Tom, On Sat, 2011-10-08 at 18:02 +0100, Tom Davies wrote: One of the top priorities for the Documentation Team right now is a guide to help people that want to start programming for LibreOffice. Cool ! :-) and of course, it's something that can be dead useful. There is already a good one for Extensions Right - and of course, we'd prefer people to write code that can be integrated into the core cleanly, and have code sharing between different implementations (it's easier to hack that up, debug it, and deploy it too FWIW). At the moment the Docs Team can only point to http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation#Other_Documentation_and_Resources I like the collection; it'd be great to excerpt / re-write some more functionally focused flows for the things we know happen lots: How to add a new language How to add a new translation But of course many things are simply not documented at all; and worse most of the existing docs are *heavily* UNO focused, which is (IMHO) a big mistake. Anyhow - there were some starter tasks I mentioned to David, when they're done - lets have a call brainstorm on what more can be done, and how best to do it; will you be in Paris to discuss ? I suspect there is enough out there to dig out and re-hash in a helpful way. As an example if we systematically discard anything that talks about UNO - and condense what little is left (code structure diagrams / functional descriptions etc.) I think we might end up with something quite useful for new core hackers: or at least a nucleus to work from. Thanks, Michael. -- michael.me...@suse.com , Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Hi Michael, Thanks for the answers. I don't have time to reply in detail this week, but I will certainly be thinking about what you said. I don't intend to let go of this subject, but will be planning my next attack (let me register that as a joke already) on the discuss list. I'll be coming up with a concrete plan, and this will certainly take account of your kind suggestions above. Read you around, and have a good time at the conference. ;-) -- David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Sorry, I just want to add this small comment/question to my preceding posts in this thread: I have been searching around, and I have not been able to find an official development roadmap of any kind. For sure, there's detailed information about planned release dates going far into the future [1]. But I don't find any information about what changes are planned to the general architecture of LibreOffice. If our leading devs stopped coding on LibreOffice tomorrow, not only would we not have any design documentation explaining how the beast is architectured and how it works, but we wouldn't have any idea of what kind of future plans they'd been working on implementing, and how far they'd advanced in the process. Does the engineering steering committee have any kind of formal methodologies, and any kind of formal documents that it maintains? Or is the future of LibreOffice simply stored in a myriad of post-its on your computer monitors, and in your minds, and in a tenuous web of discussion threads on the devs mailing list? -- David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 3:40 PM, David Nelson li...@traduction.biz wrote: For sure, there's detailed information about planned release dates going far into the future [1]. [1] http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleasePlan -- David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Hi Michael, Thank you for taking time out to give me those interesting answers. Lots of food for thought there, as has been the case in the past after discussing with you. I'll be arming up for work on the online help and the code base in the near future, and will pop up on IRC at that time. And I'll be coming back to the subject of design docs on the discuss list, with ideas and questions. Again, thanks for the time, and have a good conference. :-) I so much regret I won't be there with you guys. -- David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Hi David, David Nelson wrote (08-10-11 16:38) 2011/10/8 Jesús Corriusje...@softcatala.org: In my opinion, I don't think it's best for the project to put some of the most skilled developers to work in documentation, when other developers can also do this task perfectly well. It is precisely these guys who could put the most effective work into this initiative, and probably the fastest. I'm asking the potential future members of the BoD to lead the way on this. I see no link between the role of the BOD and individual members making commitments to certain day to day tasks. Is there something why I should, in your opinion? Documentation is always considered to be some kind of unnecessary-to-optional accompaniment to software -- unless you're some poor blighter trying to understand how the thing works. When I directed some people new on LibreOffice hacking to the various developer wiki pages, they were positively surprised. Hmm, I do not want to say that there is no room for improvement, but as said: commitment on that topic is IMO not the item to consider when talking to an individual candidate for the BOD. Pls note: I did not make any remark about the work done by, or commitment of, Michael or any of the other devs on this area ;-) Regards, Cor -- - Cor - http://nl.libreoffice.org -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Hi Cor, On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 1:16 PM, Cor Nouws oo...@nouenoff.nl wrote: I see no link between the role of the BOD and individual members making commitments to certain day to day tasks. Is there something why I should, in your opinion? I don't see anything incongruous about asking a candidate in the Board of Directors election about what commitments he might be willing to take on if elected. In fact, what else are you supposed to ask of candidates? When I directed some people new on LibreOffice hacking to the various developer wiki pages, they were positively surprised. Surprised? Or do you mean shocked and amazed at how little developer documentation there is about a major software project that has been developed for so many years? :-D I'm quite surprised you seem equate the very little content on the wiki to a useful provision of design documentation. In fact, there is little more than basic tips and instructions about compiling the code and a few other related issues. There is also a very small amount of API documentation at http://docs.libreoffice.org. I'm sure you'll agree that there is absolutely no design documentation of the kind I'm discussing (see [1]). There would be many advantages to developing some. I am putting this question before Michael, Thorsten and Caolan because, AFAIK, they are full-time, senior project members (sponsored by Novell, Suse and Red Hat, if I'm not mistaken), who most certainly have the greatest knowledge about LibreOffice's design and code base. They are the ideal people to work on design documentation, and I'm volunteering to work hard alongside them (without any suggestion of payment or sponsorship). It would be a major contribution and example to the community if they were willing to provide some time and expertise for this. I don't think I need to repeat the multiple other reasons why I think it's worth devoting some time and effort to this initiative, so I'll sit back and wait to see what answers might be forthcoming from the three BoD candidates I was originally addressing. ;-) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_document -- David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Hi David, David Nelson wrote (09-10-11 13:30) I don't see anything incongruous about asking a candidate in the Board of Directors election about what commitments he might be willing to take on if elected. In fact, what else are you supposed to ask of candidates? Taking care for documentation, is not a task of an individual member of the BOD, as far as I know. -- - Cor - http://nl.libreoffice.org -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Hi Michael, Please let me start by thanking you for your past service on the SC, and your important contributions to TDF and the LibreOffice project. I would like to ask whether you would be willing to make a commitment for a term of office on the BoD. I am certain that you will assure us that you support openness of the source code of LibreOffice. But I would like to put it to you that no software source code is truly open until it has been rendered as understandable as possible to as many people as possible. This is not yet the case with the source code of LibreOffice. There is no global design documentation available to someone who would like to learn to hack it. The devs have made some progress towards documenting the code base, but only at a more-microscopic level (the API documentation at http://docs.libreoffice.org, for example). But, IMHO, it would be extremely valuable to have more-global documentation outlining the architecture and working of the code base and its various components and modules. The solution of interested individuals gleaning knowledge by lurking and asking questions on IRC is not an effective and community-oriented method of sharing knowledge. Would you be willing to commit yourself to actively work with me on developing global design documentation that will be a major asset to any party wanting to start hacking the core and developing extensions? I am thinking of something along the lines of: - a global description of the architecture of LibreOffice; - a global description of the architecture of the LibreOffice programs, Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base; - a listing of all the libraries and components used in the software, and an explanation of why they are used and what they do; - a description of the differences between the versions of LibreOffice for *nix, Mac and Windows; - whatever other material that your expertise as a core dev tells you is useful and needed for genuinely opening up the source code to the world in the broadest possible sense. This could usefully be a collaborative initiative actively worked on by Caolan McNamara, Thorsten Behrens and Michael Meeks. Please may I ask your thoughts about this idea and whether you would explicitly agree to be part of it? In any case, wishing you all the best and, again, thanking you for your past work for us. :-) -- David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Hi Jesus, 2011/10/8 Jesús Corrius je...@softcatala.org: In my opinion, I don't think it's best for the project to put some of the most skilled developers to work in documentation, when other developers can also do this task perfectly well. It is precisely these guys who could put the most effective work into this initiative, and probably the fastest. I'm asking the potential future members of the BoD to lead the way on this. Documentation is always considered to be some kind of unnecessary-to-optional accompaniment to software -- unless you're some poor blighter trying to understand how the thing works. -- David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Hi David, On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 4:38 PM, David Nelson li...@traduction.biz wrote: Hi Jesus, 2011/10/8 Jesús Corrius je...@softcatala.org: In my opinion, I don't think it's best for the project to put some of the most skilled developers to work in documentation, when other developers can also do this task perfectly well. It is precisely these guys who could put the most effective work into this initiative, and probably the fastest. I'm asking the potential future members of the BoD to lead the way on this. Documentation is always considered to be some kind of unnecessary-to-optional accompaniment to software -- unless you're some poor blighter trying to understand how the thing works. I think your proposal is interesting and I really see your point here, but, at the same time, I'd create a group of people with different skill levels to work on it. I don't deny that it will not be as effective, but I could also be a chance for wannabe developers to learn a lot about the project while they work in benefit of the community. Just my two cents :) -- Jesús Corrius je...@softcatala.org Document Foundation founding member Mobile: +34 661 11 38 26 Skype: jcorrius | Twitter: @jcorrius -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Jesus, I'm hoping to see from three of our leading devs who are candidates for the BoD how committed they are to *Open Source* software. ;-) Open the doors wider, and more people might come in. -- David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: Michael Meeks
Hi :) One of the top priorities for the Documentation Team right now is a guide to help people that want to start programming for LibreOffice. There is already a good one for Extensions but most of the scattered things we have for programmers are apparently for OpenOffice when it was under Sun. LibreOffice has significantly improved things, for example the Easy Hacks and probably details about the infrastructure and work-flow. At the moment the Docs Team can only point to http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation#Other_Documentation_and_Resources Regards from Tom :) --- On Sat, 8/10/11, Jesús Corrius je...@softcatala.org wrote: From: Jesús Corrius Subject: Re: [steering-discuss] Candidacy for Board: To: steering-discuss@documentfoundation.org Date: Saturday, 8 October, 2011, 15:33 This could usefully be a collaborative initiative actively worked on by Caolan McNamara, Thorsten Behrens and Michael Meeks. In my opinion, I don't think it's best for the project to put some of the most skilled developers to work in documentation, when other developers can also do this task perfectly well. Jesús Corrius -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
