Re: [steering-discuss] Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Base record access unacceptably slow
On Wed, 2011-07-27 at 19:26 +0100, Tom Davies wrote: I think most of the companies i mentioned already employ devs to work on projects relevant to those organisations. If they could each give one person half a week to Base Sure - but if they could each give one person have a week to: improving the UI, accelerating import, fixing most annoying bugs, creating unit tests, ... insert any number of potential problems - then we could also make progress. However - instead of this, we have people complaining and trying to tell other people what to do :-) That actually kills developer time, because they have to respond to the griping by pointing out the obvious lack of resources, the way that reality is shaped - and asking people to be more constructive with their time - by actually getting involved fixing things. If some of those companies had direct control over half a dev So - if some individuals, who have direct control over their own work schedule, could sit down and contribute then we'd get a long way too :-) right ? I don't think TDF can afford to wait until people get annoyed enough (as RMS suggests) because it's easier for people to just stay with other products and the rest of the Suite they come with. A little work and leadership in taking Base forwards might even attract a lot of volunteers to it instead or runing for the hills. So - go for it ! you want to win eternal fame glory, and find yourself a well paid job hacking base: sign up now - get experienced with the code, improve it, make noise about your success. Failing that - your resourcing concerns belong on a single list: the discuss list. Most of the co-operatives i have worked in have paid consultants, part-time workers, accountants, lawyers and all the rest when and where needed. Many of the ones that refused to do so folded or got absorbed. Fine - so start a co-operative to work on LibreOffice, and fund these guys to do the work you want to tell them to do, and to meet your particular priorities. Failing that, do some fund raising yourself to get an existing bespoke development company (say Lanedo) to do the work for you. All the best, Michael. -- michael.me...@novell.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] Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Base record access unacceptably slow
Hi :) The difference is that 1. those other things basically work 2. people are working on them 3. new people are attracted to work on them In complete contrast Base apparently has 1. NO-ONE working on it 2. It doesn't work 3. It's horribly complicated Base is the only app that almost every question can only be solved by getting stuck into coding or extensively trouble-shooting and regression-testing dependencies. Problems in other apps tend to be able to be solved by normal office users that may have no programming skills at all. It seems that we have 3 possible routes 1. Ignore the problems and watch as Base continues to crumble away and lie to new users that we have a database program when we really don't. 2. Drop Base and be honest that we don't have an integrated database program. 3. Step-up and manage. Regards from Tom :) From: Michael Meeks michael.me...@novell.com To: steering-discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Mon, 1 August, 2011 12:54:23 Subject: Re: [steering-discuss] Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Base record access unacceptably slow On Wed, 2011-07-27 at 19:26 +0100, Tom Davies wrote: I think most of the companies i mentioned already employ devs to work on projects relevant to those organisations. If they could each give one person half a week to Base Sure - but if they could each give one person have a week to: improving the UI, accelerating import, fixing most annoying bugs, creating unit tests, ... insert any number of potential problems - then we could also make progress. However - instead of this, we have people complaining and trying to tell other people what to do :-) That actually kills developer time, because they have to respond to the griping by pointing out the obvious lack of resources, the way that reality is shaped - and asking people to be more constructive with their time - by actually getting involved fixing things. If some of those companies had direct control over half a dev So - if some individuals, who have direct control over their own work schedule, could sit down and contribute then we'd get a long way too :-) right ? I don't think TDF can afford to wait until people get annoyed enough (as RMS suggests) because it's easier for people to just stay with other products and the rest of the Suite they come with. A little work and leadership in taking Base forwards might even attract a lot of volunteers to it instead or runing for the hills. So - go for it ! you want to win eternal fame glory, and find yourself a well paid job hacking base: sign up now - get experienced with the code, improve it, make noise about your success. Failing that - your resourcing concerns belong on a single list: the discuss list. Most of the co-operatives i have worked in have paid consultants, part-time workers, accountants, lawyers and all the rest when and where needed. Many of the ones that refused to do so folded or got absorbed. Fine - so start a co-operative to work on LibreOffice, and fund these guys to do the work you want to tell them to do, and to meet your particular priorities. Failing that, do some fund raising yourself to get an existing bespoke development company (say Lanedo) to do the work for you. All the best, Michael. -- michael.me...@novell.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] Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Base record access unacceptably slow
Tom, You may have misunderstood Michael. Your 1. will be true if no one's interested in picking up that module. Your 2. is way too premature :) (btw; a very important segment of LibreOffice power users use PostgreSQL or MySQL and don't use Base, never used it even when it was first introduced inside OOo; an even bigger segment don't use a database at all.) Your 3. is where it seems something does not work ;) step up and manage doesn't mean anything, imho. We have 37 different priorities to work on; if there are developers interested in Base, they're welcome. But you won't force anyone (and TDF does not force anyone) to work on something it does not want or does not need. However, you might want to step up and start to raise funds to have developers work on Base. The doors of opportunity are wide open. best, Charles. Le 01/08/2011 16:38, Tom Davies a écrit : Hi :) The difference is that 1. those other things basically work 2. people are working on them 3. new people are attracted to work on them In complete contrast Base apparently has 1. NO-ONE working on it 2. It doesn't work 3. It's horribly complicated Base is the only app that almost every question can only be solved by getting stuck into coding or extensively trouble-shooting and regression-testing dependencies. Problems in other apps tend to be able to be solved by normal office users that may have no programming skills at all. It seems that we have 3 possible routes 1. Ignore the problems and watch as Base continues to crumble away and lie to new users that we have a database program when we really don't. 2. Drop Base and be honest that we don't have an integrated database program. 3. Step-up and manage. Regards from Tom :) From: Michael Meeks michael.me...@novell.com To: steering-discuss@documentfoundation.org Sent: Mon, 1 August, 2011 12:54:23 Subject: Re: [steering-discuss] Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Base record access unacceptably slow On Wed, 2011-07-27 at 19:26 +0100, Tom Davies wrote: I think most of the companies i mentioned already employ devs to work on projects relevant to those organisations. If they could each give one person half a week to Base Sure - but if they could each give one person have a week to: improving the UI, accelerating import, fixing most annoying bugs, creating unit tests, ... insert any number of potential problems - then we could also make progress. However - instead of this, we have people complaining and trying to tell other people what to do :-) That actually kills developer time, because they have to respond to the griping by pointing out the obvious lack of resources, the way that reality is shaped - and asking people to be more constructive with their time - by actually getting involved fixing things. If some of those companies had direct control over half a dev So - if some individuals, who have direct control over their own work schedule, could sit down and contribute then we'd get a long way too :-) right ? I don't think TDF can afford to wait until people get annoyed enough (as RMS suggests) because it's easier for people to just stay with other products and the rest of the Suite they come with. A little work and leadership in taking Base forwards might even attract a lot of volunteers to it instead or runing for the hills. So - go for it ! you want to win eternal fame glory, and find yourself a well paid job hacking base: sign up now - get experienced with the code, improve it, make noise about your success. Failing that - your resourcing concerns belong on a single list: the discuss list. Most of the co-operatives i have worked in have paid consultants, part-time workers, accountants, lawyers and all the rest when and where needed. Many of the ones that refused to do so folded or got absorbed. Fine - so start a co-operative to work on LibreOffice, and fund these guys to do the work you want to tell them to do, and to meet your particular priorities. Failing that, do some fund raising yourself to get an existing bespoke development company (say Lanedo) to do the work for you. All the best, Michael. -- 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] Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Base record access unacceptably slow
Hi :) I imagined the different lists would take the discussion in different directions relevant to their own part of this problem. I think most of the companies i mentioned already employ devs to work on projects relevant to those organisations. If they could each give one person half a week to Base, to collaborate much as volunteers do, then we could get somewhere other than backwards = which is where we are going right now and have been for a long time. It's going to need more than just 1 talented person to sort it out because skills are needed in different directions. Base is a major blocker to desktop ( small office) GnuLinux uptake (ok, games are and multimedia too but that's outside our scope). If some of those companies had direct control over half a dev in LibreOffice then they could offer a very high level of support to clients in the future especially if the half had an indepth knowledge of Base by then. I don't think TDF can afford to wait until people get annoyed enough (as RMS suggests) because it's easier for people to just stay with other products and the rest of the Suite they come with. A little work and leadership in taking Base forwards might even attract a lot of volunteers to it instead or runing for the hills. Most of the co-operatives i have worked in have paid consultants, part-time workers, accountants, lawyers and all the rest when and where needed. Many of the ones that refused to do so folded or got absorbed. Regards from Tom :) From: Michael Meeks michael.me...@novell.com To: steering-discuss@documentfoundation.org; Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk Cc: us...@global.libreoffice.org; documentat...@global.libreoffice.org; hc.stoellin...@aon.at; t...@tomcloyd.com Sent: Wed, 27 July, 2011 18:44:25 Subject: Re: [steering-discuss] Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Base record access unacceptably slow Hi Tom, On Wed, 2011-07-27 at 18:07 +0100, Tom Davies wrote: We need to attract some devs to this project. Preferably paid devs because there is a bit of a quagmire trying to work out which patches have which licences and so which cannot be incorporated into the LGPL and which can. Ho hum; the legal / ownership angle is not so difficult to sort out; usually finding fixing the bugs is more problematic ;-) Your suggestion to get lots of companies to fund more developers is a great one - but can be organisationally problematic. Ultimately I suggest the most reliable way is to find and/or encourage new developers to do the work. There is a great spot for someone to love 'own' base in the project, it's a responsible role, and we'd really appreciate someone to do it. I think those researchers could move into coding or documentation after even perhaps just 3 - 6 months with any luck. How could we get this going forwards before the whole Suite falls over due to the 1 app's failures? This is like RMS' amusing 'myth of the starving genius' :-) If there is a serious bug that annoys enough people: particularly people that are able to understand and build databases (which are near being programmers anyway) - then *surely* if it matters enough, one or other of them will start to dig into the code to fix it. There is no magic bullet here, or other white knights coming to fix bugs in LibreOffice I'm afraid. If we want it done, we have to do it ourselves. If you know what a database is, and how to use it, then you are probable quite able to invest some time in building the latest code and having a poke at it. Sorry, Michael. -- michael.me...@novell.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
