Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Thanks Martin and Albert for your dissenting opinions. They are valuable. On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 13:36, Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 9:47 PM, Morgan Collett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am happy to take on making this communication happen but I really think we need this list. FWIW, Sugar + activities are still somewhat tightly coupled, as Sugar and the underlying OS API are changing. As long as that is true, to maintain an activity to a good standard, you have to keep an eye on devel@ and/or [EMAIL PROTECTED] My rule of thumb is to try and keep people together -- recommending filters sometimes -- until the traffic gets so heavy *and* a distinct subcommunity can be split off. IMHO neither is true here (yet!). In my experience the activity developer community has lost many participants already. Perhaps they weren't going to stay anyway, beyond an initial The flip side is that offering a new ml to a small/medium sized group is a great way to *kill* that group. It is an excellent troll mgmt strategy. The last thing I want to do is fragment the community. Let me add some personal context: I started out writing a couple of activities for MaMaMedia. At that time it was very confusing trying to figure out the state of the platform. Going by the HIG, there was this excellent feature called the Bulletin Board which seemed exactly what I needed. Also, the collaboration features were exactly what I wanted. I had to ask on IRC to find out the bulletin board was non-existant and the collaboration was only partially implemented and only in a single existing activity. I personally found the best approach was to follow all communication channels to try and figure out what worked and what didn't, and what the best way to use the existing features was. I subscribed to all the technical mailing lists. I stayed logged on to IRC and read the backlogs every morning. It worked for me. However, most other activity authors that I was aware of, have vanished. They haven't updated their activities in months (if at all this year). I'm quite certain that mailing devel@ or sugar@ will not get their attention. Those are both high traffic lists, with a lot of traffic not relevant to activities, as Martin Dengler has analysed: 2008/8/3 Martin Dengler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I'm not sure I agree - sugar@ has so much traffic not relevant to casual activity authors (for example, your Congratulations... thread). I can't believe I did this, but I went through the July sugar@ messages and categorized them into ones I thought would be appropriate for the AA list and ones not (thus for the current sugar@ list). Totals: 808 messages AA - 293 messages 36.3% SS - 515 messages 63.7% You may see the details here: http://dev.laptop.org/~mdengler/sugar_list_july_2008_categorized.txt My hope is to have a mailing list that is the *last* one that an overwhelmed developer will unsubscribe from, so we can still reach them. Regards Morgan ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Morgan Collett wrote: On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 15:23, Morgan Collett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've raised the idea a couple of times to have a mailing list specifically for activity developers, which would be uncluttered by all the traffic on the devel and even sugar lists. That would hopefully have the result that people stay subscribed, or at least notice mails which are important to them. Currently, I'm not even sure which list out of devel and sugar is going to reach more activity developers, hence this cross-post and many others. I've been looking at the OLPC wiki, to see what we are advising contributors to sign up for: * http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developers_program#Project_Hosting points to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Project_hosting which says subscribe to devel@ when asking for project hosting. * http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developers_program#Expectations_of_Recipients points to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developers/Communication#Minimum_Communication_Requirements which says subscribe to community-news@ and [EMAIL PROTECTED] So IMO the sugar list is more relevant, but the devel list is more likely to reach everyone. Cross-posting to every list all the time seems counter to netiquette, and as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossposting says, if all messages were crossposted to every group, then every group would look exactly the same. What I want out of this discussion is a clear recommendation for activity authors to subscribe to a particular place that we can count on, to the extent that that is possible. We can have them subscribe to devel and apply filters (via the mailman web interface) to use predefined topics (regexps) that, for example, contain the string breaks-python or whatever. -FFM ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 12:45 AM, Morgan Collett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my experience the activity developer community has lost many participants already. Perhaps they weren't going to stay anyway, beyond an initial ... I personally found the best approach was to follow all communication channels to try and figure out what worked and what didn't, and what Good point. As mention, there are a lot of things to keep track of. At the moment, that is the nature of the beast - the platform has a high rate of change. Once the rate of change slows down, it will be easier for activity authors. Right now, well... Those are both high traffic lists, with a lot of traffic not relevant to activities, as Martin Dengler has analysed: ... I can't believe I did this, but I went through the July sugar@ messages and categorized them into ones I thought would be appropriate for the AA list and ones not (thus for the current sugar@ list). Totals: 808 messages AA - 293 messages 36.3% SS - 515 messages 63.7% Sidenote: I think *any* developer these days is used to lists where they are interested in only a % of the traffic. If you are a lead or core dev of a small project, your project's list is probably 100% for you, but in *every* other case, you read 10% of the emails. I read 100% of server [EMAIL PROTECTED], 20% of [EMAIL PROTECTED], 5% of [EMAIL PROTECTED], 5% of moodle.org list traffic, 2% of fedora-devel-list, etc. It would be wholly inappropriate for me to complain on those lists about irrelevant traffic -- every reader slices and dices them in their own way. Some activity authors need to keep track of camera bugs. Others are sensitive to timing issues (realtime-ish needs?) or storage (large media?) or touchpad bugs, or multi-touch plans. Or specific library changes. cheers, martin -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Another simplement argument: this will be clearer for users to know where to send feedback. If you have a question about a particular activity, ask on the activity list. For other questions ask on the Sugar list. -- Bastien ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
2008/8/3 Martin Dengler [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, Aug 02, 2008 at 05:10:54PM -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bastien wrote: | - announce new activities | - announce changes in ownership | - check for dead/agonizing/orphaned activities | - discuss API and dependancies issues All of these things are perfect for [EMAIL PROTECTED] They are precisely what sugar@ is for. They do not cover everything sugar@ is for[1], or is currently used for (see next point). There is no need for an additional mailing list. I'm not sure I agree - sugar@ has so much traffic not relevant to casual activity authors (for example, your Congratulations... thread). I can't believe I did this, but I went through the July sugar@ messages and categorized them into ones I thought would be appropriate for the AA list and ones not (thus for the current sugar@ list). Totals: 808 messages AA - 293 messages 36.3% SS - 515 messages 63.7% You may see the details here: http://dev.laptop.org/~mdengler/sugar_list_july_2008_categorized.txthttp://dev.laptop.org/%7Emdengler/sugar_list_july_2008_categorized.txt - --Ben Martin 1. From http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar : Sugar is the internal code name for everything users see. This includes the sharing and collaboration experience, base set of tasks, and the entire desktop stack. This mailing list is to discuss the design and the implementation of that effort. (adding Sugar back to the conversation, not sure why it was dropped) I'm generally the first one to argue against YAML (yet-another-mailing-list) as I'm already subscribed to almost 30 OLPC-related ones... However I do believe that the idea of a mailing-list targeted to activity-developers has some merit to it. Contrary to Albert's comment I don't think an announcement only list for when the API breaks is enough, this is such a fundamental thing that should be communicated on all channels (mailing lists, wiki pages, sugar almanac, you name it) when it happens. The fact that this hasn't been done in the past just shows how much is lacking when it comes to making it easy for people to contribute activities without having to follow all the conversations on sugar, devel, etc. Looking at the big picture we we should be thinking about how mailing-lists are going to be used down the road anyway, for example whether there's going to be a gen. 2 (XOXO) list for all things related to that project. There we're going to have the same issue that potentially some (but definitely not all!) issues will overlap with current devel- and sugar discussions, but I guess that's what cross-posting is for. Getting back to the discussion at hand: In a perfect world an activity-developer would not have to worry about core-issues as mostly discussed on sugar and devel, as that stabilized *information* (the outcome and decisions based on the discussions on the lists) would be accessible somewhere on the API doc, wiki, sugar-almanac, activity handbook, etc. The activity-developers mailing-list could then be used to exchange tricks of the trade, ask questions (such as Alex's current one about the difference between sugar-launch and launching from the home-view), solicit help for testing and localization (CC'ing the appropriate mailing-lists in the process) and just plainly sharing ideas and suggestions for activities without actually writing them oneself (another big issue because at the moment we don't have a forum for children, parents, educators, content creators, graphic designers, etc. to share their input). Anyway, just my 2 jet lagged euro-cents, Christoph ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Christoph Derndorfer Co-Editor, OLPCnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 9:47 PM, Morgan Collett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am happy to take on making this communication happen but I really think we need this list. FWIW, Sugar + activities are still somewhat tightly coupled, as Sugar and the underlying OS API are changing. As long as that is true, to maintain an activity to a good standard, you have to keep an eye on devel@ and/or [EMAIL PROTECTED] My rule of thumb is to try and keep people together -- recommending filters sometimes -- until the traffic gets so heavy *and* a distinct subcommunity can be split off. IMHO neither is true here (yet!). The flip side is that offering a new ml to a small/medium sized group is a great way to *kill* that group. It is an excellent troll mgmt strategy. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
[sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list)
Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: FWIW, Sugar + activities are still somewhat tightly coupled, as Sugar and the underlying OS API are changing. As long as that is true, to maintain an activity to a good standard, you have to keep an eye on devel@ and/or [EMAIL PROTECTED] My rule of thumb is to try and keep people together -- recommending filters sometimes -- until the traffic gets so heavy *and* a distinct subcommunity can be split off. IMHO neither is true here (yet!). (Fair enough. In any case, my awareness about Sugar and the activities development is not strong enough to dispute about the relevance of such a list -- 'was just dropping a few opinions.) -- Bastien ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list)
On Sun, Aug 03, 2008 at 10:43:30AM -0500, Bastien wrote: Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: FWIW, Sugar + activities are still somewhat tightly coupled, as Sugar and the underlying OS API are changing. As long as that is true, to maintain an activity to a good standard, you have to keep an eye on devel@ and/or [EMAIL PROTECTED] My rule of thumb is to try and keep people together -- recommending filters sometimes -- until the traffic gets so heavy *and* a distinct subcommunity can be split off. IMHO neither is true here (yet!). (Fair enough. In any case, my awareness about Sugar and the activities development is not strong enough to dispute about the relevance of such a list -- 'was just dropping a few opinions.) As opposed to a new list, we could use the topics function of mailman to enable people to select that they only want python breakage emails, for example, that contain a certin regexp. This topic can be addded by the list admin, per http://www.esosoft.com/support/mailinglist/mailman/topics.html -FFM ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list)
As opposed to a new list, we could use the topics function of mailman to enable people to select that they only want python breakage emails, for example, that contain a certin regexp. This topic can be addded by the list admin, per http://www.esosoft.com/support/mailinglist/mailman/topics.html I think tags, or topics, or whatever you call them, would be the perfect solution. In fact, I suggest that using this feature, we could even start to merge lists - for instance, devel@ and [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 12:53 PM, Albert Cahalan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Morgan Collett writes: We didn't get to discuss this activity developers' mailing list at the Sugar meetings. However I've had no negative feedback. If anyone is opposed to this list, please speak up quickly and loudly. Otherwise I will get it created in the next week, publicize it and invite all known activity developers whose email addresses I can track down to subscribe. Well I don't want to be all that negative because it isn't my server and I'm not joining the list, so I have little reason to care. If you're looking for reasons why the list isn't useful though, sure: This will eventually, if not immediately, be a dead list. Few people want to work on all activities. Activities often do not share much in common. For developer D1 who likes to hack on activity A1, emails about activity A2 are noise. Not sure about that... I propose that many activity developers would love to help casually with other activities, and that the lack of large-group collaboration on development of many activities could be cured by having a tangible activity developers' group. I've done some thinking about this (w.r.t. activities + git repositories) at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_co-op Generally, the expertise will be elsewhere. If I need to discuss programming the camera, where does it make sense for me to go? Certainly an activity mailing list is not the place. I could see discussing camera activity development (pygame/camera) on an activity devel list. Brian If the list were moderated, to be used ONLY for announcements of things that break the API/ABI, then there could be some value. In that case, you'd need to split up Python and non-Python. Like this: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] There could also be a list to announce new activities. ___ Sugar mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
My only question is whether this should be @lists.laptop.org or @lists.sugarlabs.org. Please comment, or I will make it the latter by default. I think the latter makes sense, activities are meant to work with Sugar and not the XO in particular. Shikhar ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Morgan Collett writes: We didn't get to discuss this activity developers' mailing list at the Sugar meetings. However I've had no negative feedback. If anyone is opposed to this list, please speak up quickly and loudly. Otherwise I will get it created in the next week, publicize it and invite all known activity developers whose email addresses I can track down to subscribe. Well I don't want to be all that negative because it isn't my server and I'm not joining the list, so I have little reason to care. If you're looking for reasons why the list isn't useful though, sure: This will eventually, if not immediately, be a dead list. Few people want to work on all activities. Activities often do not share much in common. For developer D1 who likes to hack on activity A1, emails about activity A2 are noise. Generally, the expertise will be elsewhere. If I need to discuss programming the camera, where does it make sense for me to go? Certainly an activity mailing list is not the place. If the list were moderated, to be used ONLY for announcements of things that break the API/ABI, then there could be some value. In that case, you'd need to split up Python and non-Python. Like this: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] There could also be a list to announce new activities. ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Shikhar [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: My only question is whether this should be @lists.laptop.org or @lists.sugarlabs.org. Please comment, or I will make it the latter by default. I think the latter makes sense, activities are meant to work with Sugar and not the XO in particular. Agreed! -- Bastien ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Let's say that the list will be used for: - announce new activities - announce changes in ownership - check for dead/agonizing/orphaned activities - discuss API and dependancies issues - ... I think there are many reasons to get such a list. Albert Cahalan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: If the list were moderated, to be used ONLY for announcements of things that break the API/ABI, then there could be some value. In that case, you'd need to split up Python and non-Python. Like this: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] There could also be a list to announce new activities. -- Bastien ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bastien wrote: | - announce new activities | - announce changes in ownership | - check for dead/agonizing/orphaned activities | - discuss API and dependancies issues All of these things are perfect for [EMAIL PROTECTED] They are precisely what sugar@ is for. There is no need for an additional mailing list. - --Ben -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkiUzV4ACgkQUJT6e6HFtqQVsQCfZ4EY/4O4/vGiwZTOtqXPZt4X DI0An3kNAakrEHSc5yRjYlQBnzN73uud =c9LA -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
On Sat, Aug 02, 2008 at 05:10:54PM -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bastien wrote: | - announce new activities | - announce changes in ownership | - check for dead/agonizing/orphaned activities | - discuss API and dependancies issues All of these things are perfect for [EMAIL PROTECTED] They are precisely what sugar@ is for. They do not cover everything sugar@ is for[1], or is currently used for (see next point). There is no need for an additional mailing list. I'm not sure I agree - sugar@ has so much traffic not relevant to casual activity authors (for example, your Congratulations... thread). I can't believe I did this, but I went through the July sugar@ messages and categorized them into ones I thought would be appropriate for the AA list and ones not (thus for the current sugar@ list). Totals: 808 messages AA - 293 messages 36.3% SS - 515 messages 63.7% You may see the details here: http://dev.laptop.org/~mdengler/sugar_list_july_2008_categorized.txt - --Ben Martin 1. From http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar : Sugar is the internal code name for everything users see. This includes the sharing and collaboration experience, base set of tasks, and the entire desktop stack. This mailing list is to discuss the design and the implementation of that effort. pgpJFJfTtmoFh.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 11:47:56AM +0200, Morgan Collett wrote: On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 04:42, Bastien [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Any follow-up on the idea of having a precise list of maintainers for all Sugar activities? Even just the email address from the git repo would be nice. [...] * We need to make it easier for new activity developers to get up to speed without having to wade through information they don't need. I am happy to take on making this communication happen but I really think we need this list. I think this is a good idea too, especially given that you're motivated to do it. Morgan Martin PS - I'd say +1 but please remember http://kernelslacker.livejournal.com/125203.html pgpyBXEtsDzeN.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
