Re: [Emc-users] About the board, the rebrand, and the future
On 25 January 2012 19:10, Chris Radek ch...@timeguy.com wrote: Protect myself and other individuals involved in the project from a ruinous lawsuit brought by an immensely wealthy multinational corporation that could cause grave hardship for us and our loved ones; I think that rolling over and giving them exactly what they want was the right thing to do for this reason. However it is interesting to speculate what would have happened had we been able to persuade them that their quarrel was with NIST who chose the EMC name. -- atp The idea that there is no such thing as objective truth is, quite simply, wrong. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] About the board, the rebrand, and the future
properly: N.I.S.T. and E.M.C. for the respective unabbreviated designations. ruinous lawsuits brought with the immense wealth of multinational corporations are more powerful even than god. if you disagree with such a statement of the rule of corporate law, you might as well brand yourself a terrorist, and look forward to constructing improvised idealistic devices:) --- On Thu, 1/26/12, andy pugh bodge...@gmail.com wrote: From: andy pugh bodge...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Emc-users] About the board, the rebrand, and the future To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Date: Thursday, January 26, 2012, 2:05 AM On 25 January 2012 19:10, Chris Radek ch...@timeguy.com wrote: Protect myself and other individuals involved in the project from a ruinous lawsuit brought by an immensely wealthy multinational corporation that could cause grave hardship for us and our loved ones; I think that rolling over and giving them exactly what they want was the right thing to do for this reason. However it is interesting to speculate what would have happened had we been able to persuade them that their quarrel was with NIST who chose the EMC name. -- atp The idea that there is no such thing as objective truth is, quite simply, wrong. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] About the board, the rebrand, and the future
On 1/26/2012 5:05 AM, andy pugh wrote: On 25 January 2012 19:10, Chris Radekch...@timeguy.com wrote: Protect myself and other individuals involved in the project from a ruinous lawsuit brought by an immensely wealthy multinational corporation that could cause grave hardship for us and our loved ones; I think that rolling over and giving them exactly what they want was the right thing to do for this reason. However it is interesting to speculate what would have happened had we been able to persuade them that their quarrel was with NIST who chose the EMC name. There's no refuge for us there. Last week I said As for NIST's role, it's unfortunate that Enhanced Machine Controller was chosen as the name of the system and that EMC is a natural shorthand for it. That's history and I think we should celebrate it, but I don't see anything is to be gained holding our breath until we turn blue. Even supported software (which the software at issue is not) from NIST bears a disclaimer drafted in the General Counsel's office. It typically reads,in part, This software was developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology by employees of the Federal Government in the course of their official duties. Pursuant to title 17 Section 105 of the United States Code this software is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain. These programs are experimental systems. NIST assumes no responsibility whatsoever for their use by other parties, and makes no guarantees, expressed or implied, about its quality, reliability, or any other characteristic. The name is surely one of those other characteristics. Had the NIST General Counsel received such a letter as did the board he would have advised an immediate name change to avoid the perception of trademark infringement. (In my career at NIST, I spent more than a few hours with the General Counsel and staff. I got a pretty good idea of how they work. There has always been a strong policy of neither infringing on nor endorsing private-sector products.) Have you ever wondered about the strange made-up names of many commercial products---notably pharmaceuticals, which are as numerous as software? The companies use computer programs to generate and test candidate names for appropriateness in various languages (sometimes they have missed this one big time), potential trademark infringement, etc. Choosing an initialism or acronym based on beginning letters of a catchy phrase is typically a non-starter for them. Regards, Kent -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
[Emc-users] About the board, the rebrand, and the future
Michael, Thanks for your criticism. I have taken several days to think about it. I have not discussed my thoughts with the board and I am speaking only for myself and to my own relationship to the project. I agree with you that there are some technical problems with how the renaming was done; in particular, changes of variable or object names in the source is unnecessary from a branding standpoint and unnecessarily destabilizing. It's possible we could revert those mistakes and perhaps we should. I think Jeff has responded to these thoughts too. But this is a very small part of the dissatisfaction expressed in your letter. Mostly you are dissatisfied with all aspects of the board's behavior. You would like the board to take more direct and authoritative action guiding development. In fact the bylaws currently say something to this effect: we'll within 24 hours set the priority and assign to a developer all bug fixes and feature requests submitted on sourceforge. To me this is eminently silly and you are right that I do not take this responsibility seriously. I do not feel I have the authority to assign ANYTHING to ANYONE and I certainly don't have the authority to prioritize their action items. I am not a development manager and none of our developers are my employees. Our developers, me included, take on bug fixes and improvements as we feel qualified to tackle them, and as we have time and energy to spare in our day-to-day lives. I will say more about this later. Now on the other hand, you would have liked the board to take a less direct/authoritative and more community-oriented approach to the problems posed by emc.com's lawyer, even suggesting that perhaps a community member may have had the experience to handle it better and get us a better outcome. I will say more about this later too. Now I do not claim to do everything right, or to have given the project my full attention at all times in the last, uh, decade or so that I've been involved, or that I've always handled every question to the best of my ability. I hope nobody expects that of me. But aside from that, I see that we have a fundamental disagreement about the role of the board. The things I think the board should handle are something like this: Represent the project in general to the outside world, being a point of contact for companies, lawyers, etc. Keep tabs on the infrastructure the whole project needs, make smart decisions about it, and keep it working. This is stuff like the DNS, the key used to sign the apt repositories, the websites, arrangements with services that recognize our project somehow like sourceforge and freenode and the Linux foundation, and so on. This task also includes things like studying/advocating/implementing the switch from cvs to git. It also includes deciding in general how we use vc (merging strategy, stable release branches, feature branches) and trying to keep people doing that properly. Maintain the set of keys from pushers and offer push access to contributors who show consistent quality and express an intention to stick around for a while, and hopefully a bit of guidance to new folks on using vc correctly, the stuff I mentioned above. Select release managers that can help a branch become stable and eventually get released (so far these have been board members, but I think they don't need to be). I value your great contributions to the project and am sorry that you don't have the guidance you want. For example I hear you talking about a task/interpreter restructure that you are interested in, and that you have made some progress but want feedback. When you get no feedback I understand that you can't tell if it's because nobody cares, or because nobody feels qualified to help you in that way. In the case of me personally, it's the latter. I'm not an expert in object oriented design and it does no good for you to tell me about your design. I have no useful input. On the other hand, when you show (not tell) me that you have something that makes the system better, like when you shared your remapping work, I helped you test and became your advocate and helped you get it merged. I think it's a little unfair to say that you've had complete silence from the board or board members; I do understand though that the moments of silence do stick in one's mind. Now, about the decision to rebrand and how we came to it: The first letter from the lawyer was directly to me. I hope you and others can understand that since there is no LinuxCNC organization and that we are only a bunch of individuals, those of us with (titular?) authority and responsibility had particular personal danger in this proceeding. My goals personally (again I am not speaking for the others) were, in order: Protect myself and other
Re: [Emc-users] About the board, the rebrand, and the future
On 1/25/2012 2:10 PM, Chris Radek wrote: Michael, Thanks for your criticism. I have taken several days to think about it. I have not discussed my thoughts with the board and I am speaking only for myself and to my own relationship to the project. I agree with you that there are some technical problems with how the renaming was done; in particular, changes of variable or object names in the source is unnecessary from a branding standpoint and unnecessarily destabilizing. It's possible we could revert those mistakes and perhaps we should. I think Jeff has responded to these thoughts too. ... The first letter from the lawyer was directly to me. I hope you and others can understand that since there is no LinuxCNC organization and that we are only a bunch of individuals, those of us with (titular?) authority and responsibility had particular personal danger in this proceeding. My goals personally (again I am not speaking for the others) were, in order: Protect myself and other individuals involved in the project from a ruinous lawsuit brought by an immensely wealthy multinational corporation that could cause grave hardship for us and our loved ones; Find an outcome that allows the continuation of the LinuxCNC project with as little disruption as possible, and that is likely to help us avoid more of this kind of mess in the future; Not piss off other developers and users too much. I think we have succeeded with #1 and #2, and not very well with #3. Chris: I think you folks performed remarkably well when this situation arose. You won't hear any complaints from me, just sympathy that it did arise*. I'll let others debate what our board should be and do. I think the momentary instability caused by the rebranding is acceptable particularly because it comes just before rather than just after a significant release. We seem to be reducing the radius of confusion every day. The effort has been started, let's finish it. As an aside, I hope you and the other board members carry umbrella insurance policies to help mitigate your 'particular personal danger', which is quite real. These policies not expensive, at least in the US; I bought one for my wife the day she decided to quit her job and hang out her shingle as a consultant, precisely so our personal holdings would not be at immediate risk. Regards, Kent *and you're not alone. A quick search on the term trademark bullying will reveal fascinating accounts as well as the inconclusive results of last year's study of the problem commissioned by Congress. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] About the board, the rebrand, and the future
I mostly agree with Chris on this one, some comments added below. Michael, Thanks for your criticism. I have taken several days to think about it. I have not discussed my thoughts with the board and I am speaking only for myself and to my own relationship to the project. I agree with you that there are some technical problems with how the renaming was done; in particular, changes of variable or object names in the source is unnecessary from a branding standpoint and unnecessarily destabilizing. It's possible we could revert those mistakes and perhaps we should. I think Jeff has responded to these thoughts too. As Chris described all of the work on LinuxCNC is done by contributors (I consider contributors people who write code, write documentation, test things, etc). This work is done by each individual mainly because they wish to add something to the project (or fix something that is wrong, missing, whatever). They do it without beeing instructed or compelled to. As a result, the people doing the work, are the ones who get to decide on what they want to work, how they want to do it, etc. Surely if a contribution is seen as negative to the project (by other developers), it can be discussed or even reverted. The authority for this relies still to contributors (most likely contributors which have experience in that particular field). The board (as it is now) doesn't get involved in such matters. If you say it should, then we should discuss it, and change the attributions of the board when a concensus is reached. As for the rename: sometimes discussing a new feature (like a rename) will lead to an interminable discussion with arguments on a couple of sides about how things should get done. This usually leads to a lot of talk and no real implementation. Jeff (as a developer) took the other possibility and jumped right into the change. As a board member I have no real oppinion about the way he chose (except maybe to see that he achieved the goals of renaming the project so as to comply with Emc inc.'s demands, maybe even exceeded them a bit). As a fellow developer (although my developer hat is pretty wrinkly from sitting in a closet) I agree with his later email describing some of the things he could have done better. (that doesn't mean that I wouldn't have possibly made the same mistake if I started the rename). But this is a very small part of the dissatisfaction expressed in your letter. Mostly you are dissatisfied with all aspects of the board's behavior. snip But aside from that, I see that we have a fundamental disagreement about the role of the board. The things I think the board should handle are something like this: Represent the project in general to the outside world, being a point of contact for companies, lawyers, etc. As stated in the current bylaws Keep tabs on the infrastructure the whole project needs, make smart decisions about it, and keep it working. This is stuff like the DNS, the key used to sign the apt repositories, the websites, arrangements with services that recognize our project somehow like sourceforge and freenode and the Linux foundation, and so on. Missing from the bylaws, should probably be added. This task also includes things like studying/advocating/implementing the switch from cvs to git. It also includes deciding in general how we use vc (merging strategy, stable release branches, feature branches) and trying to keep people doing that properly. Right, but this should also be done consulting the active contributors (it's not a simple board decision that needs to be accepted as in #1 - represent the project in general...). Maintain the set of keys from pushers and offer push access to contributors who show consistent quality and express an intention to stick around for a while, and hopefully a bit of guidance to new folks on using vc correctly, the stuff I mentioned above. Select release managers that can help a branch become stable and eventually get released (so far these have been board members, but I think they don't need to be). Again, the board can select managers out of developers who are willing to take the role (and volunteer for the task, knowing what it involves). We cannot assign a certain developer as the release manager for 2.6.x without having the certainty that person is up to the task, has the available manpower, is willing to do that job, etc. I value your great contributions to the project and am sorry that you don't have the guidance you want. For example I hear you talking about a task/interpreter restructure that you are interested in, and that you have made some progress but want feedback. When you get no feedback I understand that you can't tell if it's because nobody cares, or because nobody feels qualified to help you in that way. In the case of me personally, it's the latter. I'm not an expert in object oriented design and it does no good for you to
Re: [Emc-users] About the board, the rebrand, and the future
On Wednesday, January 25, 2012 05:26:08 PM Chris Radek did opine: Michael, Thanks for your criticism. I have taken several days to think about it. I have not discussed my thoughts with the board and I am speaking only for myself and to my own relationship to the project. I agree with you that there are some technical problems with how the renaming was done; in particular, changes of variable or object names in the source is unnecessary from a branding standpoint and unnecessarily destabilizing. It's possible we could revert those mistakes and perhaps we should. I think Jeff has responded to these thoughts too. But this is a very small part of the dissatisfaction expressed in your letter. Mostly you are dissatisfied with all aspects of the board's behavior. You would like the board to take more direct and authoritative action guiding development. In fact the bylaws currently say something to this effect: we'll within 24 hours set the priority and assign to a developer all bug fixes and feature requests submitted on sourceforge. To me this is eminently silly and you are right that I do not take this responsibility seriously. I do not feel I have the authority to assign ANYTHING to ANYONE and I certainly don't have the authority to prioritize their action items. I am not a development manager and none of our developers are my employees. Our developers, me included, take on bug fixes and improvements as we feel qualified to tackle them, and as we have time and energy to spare in our day-to-day lives. I will say more about this later. Now on the other hand, you would have liked the board to take a less direct/authoritative and more community-oriented approach to the problems posed by emc.com's lawyer, even suggesting that perhaps a community member may have had the experience to handle it better and get us a better outcome. I will say more about this later too. Now I do not claim to do everything right, or to have given the project my full attention at all times in the last, uh, decade or so that I've been involved, or that I've always handled every question to the best of my ability. I hope nobody expects that of me. But aside from that, I see that we have a fundamental disagreement about the role of the board. The things I think the board should handle are something like this: Represent the project in general to the outside world, being a point of contact for companies, lawyers, etc. Keep tabs on the infrastructure the whole project needs, make smart decisions about it, and keep it working. This is stuff like the DNS, the key used to sign the apt repositories, the websites, arrangements with services that recognize our project somehow like sourceforge and freenode and the Linux foundation, and so on. This task also includes things like studying/advocating/implementing the switch from cvs to git. It also includes deciding in general how we use vc (merging strategy, stable release branches, feature branches) and trying to keep people doing that properly. Maintain the set of keys from pushers and offer push access to contributors who show consistent quality and express an intention to stick around for a while, and hopefully a bit of guidance to new folks on using vc correctly, the stuff I mentioned above. Select release managers that can help a branch become stable and eventually get released (so far these have been board members, but I think they don't need to be). I value your great contributions to the project and am sorry that you don't have the guidance you want. For example I hear you talking about a task/interpreter restructure that you are interested in, and that you have made some progress but want feedback. When you get no feedback I understand that you can't tell if it's because nobody cares, or because nobody feels qualified to help you in that way. In the case of me personally, it's the latter. I'm not an expert in object oriented design and it does no good for you to tell me about your design. I have no useful input. On the other hand, when you show (not tell) me that you have something that makes the system better, like when you shared your remapping work, I helped you test and became your advocate and helped you get it merged. I think it's a little unfair to say that you've had complete silence from the board or board members; I do understand though that the moments of silence do stick in one's mind. Now, about the decision to rebrand and how we came to it: The first letter from the lawyer was directly to me. I hope you and others can understand that since there is no LinuxCNC organization and that we are only a bunch of individuals, those of us with (titular?) authority and responsibility had particular personal danger in this proceeding.
Re: [Emc-users] About the board, the rebrand, and the future
2012/1/25 Chris Radek ch...@timeguy.com Michael, Thanks for your criticism. I have taken several days to think about it. I have not discussed my thoughts with the board and I am speaking only for myself and to my own relationship to the project. ...snip Chris, I think too you made the right decision. You know, it's easy being wise afterwards, not that easy when the mess is running. No hard feelings from me in any case, and as I wrote in another debate this is a perfect time to restart in many perspectives. /Sven -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
