Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
As for the topic brought up here, I sense a bit of sentimentalism clouding the technical judgment of some. (...) In a positive creative development structure you leave the contributors their freedom. Contribute your planes! rather than Come to Gitorious, ask for our permission to get your repository, work under our supervision! Work, work, my busy bees, and make us planes for our big master-repository! Freedom naturally finds its limits where it impacts on the freedom of others - you seem to miss this point. You always have the choice to make your development available in whatever form and license you like. You can create your own hangar, present your work there, are free to use whatever license you like, are free to offer whatever level of user support you like, you can even sell your addons ... You can also offer your work as part of 'The Flightgear Project'. Once you decide to do so, it is no longer your freedom to do what you want with your work - it is under the control of 'The Flightgear Project', you may have to compromise, you can't choose your license, But you get something in return for giving up that freedom - you get to use the official Flightgear infrastructure (you aircraft will be for download on the official page, others test compatibility, other developers may take care of your work when you're not around, others will feel responsible to provide support if they can,...). You seem to entertain the idea of a free lunch - get the goodies which being part of the Flightgear project has to offer, but keeping the freedom to do what you want. That may be a positive creative development structure from your personal point of view, but certainly not for everyone else who is then supposed to provide infrastructure for you. This has nothing to do with what technical possibilities GIT offers, or what GIT is about - it's just common sense that there has to be a balance between give and take whenever people interact and work together. So, if you like your complete freedom, you can't be part of a collaborative project. It's as simple as that, being part of a bigger project always implies giving up that complete freedom. Cheers, * Thorsten (R) -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 10:28:33AM +0300, thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: As for the topic brought up here, I sense a bit of sentimentalism clouding the technical judgment of some. (...) In a positive creative development structure you leave the contributors their freedom. Contribute your planes! rather than Come to Gitorious, ask for our permission to get your repository, work under our supervision! Work, work, my busy bees, and make us planes for our big master-repository! You can also offer your work as part of 'The Flightgear Project'. Once you decide to do so, it is no longer your freedom to do what you want with your work - it is under the control of 'The Flightgear Project', you may have to compromise, you can't choose your license, But you get something in return for giving up that freedom - you get to use the official Flightgear infrastructure (you aircraft will be for download on the official page, others test compatibility, other developers may take care of your work when you're not around, others will feel responsible to provide support if they can,...). This is exactly the deal which I think you are rather hurting yourself with. I allege, that contributers of planes are not looking to make a deal with you, at least I would not. What you are offering them, is what *every* contributor should be entitled to in the first place. You only get to be on our download page if you surrender your autonomy to us? What are you trying to achieve? Do you really think anyone would readily change their mind to rather publish their plane as GPL, although they'd prefer not to, and give up their autonomy, although they'd prefer not to, to get a goodie from you? Again: What are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to promote GPL by sanctioning people for not using it? Or is it only about some personal pride thing, and you don't want to feel exploited by those, who contribute (that sounds ridicolous enough as it stands)? You seem to entertain the idea of a free lunch - get the goodies which being part of the Flightgear project has to offer, but keeping the freedom to do what you want. That may be a positive creative development structure from your personal point of view, but certainly not for everyone else who is then supposed to provide infrastructure for you. If you consider those, who contribute planes, looking for a free lunch, I seriously must wonder what kind of attitude you presume in an open source project. What is that lunch exactly? The fame, perhaps? And instead of considering listing even non-GPL planes on the main-page a good thing for Flightgear, you rather wish to deprive those who contributed them of their fame? it's just common sense that there has to be a balance between give and take whenever people interact and work together. Again, I can't help it but wonder what image you have in mind when you accuse those, who voluntarily make planes for Flightgear, of taking from you but not giving back. I can't even imagine what your opinion of people who only use Flightgear, and develop neither code nor planes for it, must be... And as for other developers may take care of your work when you're not around, others will feel responsible to provide support if they can,...). I think we have sufficiently seen how other people's work is taken care of after they leave. And how much it helps in this regard, that the planes are forced under the hood of GPL and subjected to your authority, your restrictions. I think old, abandoned planes will equally, if not more likely be willingly taken over by others, if they are not forced into a master-repo. This has nothing to do with what technical possibilities GIT offers, or what GIT is about Yes, it has everything to do with what Git(orious) is about. Because Gitorious demonstrates what a sustainable, distributed development structure works like, and your suggestion is nothing like that. You completely misregard fundamental properties of distributed development, such as cloning and branching. Your desire to patronize the other developers may be more fit for core and code development, but the development of planes differs substantially from that of the core: Planes are contributed modularily, have no strong interaction amonst eachother and can thus be contributed freely, as in the freedom to contribute or not. If you like to obtain authority over a plane, cloning it into your own repository will allow you to call it your own, while you can still savour the development the author makes. And if the author seems to abandon the plane or changes things of which you disapprove, branching will allow you to continue development as if it had always been your own. So, if you like your complete freedom, you can't be part of a collaborative project. It's as simple as that, being part of a bigger project always implies giving up that complete freedom. No one gives up any freedom here, since it's their free and voluntary
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
Hello again, I would like to add that I agree, that making any implication about whether authors *should* migrate their planes to their own repos, was wrong. There is of course no reason to turn them away, if only, there is a reason to request them to be part of the central Gitorious-Account (as it is the subject of this thread). regards, ManDay On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 10:28:33AM +0300, thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
I'd loke to note that I listed pros and cons at the wiki. Some people contributed, some didn't. Rather than turning this into a me/we-vs-you/they fight I'd like to see that people sit down and add their thoughts (and facts) to the wiki. Makes it easier/healthier for all of us ;) http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_Git:_splitting_fgdata#Reasons_to_put_aircraft_under_a_single_project -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
This is exactly the deal which I think you are rather hurting yourself with. I allege, that contributers of planes are not looking to make a deal with you, at least I would not. First, you're talking to the wrong person. I'm not Thorsten B, I am Thorsten R, and I do not represent the core developers, nor do I have any sorts of commit rights, I just take some time to explain something to you which seems pretty obvious to me. Second, if you do not wish to make the deal, then don't. End of story. No need for your rants. There are excellent planes without GPL license around (the Tu-154b comes to mind), the development is well respected, I don't see the problem. Obviously people can and do contribute that way. What you are offering them, is what *every* contributor should be entitled to in the first place. *shrugs* I'm a contributor, I just contribute a different thing (weather) which isn't so easily separable from the core. So - I need to talk to people, work together with others, accomodate structure constraints all the time. I can't usually decide to structure things in a certain way - I propose changes, they get discussed, sometimes implemented, sometimes not. You feel you are entitled to more because you do other development? Apparently yes... You only get to be on our download page if you surrender your autonomy to us? Yes. Seems pretty obvious to me. I work at a university, so I get access to the university webpages. Someone else doesn't, so he doesn't get to be on the university page. If I misuse my access to university webpages, I see it revoked. Me being able to send emails from a university address gives me mroe credibility than a yahoo address - that's some bonus. Where precisely is the problem? You work for the Flightgear project, your work gets promoted by the Flightgear webpage. You work for Cedric Sodhi, your work gets promoted by Cedric Sodhi. What are you trying to achieve? Do you really think anyone would readily change their mind to rather publish their plane as GPL, although they'd prefer not to, and give up their autonomy, although they'd prefer not to, to get a goodie from you? Frankly, I don't particularly care about that aspect. People who want to publish with a different license can do so, see above, end of story. For me, fairness is an issue. If one single person on the official project page doesn't get to keep control of his work, then no one should. It's a decision the project has made a long time ago, I entered it knowing that this is how it works, it has worked well. Again, I can't help it but wonder what image you have in mind when you accuse those, who voluntarily make planes for Flightgear, of taking from you but not giving back. Oh, but you're not talking here about people who make planes 'for Flightgear'. For people who make planes 'for Flightgear' the implication is that the planes will be given out of their hands because Flightgear is GPL. You're talking here about people who make planes as addons which rely on Flightgear - a rather different beast. Please, let's be very clear about this. We may speculate why people choose not to publish under GPL. One reason might be that they can't because they have used material that isn't GPL compatible. Another may simply be ego, or fame as you put it. Either is fine with me, people can do that, but it's not 'part of Flightgear' or 'for Flightgear', because Flightgear is GPL. Taking your argument a bit further, you'd also include FlightProSim into the group working 'for Flightgear' because they do something relying on the Flightgear code? Or if not, just when is it 'for Flightgear' in your book? Your desire to patronize the other developers may be more fit for core and code development, but the development of planes differs substantially from that of the core: Planes are contributed modularily, have no strong interaction amonst eachother and can thus be contributed freely, as in the freedom to contribute or not. It's a bit tiresome to point out again that you have the complete freedom to do whatever you like with your plane, but that you don't have the freedom to use the Flightgear page for it. Basically, the reason an idea called 'equality'. It's been around since the French Revolution. Just because there's a technical infrastructure which would allow us to be unequal we don't have to be - it still remains ethically wrong. It'd be easy to ask people to pay 1000 $ before they can cast a vote. Election results would be very different then - but does that mean we should we do so? In essence you're saying that because it is technically possible for you to exercise more freedom rights than for me, you should have more rights. I think that's not a particularly ethically well-founded position. Or, to say it bluntly, it wouldn't appear fair. A collaborative, open and free project means, at the very least, conforming to the project's requirements, technically and possibly socially. And that means
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 10:19 AM, Cedric Sodhi wrote: other developers may take care of your work when you're not around, others will feel responsible to provide support if they can,...). I think we have sufficiently seen how other people's work is taken care of after they leave. And how much it helps in this regard, that the planes are forced under the hood of GPL and subjected to your authority, your restrictions. I think old, abandoned planes will equally, if not more likely be willingly taken over by others, if they are not forced into a master-repo. Why? To my mind the practicality of being able to maintain and improve aircraft after the original author has left the project is one of the best reasons for having a shared repository. I have been involved in maintaining a number of aircraft after their original author's have moved on, so have quite a lot of experience in this area. I have found that having a shared aircraft repository has made it straightforward to make the (often quite minor) changes required to ensure that the aircraft continue to fly, and made it straightforward for new people to contribute, often years after the original author has left the project. A prime example of this is the Piper Cub. The following is from memory, so apologies if I get the names wrong: The original model was by David M. He moved on, and after a period of a number of years with only minimal maintenance (to ensure it continued to fly), another user (Karla IIRC) made significant improvements to the model. He himself moved on to other things, and more recently I myself took over and made some minor changes to the model and improved the FDM. If the aircraft had been held in a separate repository, the minimal maintenance would not have occurred, and the aircraft would have bit-rotted, and become unflyable. There's not much incentive to improve an aircraft that doesn't fly. It's unlike that Karla or myself would have put the effort into maintaining and improving the aircraft. Additionally, having a shared repository made the practicalities of maintenance straightforward. Karla didn't have commit rights, but was able to submit patches that were applied on his behalf by a team of committers. If there had been a separate private repository run by (say) Dave M, Dave would have had to commit the patches or give Karla commit rights. Dave's a nice bloke and I'm sure would have done so, but it's possible that contributors pass away, lose their passwords etc. The alternative is that Karla would have had to create his own repository, and fork the aircraft. All of this is more of a hassle. (I myself have commit rights, which makes life a lot easier) -Stuart -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
Just to add my own 2 cents while the central repository is a fine idea , after the move to git , I lost any commit rights to my own work, so after a time i gave up on the idea of maintaining them and started my own repositories . I would have happily continued to maintain/upgrade them , and I,m hoping this change might make things easier ... but if Im now being told that my work can be changed without any notice to me , that i have no say over my own contributions, then I wont waste any more time here. I do appreciate addons to my work , particularly stuff I dont/cant do but saying it's in the central repo so i can change it whether you like or not does dampen the spirit of contribution . Kind of reminds me of a contract or two Ive signed in the past , and I really hope FG isn't coming to that. Remember when we had common courtesy here ? And we all discussed changes openly ? P.S. After proofreading this have decided i need sleep :) Cheers -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
On 19 Oct 2011, at 11:53, syd adams wrote: while the central repository is a fine idea , after the move to git , I lost any commit rights to my own work, so after a time i gave up on the idea of maintaining them and started my own repositories . I would have happily continued to maintain/upgrade them , and I,m hoping this change might make things easier Hmm, that's a straight technical oversight - myself or any other the admins would have added you in 10 seconds, if we'd know there was an issue. My understanding was that all people with CVS access were granted commit access after the move to Git - that was certainly the intention! This is orthogonal to your points about courtesy to authors when making changes to their aircraft, which I also agree with - I just wanted to be clear we don't confuse an administrative screw-up with a 'policy change' that never in fact happened. James -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
I would have happily continued to maintain/upgrade them , and I,m hoping this change might make things easier ... but if Im now being told that my work can be changed without any notice to me , that i have no say over my own contributions, then I wont waste any more time here. I think that needs a distinction between what's true in principle and in practice. In principle it's true that you signed over your work, so anyone can change it without notice. The rational is that if anyone gets angry, he can't leave and take his work with him and stall the whole project in the course. So in the case that you would decide to leave Flightgear in anger, it would probably occur that your work would be modified over your objection if that's needed to keep it running. In practice, there is common courtesy to authors. I haven't witnessed many situations in which an aircraft was modified without consulting the author, when this happened it turned out to be an accident rather than intention. I have witnessed the opposite, i.e. that a change to an aircraft made by someone else was not committed because the original author objected. Most of us are adult people, and most of the time we are able to act like civilized people, i.e. we can work out things in a reasonable way without invoking the law and waving license around. There are some rules for emergency cases necessary though. So, I'm pretty sure no one will go ahead and modify your stuff without asking you first as long as you're around and participating. Hasn't ever happened to me (and the temptation must have been there...). Cheers, * Thorsten -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
On 19 Oct 2011, at 12:27, thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: Most of us are adult people, and most of the time we are able to act like civilized people, i.e. we can work out things in a reasonable way without invoking the law and waving license around. There are some rules for emergency cases necessary though. So, I'm pretty sure no one will go ahead and modify your stuff without asking you first as long as you're around and participating. Hasn't ever happened to me (and the temptation must have been there...). +1 to all of this, thanks to Thorsten for expressing it very nicely! James -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
Im still not sleeping , so thanks for clearing things up. I for one like the aircraft split , just awaiting the require permissions.Will be nice to get my own work up to date without risking breaking something elsewhere in fgdata . Cheers On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 5:42 AM, James Turner zakal...@mac.com wrote: On 19 Oct 2011, at 12:27, thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: Most of us are adult people, and most of the time we are able to act like civilized people, i.e. we can work out things in a reasonable way without invoking the law and waving license around. There are some rules for emergency cases necessary though. So, I'm pretty sure no one will go ahead and modify your stuff without asking you first as long as you're around and participating. Hasn't ever happened to me (and the temptation must have been there...). +1 to all of this, thanks to Thorsten for expressing it very nicely! James -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
I missed a day being offline yesterday, and now I see there's no way I'm going to be able to read every message in this thread word for word and catch (and acknowledge) every nuance of every point being made. So let me just say what I'm thinking, which probably echos the sentiments of the other long-time developers. FlightGear is licensed under the terms of the GPL. The GPL isn't perfect in all situations, but it's well thought out and (I think) does much more good that harm. And it would be *very* hard to change now at this point anyway. The FlightGear data repository has always welcomed inclusion of aircraft as long as developers are willing to be consistent with the rest of the project and use the GPL. This way we can distribute the package under a consistent license, developers can borrow code and ideas and models from other developers without worry about license issues. And there are all the other good points mentioned by others in this thread. What I don't want to see is someone's frustration with a technical issue turn into sweeping policy change. If there is an access/permission problem, let's fix it. If there is a technical issue let's build something to address that. The reason we don't mention or list other aircraft outside the central repository is not because we don't like their license terms or don't like them doing something on there own. That would be wildly mistaken. We absolutely support freedom and support authors developing and releasing their work however works best for them. Also we recognize that that central FlightGear repository can't scale to cover every aircraft and variant in the world. The reason is that there is no central repository of external aircraft and no way to keep track other than a huge manual effort. So I say: let's keep focused on the original intent of a central repository to support and help aircraft developers (but not lock them in if they don't want), and also facilitate keeping aircraft working and consistent when something on the software side changes. If there are some negative side effects, then lets build a system that allows us to track and reference external hangars and external models. (If that is what we want and need.) I have no problem putting links to other aircraft or having them somehow show up in a search, but the impediment is time and technology. So rather than argue over it, let's build something that fixes the problem -- something that helps us categorize and index and link to all the available aircraft, not just the ones that are GPL and managed within the central FlightGear repository structure. At the end of the day, I definitely want to encourage aircraft developers to consider releasing their work under the GPL and managing their aircraft as part of the central core of FlightGear. I think in the long term this has the best net positive effect for everyone. But certainly I understand there can be many reasons to do otherwise and I don't think we have any negative feelings towards developers that choose a different route, I think we'd like to support that and help them list and promote their aircraft too. Thanks, Curt. On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 7:57 AM, syd adams adams@gmail.com wrote: Im still not sleeping , so thanks for clearing things up. I for one like the aircraft split , just awaiting the require permissions.Will be nice to get my own work up to date without risking breaking something elsewhere in fgdata . Cheers On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 5:42 AM, James Turner zakal...@mac.com wrote: On 19 Oct 2011, at 12:27, thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: Most of us are adult people, and most of the time we are able to act like civilized people, i.e. we can work out things in a reasonable way without invoking the law and waving license around. There are some rules for emergency cases necessary though. So, I'm pretty sure no one will go ahead and modify your stuff without asking you first as long as you're around and participating. Hasn't ever happened to me (and the temptation must have been there...). +1 to all of this, thanks to Thorsten for expressing it very nicely! James -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats,
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
Cedric Sodhi wrote: On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 10:28:33AM +0300, thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: You seem to entertain the idea of a free lunch - get the goodies which being part of the Flightgear project has to offer, but keeping the freedom to do what you want. That may be a positive creative development structure from your personal point of view, but certainly not for everyone else who is then supposed to provide infrastructure for you. If you consider those, who contribute planes, looking for a free lunch, I seriously must wonder what kind of attitude you presume in an open source project. What is that lunch exactly? The fame, perhaps? Even though I'm just citing a small part (to save everyone from browsing the entire article), I agree with everything Thorsten wrote in his posting. I may remind those who are having hard times at understanding the context that the 'traditional' development model with a combined hangar at least brought them an OpenSource flight simulation with quite a few pretty fine aircraft. Cedric, I'm not claiming that everything's perfect in FlightGear land, but until now you failed to show how you're going to contribute a solution to any of the relevant issues wrt. The FlightGear project's aircraft hangar. Instead, you're just applying a technical solution to a non-technical issue an approach which usually is destined to fail, as history shows. Cheers, Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
On 18.10.2011 18:24, Cedric Sodhi wrote: All aircraft related development shall henceforth be performed on repositories which are maintained by the respective authors. It is planned that most of the repositories on https://gitorious.org/flightgear-aircraft will be dissolved over time and be taken over by the respective authors. On a sidenote, some of those repositories are already superflous because development has long been moved somewhere else. These are the first repositories which will be decomissioned. I don't think this is what we agreed upon. We agreed to split fgdata for technical reasons, to cut it into smaller chunks and make it easier to maintain. With separate repos we can give each author direct commit rights - without requiring full access to the rest of fgdata. But there was no agreed decision to dissolve our central community aircraft repository. And personally I think that would be a very, very bad idea to do so. If you look at our aircraft, you'll see the history go way back to the very beginning of FlightGear. Meanwhile, many aircraft developers have joined and left the project. Many private hangars have been created, shutdown, some were lost. The only aircraft which are guaranteed to live on are those in a repository controlled by the FlightGear community. It's not a guarantee forever - but it's a guarantee that is connected to the FlightSim (core / source code) itself - which is what really matters. A community repo has a lot of advantages. When people leave, work isn't lost - maintenance kind of automatically transfers to the community. When really necessary, we can also apply patches - i.e. when something about the flight sim itself has to be changed and aircraft really need to be adapted (which we usually try to avoid, of course). A central repo also allowed us to use the bug tracker for aircraft issues. No one is going to work the bug tracker for issues which affect aircraft living in some dodgy private hangar, probably in 8 different versions maintained by 3 different authors - and we're going to see loads of aircraft forks, without an official repo. We'd also be seeing fewer GPLed aircraft. So far, we had the strict rule: only GPLed stuff was accepted - which was very good for the project. Without such a central hangar, there is one reason less for GPL. And when the majority of aircraft wasn't GPLed any longer, FlightGear will be much less attractive. And why should someone work on _GPLed_ FG core sources - if the rest isn't? The aircraft in our main repository are worth a lot. It's been there for many, many years and it took many, many hours to create. The aircraft probably account for far more than 50% of the time spent on creating FlightGear. It'd be extremely unfortunate to drop all this from the FG community project. And only being slightly provocative: if splitting FGDATA now turns toward a path of breaking up our FG aircraft - I'll rather propose to keep the existing FGDATA. So, before any such major decision affecting the community is made here, I would really like everyone's opinion. Especially Curt's... cheers, Thorsten PS: The old git repo was only 4GB in size: 3GB of git history for aircraft, 1GB for the rest. It was looking much bigger of course, once a git branch was checked out - since files were copied into the working directory (doubles the size) and also decompressed (factor 2). -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
Hi all! Cedric wrote: ManDay, on behalf of the Split-Team ^^ ThorstenB wrote: I don't think this is what we agreed upon. I'd like to mention that Cedric did not wrote his email on my behalf nor on Jorg's. Cedric has been a great help (most of this wouldn't be possible without him) and for most of the process we agree, but we disagree with the dissolving of aircraft repos. My plan is still to keep the aircraft under the FlightGear Aircraft project, as written down on the wiki page http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_Git:_splitting_fgdata I did not add 387 repositories to Gitorious (by hand!) to see them dissolve ;) After a simple test I found out that granting admin rights to aircraft authors will also mean that they can revoke the flightgear-aircraft team's rights. And if that is done, we'd have no control over the repo whatsoever. We even would be unable to delete it (only way is to delete the entire project, but as you can imagine that isn't a way). I've added this to the Questions section at the wiki. Please see if you can answer/ask any other questions/concerns: http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_Git:_splitting_fgdata#Questions Therefore I think we shouldn't give aircraft authors full admin rights over their aircraft's repos. I did add all fgdata-developers and flightgear-developers to the flightgear-aircraft team, so anyone that was able to push to fgdata/flightgear should be able to push to all aircraft repos. Please let me know when you're missing. Cheers, Gijs -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 09:46:58PM +0200, Gijs de Rooy wrote: Hi all! Cedric wrote: ManDay, on behalf of the Split-Team ^^ ThorstenB wrote: I don't think this is what we agreed upon. I'd like to mention that Cedric did not wrote his email on my behalf nor on Jorg's. Hello, I apologize for wrongly inserting the suggestion to dissolve the repos on your behalf. I think the other parts of the E-Mail, the description etc, were very well composed on your behalf, though. As for the topic brought up here, I sense a bit of sentimentalism clouding the technical judgment of some. Fact is, that quite a few aircrafts of the old FGDATA are nowadays developed elsewhere. I recall at least having witnessed this twice, although I've only tried a few airplanes. If I recall correctly, skyop's magnificant Bombardier is one of those planes which are developed launchpad and is only represented in FGDATA-Airplanes for historical reasons. Regardless, your arguments why a central repository would be an advantage, minus the sentimental it has always been like that parts, esp. the one about authors joining and leaving, are more or less orthogonal to the philosophy of the development structure which you employ: Git and Gitorious. A central facility, which collects all planes, yes, that makes sense. Actually, I see not how such thing could possibly be forgone. But forcing all aircraft development under the patronage of the core developers is without any practical footing. You are not helping anyone, nor are you supporting GPL. If people want to publish under the GPL, they will do so. If not, they wont. Regardless of whether you coerce them to publish their planes in your master-repository, but only as GPL. Neither do you provide any more guarantee by herding developers into your central repository. You are only patronizing them. You cannot guarantee for someone else's property. And if it's not their property for it's GPL, you can always keep yourself a backup-copy or a clone of their repository, if you are worried about guarantees. Not only are all these alleged advantages pretty much contrived, there are also disadvantages in urging people to play in your opera rather than their own. Restrictions are always harmful to voluntary work. If I, for example, am a LP user and you are trying to lure me come, come to us, here is where the good things happen to your repository, I will rather turn away - as opposed to an OPEN development structure where people are encourage to develop whereever, however they want and simply announce their contribution centrally. History has shown what that concept of a centralized master-repo has lead to: A thick jungle of half-finished, unmaintained and completely abandoned planes, happily mixed with high-quality planes, relicts of planes which have long been migrated to development elsewhere and practically everone has lost orientation in your master-repo. This is not how Git works. This is not how modular contribution on open software works. This is not how Gitorious works. It's most likely counter productive, as has been the unnavigable jungle of planes in the first place. In a positive creative development structure you leave the contributors their freedom. Contribute your planes! rather than Come to Gitorious, ask for our permission to get your repository, work under our supervision! Work, work, my busy bees, and make us planes for our big master-repository! ...to be equally provocative. kind regards, ManDay -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear aircraft repository
On Tuesday 18 October 2011 15:56:54 Cedric Sodhi wrote: On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 09:46:58PM +0200, Gijs de Rooy wrote: Hi all! Cedric wrote: ManDay, on behalf of the Split-Team ^^ ThorstenB wrote: I don't think this is what we agreed upon. I'd like to mention that Cedric did not wrote his email on my behalf nor on Jorg's. Hello, I apologize for wrongly inserting the suggestion to dissolve the repos on your behalf. I think the other parts of the E-Mail, the description etc, were very well composed on your behalf, though. As for the topic brought up here, I sense a bit of sentimentalism clouding the technical judgment of some. Fact is, that quite a few aircrafts of the old FGDATA are nowadays developed elsewhere. I recall at least having witnessed this twice, although I've only tried a few airplanes. If I recall correctly, skyop's magnificant Bombardier is one of those planes which are developed launchpad and is only represented in FGDATA-Airplanes for historical reasons. Regardless, your arguments why a central repository would be an advantage, minus the sentimental it has always been like that parts, esp. the one about authors joining and leaving, are more or less orthogonal to the philosophy of the development structure which you employ: Git and Gitorious. A central facility, which collects all planes, yes, that makes sense. Actually, I see not how such thing could possibly be forgone. But forcing all aircraft development under the patronage of the core developers is without any practical footing. You are not helping anyone, nor are you supporting GPL. If people want to publish under the GPL, they will do so. If not, they wont. Regardless of whether you coerce them to publish their planes in your master-repository, but only as GPL. Neither do you provide any more guarantee by herding developers into your central repository. You are only patronizing them. You cannot guarantee for someone else's property. And if it's not their property for it's GPL, you can always keep yourself a backup-copy or a clone of their repository, if you are worried about guarantees. Not only are all these alleged advantages pretty much contrived, there are also disadvantages in urging people to play in your opera rather than their own. Restrictions are always harmful to voluntary work. If I, for example, am a LP user and you are trying to lure me come, come to us, here is where the good things happen to your repository, I will rather turn away - as opposed to an OPEN development structure where people are encourage to develop whereever, however they want and simply announce their contribution centrally. History has shown what that concept of a centralized master-repo has lead to: A thick jungle of half-finished, unmaintained and completely abandoned planes, happily mixed with high-quality planes, relicts of planes which have long been migrated to development elsewhere and practically everone has lost orientation in your master-repo. This is not how Git works. This is not how modular contribution on open software works. This is not how Gitorious works. It's most likely counter productive, as has been the unnavigable jungle of planes in the first place. In a positive creative development structure you leave the contributors their freedom. Contribute your planes! rather than Come to Gitorious, ask for our permission to get your repository, work under our supervision! Work, work, my busy bees, and make us planes for our big master-repository! ...to be equally provocative. kind regards, ManDay My own, personal reasons for developing my planes 'elsewhere' and having them migrated into the master repository is because I do not have access to the master repository. I would/will happily migrate all of my aircraft work to fg_aircraft and remove the old repositories if I have commit access to my planes. I think Gjis has the correct sense: if my aircraft is in the master repository, I expect the code developers to take some care that it will not bit-rot because they make a change. If the aircraft is elsewhere, GPL or not, the code developers do not have that obligation. Also, having an aircraft in the common repository invites others to join in and make changes. That is how I got started in this whole mess in the first place. $0.02 Thanks, Ron -- All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
