Re: [Gimp-developer] Updated roadmap (so people don't laugh at the old one)

2004-02-07 Thread Alan Horkan

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, Sven Neumann wrote:

> Date: 06 Feb 2004 11:50:54 +0100
> From: Sven Neumann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: [Gimp-developer] Updated roadmap (so people don't laugh at
> the old one)
>
> Hi,
>
> David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > You can certainly spread it around. I update the NEWS now, as
> > well as you. Anyone can do that. Same thing goes for making the
> > announcement on freshmeat, gnome-desktop, linuxartist... I can do
> > bugzilla tags.
>
> Well, I am certainly not going to ask for this and so far I have
> always waited about a day if someone else would post announcements on
> gnomedesktop and other sites. But it seems that noone but me is
> interested enough to post there, so I guess I will continue to do

If you _asked_ people might post the news but unless you asked for others
to do it then I would assume that you wanted to do it yourself and have it
done your way.  And I'm on the list digest so I usually read the
announcement on GnomeDesktop.org before I read it on the list.

- Alan
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Updated roadmap (so people don't laugh at the old one)

2004-02-06 Thread David Hodson
Sven Neumann wrote:

Comments off-list don't count. If people want to comment on this
subject, they should do it on the list. Everything else is just noise.
Maybe they should, but that doesn't mean that they will. It's a lot
easier to drop an email to the person that you agree with, than to
jump into a heated discussion. And maybe a simple agreement doesn't
need to be read by the whole list.
For the record, I think that there's a middle ground. I understand
that people don't want an explicit timetable, and that the Gimp
development shouldn't be driven by deadlines. On the other hand,
if there was indeed a general agreement about the timing of the
next release, the original email very effectively pointed out the
implications of that choice.
(And I don't think that this added much to the discussion.)

--
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Updated roadmap (so people don't laugh at the old one)

2004-02-06 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> > Well, I am certainly not going to ask for this and so far I have
> > always waited about a day if someone else would post announcements on
> > gnomedesktop and other sites. But it seems that noone but me is
> > interested enough to post there, so I guess I will continue to do
> > that. After all I am interested in people trying the release when I've
> > gone through the trouble of doing one.
> 
> Perhaps people hesitate about this because they don't want to step in
> on what might be perceived as your territory?

I never claimed that this was my territory. Until yesterday I haven't
even told anyone that I do most of the website announcements. I have
always waited if someone else feel enthusiastic enough about the
release to do it. Usually after a while I decide that I will probably
have to do it myself. I don't like the idea of delegating such a job.
It's a volunteers project, people should do what they would like to do
without the need of someone telling them.


Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Updated roadmap (so people don't laugh at the old one)

2004-02-06 Thread Dave Neary
Sven Neumann wrote:

Hi,

David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:


You can certainly spread it around. I update the NEWS now, as
well as you. Anyone can do that. Same thing goes for making the
announcement on freshmeat, gnome-desktop, linuxartist... I can do
bugzilla tags.


Well, I am certainly not going to ask for this and so far I have
always waited about a day if someone else would post announcements on
gnomedesktop and other sites. But it seems that noone but me is
interested enough to post there, so I guess I will continue to do
that. After all I am interested in people trying the release when I've
gone through the trouble of doing one.
Perhaps people hesitate about this because they don't want to step in on what 
might be perceived as your territory?

If I understand correctly, you'd like to be able to have it announced on the 
mailing lists (as I do now), and then the people on the list make the 
announcement known in the places that are important to them. That seems 
reasonable, and I think that now that you have said so, this might well happen 
for the next release.

That looks like a reasonable time frame. I expect that we will have to
extend it a bit but that was the point of starting with a tight
schedule. What's missing now is some agreement on what we want to
achieve in 2.2 but I think we can as well delay this discussion until
2.0 is finally done.
That's one reason I didn't put any meat on the bones when I made this proposal. 
2.0 is the priority right now. You're contradicting yourself a bit too - one of 
your complaints was that there was no meat on the propsal.

Anyway - I think we can agree to maintain a vaguer roadmap. I'd still like to 
think that we can be sensible about trying to keep to the things we say in it.

Cheers,
Dave
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Updated roadmap (so people don't laugh at the old one)

2004-02-06 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> You can certainly spread it around. I update the NEWS now, as
> well as you. Anyone can do that. Same thing goes for making the
> announcement on freshmeat, gnome-desktop, linuxartist... I can do
> bugzilla tags.

Well, I am certainly not going to ask for this and so far I have
always waited about a day if someone else would post announcements on
gnomedesktop and other sites. But it seems that noone but me is
interested enough to post there, so I guess I will continue to do
that. After all I am interested in people trying the release when I've
gone through the trouble of doing one.

> I got the point; so I'll repeat mine, and then we can stop. We're
> more or less agreed that to have 2.2 by the end of June, we need
> to 
> 1) have 2.0 this month
> 2) Branch a stable development branch next month
> 3) Feature freeze at the start of April
> 4) start pre-releases in the middle of April
> 5) Release 2.2 the end of June.

That looks like a reasonable time frame. I expect that we will have to
extend it a bit but that was the point of starting with a tight
schedule. What's missing now is some agreement on what we want to
achieve in 2.2 but I think we can as well delay this discussion until
2.0 is finally done.

> I don't think there's any argument there. All I did was throw in
> a release every couple of weeks between those 5 points. I think
> it's helpful to show how little time there will be in this
> development cycle.
> 
> > Some real content in the roadmap instead of meaning-less dates would
> > be helpful. At perhaps make it a proposal for a roadmap next time.
> 
> This comment got me angry. I've calmed down now.

I am sorry, it wasn't every well worded. But your posting got me angry
as well and perhaps I didn't take enough time to calm down.

> Everything I post to this list that isn't meant to be a fact is an
> opinion, and a request for comments. If I say "March 17th is
> St. Patrick's Day", that's a fact. If I say "I think we should have
> 2.2.0 at the end of June, and I think this is more or less how to
> get there", that's opinion. See the difference? I asked for
> comments.  I even got a couple of positive ones, in e-mails
> off-list.

Comments off-list don't count. If people want to comment on this
subject, they should do it on the list. Everything else is just noise.

> How much more proposally would you like it to be?

Well, your mail said "here's the roadmap" and that's what will be
cited later. If the word proposal would have been used, perhaps even
in the Subject, things would have certainly been easier.


Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Updated roadmap (so people don't laugh at the old one)

2004-02-05 Thread David Neary
Hi,

First, I'd like to say that I think it's a pity that you replied
so aggressively to the mail - I would have liked to hear more
comments, but I think that the tone of the thread may have
intimidated people somewhat.

Sven Neumann wrote:
> We all know that but your roadmap gave a different impression. Instead
> of pointing out what we want to achieve you gave a list of dates. Since
> we will not match a single one of these dates, it doesn't make sense to
> publish such a list.

I am convinced that if we make releases conditional on a feature
set that we will not have a 2.2 in 2004. If we're not making our
major releases based on a feature set, then the only alternative
is to make releases time-based. This has worked for other
projects, I think it can work for ours.

> Doing the release tarball takes about half an hour. What takes time is
> to test it, to upload the tarball, put it on the FTP site, add a
> bugzilla version, change www.gimp.org to point to the new release,
> announce the release on freshmeat, gnomedesktop.org, linuxartist.org
> ...  You can hardly cut down much of this.

You can certainly spread it around. I update the NEWS now, as
well as you. Anyone can do that. Same thing goes for making the
announcement on freshmeat, gnome-desktop, linuxartist... I can do
bugzilla tags.

Anything which requires specialist knowledge (make distcheck, as
you have pointed out, requires a finely balanced set of versions
for a bunch of stuff, and there are very few people who
understand the website system) or permissions (uploading the 
tarball) is another matter, but it doesn't make sense in general to 
have only one person able to do these things. The thing which
takes the longest for *me* is make distcheck.

> But I don't see what you are trying to argument about here. We agreed
> that we will do regular releases, we are already doing releases every
> two or three weeks. The point is just that I don't want to have a list
> that tells me that a release is pending next sunday.

I got the point; so I'll repeat mine, and then we can stop. We're
more or less agreed that to have 2.2 by the end of June, we need
to 
1) have 2.0 this month
2) Branch a stable development branch next month
3) Feature freeze at the start of April
4) start pre-releases in the middle of April
5) Release 2.2 the end of June.

I don't think there's any argument there. All I did was throw in
a release every couple of weeks between those 5 points. I think
it's helpful to show how little time there will be in this
development cycle.

> Some real content in the roadmap instead of meaning-less dates would
> be helpful. At perhaps make it a proposal for a roadmap next time.

This comment got me angry. I've calmed down now. Everything I
post to this list that isn't meant to be a fact is an opinion,
and a request for comments. If I say "March 17th is St. Patrick's
Day", that's a fact. If I say "I think we should have 2.2.0 at
the end of June, and I think this is more or less how to get
there", that's opinion. See the difference? I asked for comments.
I even got a couple of positive ones, in e-mails off-list. How
much more proposally would you like it to be?

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
   David Neary,
   Lyon, France
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Updated roadmap (so people don't laugh at the old one)

2004-02-05 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

Dave Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> I'm not trying to nail anyone down. I don't think anyone is. I'm not
> *imposing* anything. The roadmap (as has been shown by the last one)
> is *not* set in stone.

We all know that but your roadmap gave a different impression. Instead
of pointing out what we want to achieve you gave a list of dates. Since
we will not match a single one of these dates, it doesn't make sense to
publish such a list.

> Releasing should not be a big deal. It could be as simple as doing
> cvs tag GIMP_2_1_1
> cvs diff -r GIMP_2_1_0 -r GIMP_2_1_1 > the_diff
> In which case, there'd be no reason not to do it often. Currently, we
> impose a standard somewhat stricter on ourselves, which means that
> making a release takes a long time (it can take 7 or 8 hours on a fast
> machine). But who cares if that thing you wanted to fix didn't get
> done? It'll be done for the next release. A release is *not* a
> deadline, it's a liberation of the work of the last 2 weeks.

Doing the release tarball takes about half an hour. What takes time is
to test it, to upload the tarball, put it on the FTP site, add a
bugzilla version, change www.gimp.org to point to the new release,
announce the release on freshmeat, gnomedesktop.org, linuxartist.org
...  You can hardly cut down much of this.

But I don't see what you are trying to argument about here. We agreed
that we will do regular releases, we are already doing releases every
two or three weeks. The point is just that I don't want to have a list
that tells me that a release is pending next sunday. I know very well
when it is about time for a release. When the time has come, I can
figure out if the source is in a reasonable state for a release. Then
I can try to find time to do it. If someone else would be doing the
release it would be the very same thing. Now what good does it do if
we tell people some release date that we are not likely to ever meet?

> Well, myself and Sven are in agreement on the tight release plan,
> more or less. I think it might be a little too tight, and I
> personally would have aimed for a first pre-release for guadec, with
> a final 2.2 in August, but I think a 4 month release is
> possible. The *only* difference between my idea and yours and Sven's
> is that I think that giving concrete dates as rough guidelines for
> milestones is better than having bigger milestones every 6 weeks to
> 2 months.

All I can say is that a concrete release date discourages me to the
point where I decide that I will rather be doing something else. As
Brix said, there are enough deadlines in our lives. If GIMP starts to
add more, then for me it's about time to quit with GIMP development. I
just couldn't stand it.

> I respect that you don't want to have to stick to dates. Like I
> said, there will be no Stazi knocking on your door if you don't. The
> roadmap is meant to be specific, but flexible, in my mind. If the
> majority opinion is against that, I will re-do a vaguer roadmap with
> no precise dates.

Some real content in the roadmap instead of meaning-less dates would
be helpful. At perhaps make it a proposal for a roadmap next time.


Sven
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Updated roadmap (so people don't laugh at the old one)

2004-02-05 Thread Dave Neary
Hi,

Henrik Brix Andersen wrote:
On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 13:27, Sven Neumann wrote:
[...] nail us down [...]
[snip]

Imposing a fixed release schedule  [...]
[snip]

[...] this road map should not be set in stone.
I think both you and Sven have somewhat missed the point. The funny thing is, we 
are *almost* in agreement.

I'm not trying to nail anyone down. I don't think anyone is. I'm not *imposing* 
anything. The roadmap (as has been shown by the last one) is *not* set in stone.

However, it is precise. I don't think this should be a stick we use to beat 
ourselves with. I don't think we should get upset if a release isn't done 
*exactly* on the 31st of March or whatever. But I think that we're more likely 
to be close to the bigger dates if we have smaller, closer dates to aim for. I 
also think that we should release regularly, regardless of whether we think 
things are "ready" or "finished", because it's healthy for the project.

Releasing should not be a big deal. It could be as simple as doing
cvs tag GIMP_2_1_1
cvs diff -r GIMP_2_1_0 -r GIMP_2_1_1 > the_diff
In which case, there'd be no reason not to do it often. Currently, we impose a 
standard somewhat stricter on ourselves, which means that making a release takes 
a long time (it can take 7 or 8 hours on a fast machine). But who cares if that 
thing you wanted to fix didn't get done? It'll be done for the next release. A 
release is *not* a deadline, it's a liberation of the work of the last 2 weeks.

It's no secret that the GIMP project is rather short on active
developers these days (I haven't been very active myself lately either)
- and I think setting a tight release plan/road map will only discourage
new developers to start spending what little spare time they may have
contributing to The GIMP.
Well, myself and Sven are in agreement on the tight release plan, more or less. 
I think it might be a little too tight, and I personally would have aimed for a 
first pre-release for guadec, with a final 2.2 in August, but I think a 4 month 
release is possible. The *only* difference between my idea and yours and Sven's 
is that I think that giving concrete dates as rough guidelines for milestones is 
better than having bigger milestones every 6 weeks to 2 months.

I respect that you don't want to have to stick to dates. Like I said, there will 
be no Stazi knocking on your door if you don't. The roadmap is meant to be 
specific, but flexible, in my mind. If the majority opinion is against that, I 
will re-do a vaguer roadmap with no precise dates.

Cheers,
Dave.
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Re: [Gimp-developer] Updated roadmap (so people don't laugh at the old one)

2004-02-05 Thread Henrik Brix Andersen
Hi,

On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 13:27, Sven Neumann wrote:
> David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
[snip]
> > So, without further ado, here's the updated roadmap... are there
> > any comments?
[snip]
> The GIMP project is already putting up enough pressure without
> people trying to nail us down on release dates. Things would be
> different if someone payed a handful of GIMP developers. They could be
> responsible for the milestones then and I could understand why someone
> would want to see such a list. However as long as GIMP is a project
> that is driven by voluntary contributions, we should IMO avoid to
> publish such lists. 
>
> If the GIMP developers decide that such list of published milestones
> is required for the future development, then I am going to look for
> other projects to contribute to. After all this is supposed to be fun.

I couldn't have said it any better myself, Sven. The GIMP is a spare
time project for all of us - personally I have enough deadlines and
stressful release dates as part of my study. I don't need more of these
during my free time.

The GIMP is being developed by a group of volunteers - Personally I'm in
it partly because it's lots of fun and partly because I learn a lot
during the the process. Imposing a fixed release schedule will take a
great deal of fun out of the project, I'm afraid.

Don't get me wrong. I believe having a road map is a good thing. As with
any major software project we too need to plan ahead. But I am convinced
we should stick to only hinting at release dates like we did at the last
GIMPCon. The main goal of the road map, IMO, should be documenting which
major changes goes into which release - and even then this road map
should not be set in stone.

It's no secret that the GIMP project is rather short on active
developers these days (I haven't been very active myself lately either)
- and I think setting a tight release plan/road map will only discourage
new developers to start spending what little spare time they may have
contributing to The GIMP.

Sincerely,
./Brix
-- 
Henrik Brix Andersen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

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Re: [Gimp-developer] Updated roadmap (so people don't laugh at the old one)

2004-02-05 Thread Sven Neumann
Hi,

David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> This roadmap should not be seen as set in stone, but I agree with
> Freedman Dyson that it is better to be precise and wrong than to
> be vague. If we set ourselves vague targets, then we will arrive
> at them a long time after we'd like.

So what?

> So, without further ado, here's the updated roadmap... are there
> any comments?

I'd like to note that I personally very much dislike the fact that you
published these fixed dates. They haven't been discussed as such and I
don't think it is helpful to set such dates at all.

I do believe that it is important to publish dates for feature and API
freezes since developers need to know about them and the earlier they
know the better. But it is IMO a very bad thing to publish release
dates. It would have been OK to say that we target a 2.0 release this
month and that 2.2 is supposed to be out in summer, perhaps even in
June. However publishing a fixed date for each and every release that
we will possibly do during the next months is IMO the worst thing we
could have done. Let alone the fact that release dates for 2.0.1 or
even 2.0.2 are completely unreasonable since they depend on facts we
cannot know yet.

I would like to let people know that I will not respect any of these
dates. The GIMP project is already putting up enough pressure without
people trying to nail us down on release dates. Things would be
different if someone payed a handful of GIMP developers. They could be
responsible for the milestones then and I could understand why someone
would want to see such a list. However as long as GIMP is a project
that is driven by voluntary contributions, we should IMO avoid to
publish such lists. 

If the GIMP developers decide that such list of published milestones
is required for the future development, then I am going to look for
other projects to contribute to. After all this is supposed to be fun.


Sven
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[Gimp-developer] Updated roadmap (so people don't laugh at the old one)

2004-02-04 Thread David Neary
Hi all,

Some people thought it was ridiculous to fix dates on events when
we had GIMPCon at the CCC in August - after all, we haven't done
that in the past, and "it'll be done when it's done" is almost a
motto for some people around.

The thing is that we did make a roadmap, though - and we've
deviated from it quite a bit. But I think that without it, we
wouldn't have come as far as we have in so little time.

We're now on the cusp of 2.0.0, and the time has come to put some
realism back in the old roadmap. We expected 2.0 before
Christmas, and it looks like we will have it in February. We need
to start thinking about 2.2 (not just about what we will do for
it, but what we will not do). 

I still think we should stick with a target of the end of June
for 2.2.0 - this will be a short release cycle (4 months), but
the goal of the 2.2 release has not changed - we should stabilise
the codebase, adding some stuff which we would have liked to have
in 2.0 (but not everything that we would have liked in 2.0), and
work on building the community. 

That means that the 2.1 series will be always buildable, always
usable, (almost) always releasable (following the example of the
GNOME release team, my idols). 

This roadmap should not be seen as set in stone, but I agree with
Freedman Dyson that it is better to be precise and wrong than to
be vague. If we set ourselves vague targets, then we will arrive
at them a long time after we'd like.

So, without further ado, here's the updated roadmap... are there
any comments?

Cheers,
Dave.


Updated GIMP development Roadmap:
=

Aug 6-10 2003: CCC

Jan 7th: 2.0 pre1 release

Jan 19th: 2.0 pre2

Feb 4th: 2.0 pre3 *** WE ARE HERE ***

Feb 18th: 2.0pre4 (or 2.0 rc1)

Feb 25th: 2.0.0

March 10th: 2.0.1, creation of gimp-2-0 branch

March 13th: Final feature list for inclusion in 2.2.0
(prioritised)

March 25th: 2.0.2 (possibly final 2.0 release)

April 2nd: 2.1.0

April 16th: 2.1.1

End of April: 2.1.2, Feature freeze for 2.2 (anything on the above list
that's not done isn't in 2.2)

Around May 15th: 2.2 pre1 (2.1.3)
Pre-releases to follow every 2 weeks.

Late June 2004: 2.2.0 (just before GIMPCon)

August 2004: The Great Pain - the GeGL migration.
I suspect that parts of this will start in February/March, and
that this will not be complete until Summer 05.

Summer 05: 3.0 or 4.0 (depending on how we go about versioning).


-- 
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   Lyon, France
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